Lola and I have been cursed when running our Starters Jumpers courses from the very first trial. It's true, I swear I'm not being superstitious. There are pictures, videos, and a lot of painful memories that prove what we've been through.
There was that awful hoop shaped like a boat boey that Lola wanted no part of jumping through. There was one course that had such a horrible tunnel entry, I thought for sure that Lola would forsake her love of the tunnel forever. There have been jumps missed, off courses, rainy days, sunny days, bars at 16", bars at 22", distractions from spectators, distractions from ring crew, confused handling, panicked handling and just plain bad handling.
Lola and I were doomed to remain in Starters Jumpers for the rest of the summer.
Then this past weekend, we broke the curse. The very last run of the weekend, when everyone had packed up and was ready to leave, we ran a flawless 23 second course.
I didn't ask anyone to film it (luckily someone did), I didn't expect anyone to be paying much attention, since everyone was busy packing up, and I was mentally drained from from such an exhausting weekend.
We didn't have any family members there to cheer us on and I probably had a full bladder from avoiding the 2 day old port a potties. I was tired and hungry and thinking about what to have for dinner.
Best of all, I had left all my bad feelings in the roots of a strong old tree with the false promise of going to back to collect them after the race. Like George Costanza I did the opposite of everything I normally do without putting pressure on my self to succeed.
And that's how we broke The Jumpers curse.
