Big Announcement No. 2

Another week, another big announcement (that makes me sound so important so I love to say it).

As my USEF internship comes to a close, I've had to start wondering about my future once again. My ultimate goal is to stay in Lexington because I 100% love it here. So in came typical Melissa.

If you know me, you know that I get pretty crazy ideas and most of the time, I don't give them a second thought after looking over the "reality" of them. That's probably a good thing.

But last week, I got a crazy thought and when I couldn't find many cons for it, I stuck with it and let it build. I contacted Jen, laid out my plan and got her approval. Then I went to the Paulick Report and asked for their approval just in case it would be a conflict of interest. After a few nerve-racking hours, I received approval from that side. 

I then e-mailed Jen back and told her that I had the necessary approval to go on with my plan. (If you're still with me here, congrats!)

So as of January, I will be working at the Paulick Report during the weekends and a marketing intern at Three Chimneys two afternoons a week. 

My internship with the USEF ends December 7, although I may try to change that, and I'm planning on going home for a month to recharge my batteries as the few weeks I had between graduation and moving here were mostly spent running around.

I may also try to find a new apartment to move into as living in the dining room of a friend's isn't the best situation for long term. However, that one is still up in the air at this point.

So there you have it.  As of January, I will be fully involved in the horse racing industry. I will also be taking more steps towards moving to Lexington permanently. Oh boy! 

And just as an extra for those that know my joke about taking over the world...

 

Welcome to My Life

I'm sneaking this post in a little late this week due to how busy I was with the second week of the Keeneland September Sale.

First off, last weekend in celebration of my big news (below), Jen Roytz invited me to Three Chimneys to "celebrate" with the horse that started it all, Point Given. While two bags of carrots were distributed among all the Three Chimney stallions currently present on the farm (some are vacationing in Australia), a whole bag (plus one) went to my main man. 

Jen got pictures of me spending time with multiple stallions, but this one is definitely my favorite. I really can't describe how much I love this horse.



This week at the internship, I finally got a "big" project. The network is going through some changes so I get to go through all the videos on the server and put values in the metadata so searchers can find the riders, horses, events, etc that they want. I'm guessing it will be my final hurrah since it will take months to go through and I only have about 2 1/2 months left. There aren't really any big shows coming that we'll be working either so metadata will probably take over my life until December.

That brings me to my next piece of news. Almost two weeks ago, I was hired on as weekend editor at the Paulick Report. This weekend was my first weekend and I loved doing all the work. While being put in charge of the website with no one to hold my hand in person (phone and e-mail were my friends) was a little scary, I feel like I got it down for the most part with just a few "what am I supposed to do now" moments. Ray Paulick also gave me some tips on my writing and headlines so I'll be making a "cheat sheet" to refer to for years to come and I'm sure I'll be adding to it. 

Next weekend is a pretty big stakes weekend with, I believe, 14 stakes in two days. Even more crazily, about 11 of those are on Saturday. This weekend was a little light on stakes races and news, which I'm thankful for since it was my first weekend, but I'm worried that next weekend I'll be a little overwhelmed.

However, at lunch with Jen after she dragged me away from the farm, she told me that she had breakfast with Brad Cummings of the Paulick Report earlier that week. While at first I was a little suspicious of them talking about me, he told her that I remind him of him when I was younger and she said that she thinks the same. That's a huge compliment to me and inspires me even more. It does add some pressure but I thrive under pressure so I'm okay with that.

On top of that pressure, when Brad and I met for my pre-work training, he told me that he's going to push me pretty hard because he knows that I'm not just here for a temporary job and that's 100% true. I want to make the racing industry my long term career (even more now that I have a weekend of racing journalism under my belt) so that was welcome music to my ears. 

As I told Ray when he was putting me through a soft edition of writing boot camp yesterday as I posted articles, I'm learning every time he says something (it's all going on the cheat sheet) and I want be educated as much as I possibly can both about my mistakes and things to look out for in the future. I feel like PR is the perfect place for that because if this weekend is any indication, they are as eager to teach me as I am to learn.

I definitely feel like there are big things coming down the pike in coming months and can't wait to see what the future brings.

Yearlings, Fish... and Yoga

Welcome to the crazy first week of Fall for me. I started off the week in a yoga class and ended it at Keeneland. I told you it was crazy.

Last weekend, I went to my first yoga class in probably about three years. Unlucky for me, it was an "all levels" class so by the end of the warm up, I was exhausted. However, I went to the class two more times last week and it got a little better each time. After Thursday's class, I even added some extra activities in after class. Sadly, I probably won't be able to make it to the classes this week (however, I'm going to try) due to being super busy, which leads me to my next topic... Keeneland.

