Chloe Phillips-Harris - Fearless: The life of adventurer, equestrian and endurance rider Chloe Phillips-Harris

CONTENTS

CONTENTS

I would like to dedicate this book to every

horse that changed the direction of my life

the good ones and the challenging ones,

the ones that flew like the wind across the

great Mongolian steppe and the ones that

taught me patience and persistence at home.

Also, to my parents, both of whom showed me

there is a huge, wide world out there and that

its okay to take the path less travelled.

I t was just the slightest movement that woke me. Pain was the first sensation I was aware of, jolting me out of much-needed sleep. It was a searing sensation, like someone was suddenly using burning glass to cut through my joints. The agony was racing the length of my skeleton, disorientating and overpowering my other senses. It seemed to be slicing my knees and ankles apart, tearing at every joint in my body. The more aware I became, the more I could feel. My hip bones and shoulder blades were aching where they dug into the hard, lumpy mattress beneath me. Mattress was an overstatement I was lying on a wooden bed-frame with a layer of carpet and half an inch of thick woollen blanket on top. It offered not an ounce of softness to my pain-wracked body.

Grimly, I opened my eyes, just a little; even they hurt, feeling gritty and inflamed, begging for more rest. With my slitted, squinted vision, I could just make out the black spokes of the ger poles against the dark un-illuminated canvas roof, as my eyes adjusted to the surroundings. I lay there looking upwards; everything was slowly coming back to me. Clear thoughts making their way through the waves of pain. What had happened to me; why was I lying here in agony? Never before had I comprehended that horse riding could lead to this.

I knew I needed to get up, but I wasnt ready to face the day. Wasnt ready to move or even think about getting on another Mongolian steed. So I looked at the ceiling and the structure holding it together. Poles and canvas lined with felt, in a circular structure like that of a wagon wheel, was keeping the cold of the outdoors away. Unlike other gers Id stayed in, this didnt feel particularly cosy. It was unadorned, missing the usual artwork, shrines and tapestries that made a nomadic tent into a family home. There was nothing homely or reassuring here, it was just an empty tourist ger on the side of a lake. I took a deep breath in. Even the air felt a bit stale; un-lived in. Wed found the ger last night and, with no one around, wed tethered our horses and laid our sleeping bags on top of the wooden bed-frames for the night. It wasnt helping my current mood to feel like an imposter in an unwelcoming environment.

I blinked, feeling my eyelids scrape again. I couldnt see my companion on the adjacent bed, but I could hear her still drawing in the deep breaths of sleep. Slowly, I went to move a leg. Ugh I bit my lip to stifle a groan. I dont remember ever experiencing this kind of pain before, pain that was the focal point of my entire being. Even that small movement sent the glass shards of fire cutting through my knees once more.

More than anything, I could not believe the agony I was in. How was I going to get out of bed, let alone on another horse? The pain was making me mad and scared at the same time. I was tougher than this, surely? I shouldnt be hurting this bad. I knew about pain but yet, here I was, scared about how much everything was going to hurt. My entire life savings spent to enter the worlds toughest horse race, and I was lying immobilised by the fourth morning. Was I weak? Everyone wonders just what they would do in a testing situation how would they react, would they quit when push came to shove? Would I? I lay there, contemplating the question.

Right at this point, I really wanted to. Yet then, everything Id done would all have been for nothing. I breathed in slowly; my ribs ached. Could I do this? I let the breath out. Cmon, I thought, get your shit together, Chloe.

I pulled my arm out from where it was trapped in my sleeping bag, cocooned at my side. Bringing my watch to my face, I pressed the little button to illuminate its screen. The bright light in the blackness was temporarily blinding and burned my dry eyes. I had four minutes until my alarm would go off and Id have to move. Might as well start now and beat the clock. I didnt want to endure what I knew the next few minutes would bring; I wanted sleep, a glass of water and more sleep.

Instead, I pulled my other arm out, reached across my chest and unzipped the sleeping bag down to my waist. Another deep breath, and I rolled onto my side. Stifling another groan... my knees touching the mattress, and each one hurt so bad. Must keep moving. I wriggled some more, biting my lips to keep from making a sound, and dropped my legs over the side of the bed to sit up. If it hurt to be lying down, sitting up was worse it woke up every little ache and pain, amplifying them ten-fold.

The wooden edge of the bed was digging into my thighs. I looked down at my legs; that was a mistake. My thighs glowed abnormally pale in the dim light, but below them my knees were a visibly swollen, tight mass of mottled purple-and-blue bruising. I recoiled from the sight. I knew they were painful, but I hadnt expected there to be any visible marks of injury. The fact that there was made the pain seem all the more real. There were no open flesh wounds, no actual bits of glass sticking out. But the bruising was like nothing Id ever seen on my own body before. If I hadnt looked, I could just have pretended there was nothing wrong and carried on, but now I knew there was something real. My heart was beating a little faster and it seemed a far harder obstacle to overcome. I never bruised. I had sustained serious injury before kicks from horses that had chipped bone, broken toes and fingers, bad falls. Yet I had never managed to be properly bruised in my life. Id always wanted to, in my mind, if it didnt look bad with just a big bruise, it wasnt a real injury. I was always just a tad jealous of friends who did something as simple as bump into a table, only to come up with a massive bruise and receive endless sympathy. The irony was that now, the time I most wanted to pretend everything was okay, I was covered in bruises. Past my knees, my ankles werent fairing much better both puffy with purple patches all over them. I rolled them experimentally; they hurt, and there seemed to be a delay in my deciding to move them and actually getting any sort of action. As if between my brain and my foot, the nerve sending the message had been slowed.

Taking off my pants last night had been a mistake. For the previous three days, Id slept in everything I was wearing, minus the boots. Literally sleeping in all my clothes. My jodhpurs were tight and seemed to contain all the swelling, or at least up until right now. Looking at them, Id had no way to see the damage to my legs. I should have stuck to that plan, but for some reason last night, I thought I should take at least my pants and socks off and air my legs and feet. I reached into my sleeping bag and dragged out the jodhpurs where Id left them to keep warm. They were grey in colour, with tight, stretchy sport fabric, slightly fleecy on the inside. Slowly I pulled them on; they didnt seem to want to fit over my puffy ankles. As I pushed down with my foot, even the pressure from the fabric seemed to make the pain come to life again. But at this point, it was either get dressed and get up, or give up. The thought of having to explain to everyone back home that Id just given up without making it to halfway was more than I could bear. I pushed my other foot through and then stood up, dragging the grey fabric up the rest of my legs. My knees hurt, they cried in pain and seemed unable to hold me straight. I stood there with bent legs as if still on a horse and did my pants up, legs throbbing. At least the tight fabric in some way seemed to feel like it was holding my joints together. Some support to stop them from giving out underneath me.