Why I Write Down My Eventing Goals Before Each Season

The first warm spell of the Australian spring always hits my paddocks at the most inconvenient time. One minute I am still pulling on a puffer jacket at the Mt Duneed agistment, the next the clippers are out, the horse is shedding, and event entries for the new season have opened across Boneo Park, Wallaby Hill, and a dozen other venues in between. My instinct in those first bright weeks is to throw myself straight into work. Load the float, book lessons, canter up the hills, and hope the rest sorts itself out. The older I get, the more I have learned that hope is a poor training partner, and the season that nearly broke me was the one where I did not bother to write down what I actually wanted from it.

That year, I turned up to Melbourne International Three Day Event with a vague feeling that I should do better than the previous year, a saddle pad that did not quite fit, and absolutely nothing written down. I was not tracking which movements I needed to fix in dressage, which lines I kept missing in show jumping, or which questions on cross-country I had been avoiding for two seasons. The result was predictable: I left the weekend tired, frustrated, and unsure what to even put in my next lesson. The only way I have managed to stop repeating that pattern is by sitting down each August with a notebook and putting pen to paper before the calendar swallows me.

Writing goals down is not glamorous, and it is certainly not the kind of post that gathers likes on Instagram. It is, however, the single habit that has changed how my seasons unfold. I keep my list in a battered Moleskine I bought in a newsagent in Geelong, and I read it back at the start of every event. It has become less of a wishlist and more of a contract with myself, my horse, and the people who help us get to the start box.

A Goals List Forces You to Be Honest About Where You Are

Before I can write a single goal for the coming season, I have to look at the season that just finished. That means pulling out my scoring sheets from Adelaide Horse Trials, my dressage test sheets from Scone, the notes my coach scribbled in the margins, and the video clips I never quite want to rewatch. It is uncomfortable. I would rather focus on the canter I finally nailed or the clear round at Albury. The truth, though, is that honest self-assessment is the only foundation a useful target can sit on.

Last spring, my list at the top of the page read something like: stop rushing the canter-trot transitions in the warm-up, ride the corners in the show jumping without throwing my shoulder, and make the log at the B element of the MIM clip a positive line rather than a survival mission. None of those are flashy. None of them will be on a highlight reel. All of them are the things that were quietly costing me marks, time, and confidence. Putting them in writing meant I could not pretend they had gone away over the off season.

I have also started adding the numbers. How many cross-country jumping penalties across the whole season, what my average dressage score looked like, how many rails in the show jumping phase. The cold, unromantic data tells a different story than the feeling I have walking back to the truck. Aiming to improve from a 32 to a 28 in dressage is a concrete project. Aiming to "do better" is a daydream. I think a lot of riders in the Australian eventing community fall into the daydream category because we are good at soldiering on. The list forces us to be specific.

Paper Beats Memory When the Pressure Hits

I have tried keeping objectives in my head. I have tried keeping them in the Notes app on my phone. I have tried texting them to my coach and hoping he would remember for me. None of those survive the pressure of a two-star trot-up at Sydney International when my hands are shaking and I am trying to remember which side of the saddle my brain is supposed to be on. The list has to be on paper, in a place I can actually see it.

Some riders I know in the Toowoomba region photograph their goal sheet and use it as the lock screen on their phone for the whole season. Others laminate the page and tape it inside the lid of their tack box. I have a friend who writes hers in white pencil on the back of her breastplate number and reads them while she walks the course. The method does not matter. The point is that the targets are physically in front of you at the moments when the brain wants to talk you out of them. I have lost count of the number of times I have walked a cross-country course at Wallaby Hill, felt the nerves rise, and glanced down at the laminated card in my pocket to remember that today is about riding the line, not chasing the time.

This is also where the quieter logistics live. My list usually includes things like: prep the lorry the night before, pack the hay net, double check the studs, give Teddy a quiet evening. That last one I treat almost like a mantra, and there is a whole separate piece on the art of giving your horse a quiet night before a big day that I keep bookmarked on my phone for the night before any major run. The point of writing it down is that I do not have to think about it in the dark at five in the morning when my brain is half asleep and I am reaching for the wrong travel boots.

