Practice & Non Practice Runs

Friday night I got Voodoo from the pasture & put him in a pen for the night.  I'm very cruel, the pen has grass plus he got a very full hay bag.  Don't worry, when I went to get him Saturday morning he didn't hesitate to let me know how mean I was... he's such a drama queen lol
Anyway, I also had the truck filled & hooked up the trailer and had the trailer loaded Friday night.
Saturday morning I was up (after far too little sleep), did chores, loaded my poor abused pony and was on the road to go barrel racing.
The bad news was I hadn't figured into my travel & chore times that I needed to be there a bit early because I had all the paperwork & timers for my friend that was hosting the jackpot :o  The good news is the estimate I had for travel time of 90 minutes was WAY off and I got there in plenty of time :)

I had been doing some barrel work this last week at home and Voodoo has been working pretty nicely.  But when I went in for my first run (it was a double header, one run per jackpot) Voodoo started off at a nice, easy, slow lope for 1st barrel *headdesk*  Hmm... I guess I should have made one or two speed runs at home when I was practicing.
As we were turning 1st I felt a change in him, like he woke up and went "oh this is for reals!" and he picked up speed the rest of the run.  I was very happy with his 2nd barrel, its my nemesis but this time I managed to not start to cue him for the turn too soon and he maintained nice form around it.  The ground felt a bit iffy and I totally safetied him up on 3rd, still nice but way slow.
When it was time for the second jackpot he ran better to first but he felt stiff... I got him to soften up but he also took it as "hey lets turn here" which was about a half stride too soon, we made it around but it was NOT pretty nor was it fast.  He ran nicely to 2nd and I managed to ride him to what felt like the right spot but I think I was a little off again because he was really tight coming out which caused him to veer off like an idiot on the way to 3rd.  I was feeling better about the ground so I didn't safety up like I had earlier (the ground was harrowed every 5 riders, so by the 2nd jackpot the ground was much better)   Overall our 3rd was better, but still not great, and our 1st was worse.
I did manage to keep pushing all the way to the timers which is a huge mental problem for me.  I always think I don't have enough stopping room.  I guess its from running Cessa as my first barrel horse, being a TB she wasn't built to stop like a stock horse... that girl needed room to stop! 
The good news is Voodoo was consistent, our times had a difference of about .2 of a second.  The better news is that in the first jackpot we placed 4th in the 3D and it paid to four spots :)  For the record we placed 5th in the 3D in the second jackpot and it only paid to 3 spots. 

(how many spots are paid depends on how many entries there are)

His runs are starting to come together again, obviously we need to keep doing our slow work at home but to also add in some "real" runs once in awhile.