The two weeks I've been waiting for are here. Over the last two days, I've spent about 18 hours looking at all sorts of yearlings. From beauties to those that are "unfortunate", I've seen all different types. I've also gotten some good tips by hanging out with more "professional" types of photographers during the two days. 

The highlights of the weekend were getting to shake Carl Nafzger's hand and have him tease me about my age; meet awesome people working the consignments, including my new "favorites" Mike at Mill Ridge and Charles at Lane's End of Zenyatta fame; chilling out within five feet of Bob Baffert as he looked at horses; and meeting the yearling half sister to the awesome Point Given (picture below).

I will be going back tomorrow for the first night of the sale and my first ever "live" thoroughbred auction, so I'm sure there will be some more highlights.

I took over 5,000 pictures during the weekend and am having to do a little shifting around on hard drives to get them to fit on my computer but I expect even more over the coming days. I am thinking about doing an "opinion" blog about my thoughts of who I find impressive and such but that has to wait until I get to actually look at all my pictures since I can't remember who is who right now other than a few big standouts (Hip No. 111 for one).

On the sad side of things, after a week long battle with trying to fix the effects that Lexington water had on my fish, he has traveled his last mile. "Eddie" was literally the traveling fish. I got him right before I moved to Moscow, Idaho in 2008 and he was the only "survivor" of their water (I went there with 3, I came back with one). He then went to Texas with me where he wintered with my friend in Houston while I went home for Christmas and did the Washington to Texas trip back and forth four times. His journey ended with Lexington so all in all, he may be the most traveled fish ever with over 10,000 miles. Pretty good for a fish that's only supposed to live a year or two. While other people live with cats and dogs, I lived with a fish... so I guess you could consider him my cat. RIP Eddie.

Last but not least, I *may* have a big announcement coming up but it's not confirmed and I don't want to jinx it so I'm just going to leave you with that. So stay tuned!

The Blunt Thoughts

Please excuse the long break between posts, my mom was in town at the end of last week so I spent the whole week running around trying to get ahead in order to spend more time not worrying about anything.

Her vacation was definitely eye-opening for me and is probably why I'm being a little more blunt in this blog post.

Last week was a blast for the most part. I exchanged e-mails with one of the top writers in the racing business to get advice on how to further my "career" and then toured an amazing barn and Rood & Riddle with my mom. It did have it's boring moments but overall, it was a good week.

This week I'm being entrusted with writing the press releases for two National Championships, although I'm convinced I've only been assigned them because everyone else has other stuff to do. However, I'm not complaining since it is something. So over the past few days, I've been writing previews for my two shows. I've also been updating all the bios for riders on the Network. That was literally a three week job that made life a little more interesting.

The good thing about this internship is that it's taught me that I would rather be staying busy than sitting at my desk in the office. When I first started, I was all about being in media relations, even if it meant having a desk where times could be slow job. But now that I've experienced it and had a taste of doing journalism as well, I'm definitely pulling for a job that let's me get out of the office and/or has me constantly active. I'm not a fan of sitting around at my desk all day when I could be writing so it's definitely been eye opening.

Because of this, I'm going to start searching for a journalism job soon. My internship gets over December first and I want to have some sort of equestrian journalism job by then. However, if they offer me something and I'm still on the jobless side, I'll probably take it just so I can stay in Lexington. I do love the USEF, but I think I'd be better suited for the racing industry. It's going to be an interesting situation.

My state of mind right now is journalism or bust. I'm really hoping there's not going to be any busting when it comes right down to it. My goal is to be able to say on November 15 (my deadline for myself) that I will 100% be staying in Lexington with a job at [insert publication here]. Because of that, I am going to start job searching on September first (this Saturday) and maybe if I get really lucky, I'll be secure enough in my future that I can move the girl (horses) here before winter. Although, I'm really doubting that last part. 

My "no worries" college life is quickly drawing to a close. But while I was panicked about it in May, I'm strangely calm about it now. I'm hoping that means good things are in store for the rest of 2012.

The Bike Challenge

This week's post is going to take a bit of a different tone. Instead of one of those boring "update" threads, it's time to talk about motivation.

About a month ago, I briefly mentioned the "Challenge" my internship was doing with exercising. As a way to motivate employees to get healthy, an awards program was sent out so employees could earn a gold, silver, or bronze medal (in addition to other prizes) for going so many miles. The idea was apparently to mimic the Olympic type of spirit when it came to the challenge so more people would be interested.

If you know me, you know that I'm really competitive, so getting the e-mail with what had to be done to get the top medal immediately motivated me. Thankfully, one of the activities was riding a bike, which could also be an exercise bike, so I jumped right in (I swim like a rock and walking long distances just doesn't work for me). 

Somewhere along the way, my brain confused the mileage and I was convinced I had to go 250 miles so I put in a lot more miles in a short amount of time than I probably should have when getting into shape, oh well. The actual mileage was 150 for the gold medal and I was somewhere around the 190 mark at the end of the challenge so I definitely hit the gold standard.