Goals Should Cover More Than Ribbons

It took me a few seasons to realise that a list built only around outcomes is a list that will, eventually, make you miserable. I cannot control whether I win, whether the judge likes my trot, or whether the heavens open at three o'clock on cross-country day. What I can control is the preparation. So my page is at least half process goals, the kind that nobody else sees and that nobody will congratulate me for.

Things like: ride at least four schooling sessions a week in winter. Stretch properly after every ride. Eat a real breakfast on event days instead of three flat whites and a muesli bar. Book the bodyworker for Teddy every six weeks. Do my own strength work consistently. The physical side of riding gets ignored by a lot of eventers because we spend so much time focused on the horse, but I have felt the difference in my own position since I started taking my own fitness seriously. I have been working through a pull-up progression between competition days, and I can feel the difference in my two-point at the canter when my shoulders actually have some strength behind them.

I also write down the mental goals. I am not naturally a confident rider. I overthink, I second-guess, and I have a long history of letting nerves eat a clear round before I have even entered the warm-up. My list includes things like: breathe before the start box, do not change the plan on cross-country, walk away from the showground at least once between phases and eat something. They sound small, almost embarrassingly obvious written down. That is exactly why they need to be written down.

A Goals List Is a Conversation Starter With Your Team

I ride a horse who is not my own, and that complicates things. I lease Teddy, and his owner has her own ideas about what the season should look like, what level we should aim for, and what kinds of events suit him. If I turn up in August with my list already in my head and never share it, the conversation usually goes badly. If I share the page before the season starts, the conversation is much easier.

I email the targets to my coach first. We talk about what is realistic, what is stretching, and what is going to get both of us out of our comfort zone without burning Teddy out. I send a version to his owner so she can see what I am aiming for with her horse, and we adjust together. I leave a copy in the feed room at the agistment so my partner, who often helps me on the ground, can see what the weekend is about. None of these people need to memorise the list, but all of them benefit from knowing what I am trying to do.

In the Australian eventing world, a lot of us ride on fairly tight budgets and even tighter time frames. We do not have a team of grooms and a string of horses to choose from. The people around us are juggling their own horses, their own jobs, and their own families. A goals list is a kindness to them, because it tells them what to help with and when. It is also a kindness to yourself, because it means you are not asking your coach, in the middle of a lesson, what you are even working towards this season.

The List Becomes a Time Capsule You Will Thank Yourself For

I have goal lists going back to my very first prelim season, and I have read them again recently. The one from five years ago had things like: do not fall off at the water. The one from two years ago had things like: ride a clean cross-country at 80 centimetres. The list I wrote last August has things like: qualify for the three-star class at Melbourne. Each page looked enormous at the time. Each page now looks like exactly the right next step.

Reading the old ones back is one of my favourite quiet rituals at the start of a season. I sit on the verandah with a cup of tea, the dogs at my feet, and I flip through the Moleskine. Some of the targets I did not hit, and that is fine, because I usually understand why when I look back. Some I exceeded, and that surprises me in the best way. Either way, the act of writing them down gave me a season that had shape, rather than a season that just kind of happened to me.

I think that is what I want other riders to take from this. The season does not need to be perfect. The list does not need to be long or impressive. It just needs to be written, and it needs to be honest, and it needs to be somewhere you can actually find it when the nerves are loud and the coffee is not enough. Pull out a notebook, the back of an envelope, whatever you have. Sit with your horse for a few minutes and ask yourself what you actually want from the next six months. Write it down. Then go and do the work.

If you have a goal-setting habit that works for you, or you are about to sit down and write your first one, I would genuinely love to hear your take. Drop me a comment on the post, slide into my DMs, or tag me in a story. The more of us who are doing this kind of thinking out loud, the stronger and more honest our little corner of the sport becomes. See you at the start box.