Now that the challenge is over, I've created the "three week habit" of going to the gym nearly every day. Thankfully, I can also have a bit more freedom of what sort of exercises I do every day since I'm not stuck on getting so many miles in a day for the challenge

Doing the same pattern on the bike for 5 weeks (two before Young Riders and the last three weeks) wore me down since I wanted to get 10 miles every day instead of changing up my exercise plan. My big thing now is to mix it up every day to make it more fun again.

My big fear for the end of the challenge was that I wouldn't have any motivation towards continuing on once it was over. I've never been one to really sit down and accomplish goals when it comes to the gym so I had to find another way other than just losing x amount of pounds or really any "normal" goals.

The good thing about this summer is that I have a friend that is returning to the soccer field after a devastating injury last season. While watching her go through the rehabilitation process after the injury (something that I actually witnessed), I knew how much it would mean for her to get back onto the field. Therefore, her blog the other day inspired me to keep working out, especially since I still have the ankle injury from hell causing problems.

Another inspiration came from an Olympic Athlete that I actually know through mutual friends and my cousin since she graduated three years ahead of me in school. I've followed Kara's career pretty closely since she started throwing javelin in college because she was the "A" standard that a lot of us tried to live up to in athletics (or maybe just me, who knows). 

She hurt her knee at Trials this summer when she was qualifying for the Olympics but soldiered on and made it to London. It wasn't until after her qualifying throw at London (due to the injury, she didn't get past the first round), that she admitted she had torn her ACL. After finding that out, I was in awe of her strength to not just make it to the Olympics with this injury, but also to put in a pretty good throw. 

She was already motivating to me, especially after learning about the injury, but after reading her blog, I felt stupid for even having a thought of no motivation at the gym.

My pretend goal for the gym (just because it makes me feel better to have something to look towards that is workout related) is to get into at least half the shape I was in back when I was active in sports. 

My real goal is to strengthen my ankle so it stops whining and my back so I can avoid the pain that comes with my unfused vertebra moving around when I'm misusing my body. After tweaking my back at Young Riders and getting a small taste of that pain (something that I know too well from two bad episodes, one that ruined my barrel season a few years ago), I'm eager to avoid it.

Due to the fact that this blog wouldn't be complete without a horse mention, my not-so-secret "secret" goal is to get in good enough shape that when I seriously start riding again, I can be back at the "high school level" that I was at six years ago. I have some plans on changing disciplines in the near future so being in shape will definitely help with that.

Who knew my competitive nature and a bike challenge would push me in a way that I haven't been able to push myself in a long time? Definitely not me. Hopefully it's something that I can keep rolling as we enter Fall and the Holiday season.

So Much To Say

I have a ton of thoughts in my head tonight so bare with me. 
 

First.... the Olympics. 

I made it my goal this year to watch a little bit of everything and I think I've done a pretty good job. Granted, I'm behind on the events that started this week (track events mostly) but I'm hoping that NBC keeps the replays up after the Olympics so I can take some time to watch them in the coming weeks.

The first bittersweet part of the Olympics has been the Americans' performances in the equestrian events. Overall, we really haven't lived up to expectations. The team won't be bringing home a team medal and we only have three individual chances now in two events, but even their chances are looking slim. 

However, it's been great to watch Great Britain win two different team gold medals (in show jumping and dressage) and a silver medal on their home turf. Especially during the Queen's Diamond Jubilee year. 

I was surprised to learn that Great Britain never won a medal in dressage (not sure if this is overall or just for team medals) but they made a big splash on that front by winning the whole thing.

Another bittersweet moment was watching Michael Phelps' last Olympics. He retires as the most decorated Olympian and it's pretty awesome to know that I watched all his Olympic performances through the years. Talk about an awesome athlete! Of even more interest to me, it looks like his next venture will be buying racehorses. That would be beyond cool!

For my own exciting news of the week, I finally got back in the saddle on Saturday after a three month absence. Jen Rotyz and I (read a blog from earlier in the year for more on how awesome Jen is) went out to lunch and she asked if I wanted to go riding afterwards. I am desperately missing being in the saddle so I jumped on the chance (no pun intended), even though I haven't been in an english saddle since probably February (my first words to her were "excuse me if I look like a fish" when she brought out the saddles).

When she made a comment that "Boomer" (Point of Impact) hadn't been rode in a month, I figured that I'd be on her other horse so it was a major surprise when she not only had me catch Boomer but also let me ride him. Boomer is the most expensive Point Given foal ever sold so just on that fact, it was awesome to get to ride him. But if you know my obsession when it comes to Point Given, you'll understand how high I was floating at getting to ride one of his babies. 

PG is fully responsible for bringing me into horse racing and is hands down my favorite racehorse of all time. I had a BLAST riding and remembered just how important it is for me to be around horses. I could feel my mood change and I'm still on the riding "high" five days after the ride.

I think Jen was happy to have someone else on Boomer as well because she kept taking pictures while we were riding, so I have "proof" I got to ride such an awesome horse. I don't have nearly enough pictures of me riding (I'm the one that takes pictures, not the one that gets them taken) so it's always nice to have more! 

Here's a picture we had one of the owners of Blackwood Stables snap, which has a funny story behind it but Jen may disown me if I told it on the blog, haha.

Jen knows that eventually I will be searching for a Point Given baby and I told her that after seeing pictures of Boomer and me, I am claiming all 17.3 hands of him. We make a handsome pair, don't you think?

After our ride, we visited Three Chimneys stallion complex where I got to see my favorite boy from afar (he was on the other side of the pasture) and also got to see the new boys on the farm in person.

I've seen Cactus Ridge before when he was standing at another farm, but I hadn't seen the other two up close. 

One of the new boys, Ice Box, is entering his second year at stud in 2013 and still looks like he's in race shape. I'm pretty sure they could take him out of his stallion, put him in training, and he'd still be able to run a route. He's also a sweetheart and loved the attention we gave him. Caleb's Posse was my favorite three-year-old last year after Stay Thirsty and I had never seen him up close so it was awesome to see him so soon after retirement. 

Caleb was a massive ham when I went to take a picture of him. When he heard the word "Picture", he looked at me and then struck a somewhat "professional stallion" pose, which made me chuckle.

He's still adjusting to farm life but I got to see his turn out pen and it looks like he'll soon be able to enjoy the whole field. His first year at stud is 2013 and I can't wait to see his first crop in a few years.

Finally, a last little update if you are still reading.

This week, I am working the USEF merchandise booth for the US Pony Finals. I always knew there was a lot of money in ponies but I don't think I realized just how much. Today, I saw many "big" purchases (hundreds of dollars worth of gear) in the merchandise tent and it blew my mind! We had a mad rush from when we opened at 8am until about noon and I've been told we may have a few more rushes like that in the coming days but probably not that bad.

All I can say about that is "Thank the Lord!", there was massive running around going on and we sold probably 3/4 of our merchandise before noon. We start again at 8am tomorrow and I work until we close on Sunday afternoon so I'm expecting very little sleep over the coming days. I guess the good news is that it's not going to be as crazy as Young Riders!

Well that's it for my thoughts this week.

Until next time,

Mel

Horses R Us

Happy Olympics Week!

If you know me, you know I LOVE the Olympics. Every two years, I am obsessed with watching them, especially since the last few Olympics have had major meanings, (and life changes) for me. This year, the Olympics has even more meaning since I've helped put together parts of the USEF's material for them and I know more people there.

This year, the Olympics have also made me realize how involved I am in the horse world lately. When I was actually competing with my horses, I was pretty deep into the industry, but I honestly can't say I was this far into it. I definitely spent a lot of time with both my horses and my friends that were also involved in horses, but I always had an outlet to escape for a few hours, even if it was just school. 

At school, I was a somewhat normal person. People knew I was involved with horses but it wasn't what defined me for those 6-8 hours a day. Funnily enough, back then, I wished that it would have defined me. But now as I've "grown up" (huh?) and moved on from hoping that anything except my talents define me, horses and sports describe.... well.... me.

I'm not going to lie, I basically live and breathe our equine friends these days. While I don't see an actual horse up close and personal most days, even though I work at the Horse Park, my life is full of them. 

In the mornings, I usually have an equine-type of text on my phone from Twitter (a few sources I follow with my mobile notifications), when I'm driving to work, I pass by at least three farms depending on the way I go, then I go to the USEF, and on the way home, I usually drive down Old Frankfort Pike to avoid traffic.

I do go to the gym for about an hour almost every day and don't do the horse thing there but then I go home to a house that I share with two other people that work in the industry. Even when I don't really talk to them, I am either looking up news on the horse front or writing an equine based article. Basically, my life is horses 23/7 (taking off the gym hour).

A few years ago when I was nearing an equine burn out, I would have hated this lifestyle, but these days I love it. I'm definitely not involved as much competition-wise as I was back then (okay, not at all) and I'm missing actually messing with horses but even without that, I'm still just as deep in it as I was during my big years.

However, this also opens up more life questions about where exactly I want to go after my internship. But I've decided that other than doing a few simple things, I'm not worrying about that until the Fall.

Either way, I'm almost positive I'll keep up my Horses R Us theme that I have going on now because I really can't see any way to avoid it. 

Like the mob, the horse industry always sucks you in and never lets you get too far away.