Why I’m not ready to ride Tevis

First, non-endurance friends, read here what Tevis is.

I’m not ready to ride 100 miles in a day (or even 90-ish, as they may have done this year). Putting aside all the concrete reasons that I'm not ready, including (but not limited to): Not having enough money for a trip to CA, not having a fit horse, not being a fit rider, never having ridden more than 30 miles continuously, not being a "morning person" and needing much more frequent bathroom breaks than a Tevis-winning pace will allow, I also am just too damn lazy. Let me illustrate.

I’ve copied 2011 winning rider Jeremy Reynolds’ schedule from ride day and compared it to my own schedule for the same Saturday. It puts my productivity in pretty harsh perspective.

6:30 a.m.

Jeremy begins the ride, cantering through darkness with a herd of fire-breathing elite equine athletes.

I am still in bed. 

7:30 a.m.

Jeremy arrives at Lower Quarry–East, averaging 10.1mph.

I am still in bed.

8:01 a.m.

Jeremy arrives at Franciscos–East, having already gone 20.1 miles in less than two hours.

I am still in bed.

10:21 a.m.

Jeremy arrives at Foresthill–East, having traveled 38.6 miles. He will now have a one-hour hold and vet check.

I am still in bed. (Do you see a pattern forming?)

11:24 a.m.

Jeremy leaves Foresthill–East.

I wake up 11 minutes after Jeremy leaves Foresthill. In those 11 minutes he has traveled about a mile. I have gone the 10 steps to the bathroom and back.

12:01 p.m.

Jeremy arrives at Chicken Hawk/Volcano–East, having traveled 42.7 miles.

I am putting frozen biscuits in the oven and frying breakfast sausage. I am still in my bathrobe. Brian is playing Call of Duty in his underwear.

1:22 p.m.

Jeremy is leaving Chicken Hawk/Volcano–West, having traveled more than half the ride distance—57.3 miles.

I am now wearing pants.

1:55 p.m.

Jeremy cruises into Foresthill – West. He is at 61.4 miles and will have another hourlong hold.

I am in the truck on my way to Heather’s to ride Blue.

2:58 p.m.

Jeremy leaves Foresthill – West.

Blue and I are at Bennington Lake. We are about 15 minutes into our ride.

5:22 p.m.

Jeremy arrives at River Crossing – West. He has ridden 83.4 miles today.

I am already back in the parking lot at Bennington Lake grooming Blue. I rode a few moderately paced miles of hills in ideal October-in-Walla-Walla weather (i.e., 70 degrees and sun with just the hint of a breeze).

I'm not a real endurance rider; I just play one in this blog.

5:50 p.m.

Jeremy arrives at Lower Quarry – West, 89.9 miles into his journey.

I drop Blue off at Heather’s and unhook the trailer. I zoom home to say hello to Brian and change clothes so I can go for a run.

7:01 p.m.

Jeremy cruises into the finish at McCann Stadium. He has been riding for 10.5 hours—longer than I have been awake—at an average speed just under 10mph.

I finish a 20-minute run (level, paved trail) at the same moment he crosses the finish line. I feel pleasantly tired.

I can’t imagine how he feels. And that’s why I’m not ready.

Lightness

Two fantastic rides this weekend. Two very different rides.

Friday after work I was feeling kind of tired and irritable, which is the wrong frame of mind for taking out on the road for mileage. But I knew I needed to ride: Blue is getting F-A-T these days. I'm constantly tweaking his diet, but since he arrived malnourished, we haven't quite figured out what he needs on a day-to-day basis yet. So right now he's probably getting a bit more than he needs... grass hay, pasture, beet pulp, Life Design senior, and half a cup of flax seeds with paprika daily. Believe it or not, up until a few weeks ago we were putting Cool Calories and canola oil on top of that.

On the upside, Heather tells me that he has started frolicking in the pasture (i.e., tearing around like an idiot), so I think he must be feeling better than he was when I got him. I just keep telling myself that all that feed is going somewhere. On Friday, it went toward arena work.

I tend to get bored in the arena. To keep myself involved and to enforce some kind of structure on the ride, I played an episode of This American Life on my iPhone. The purpose is to keep my mind and body relaxed by distracting me just the right amount, while also making it clear when I have been riding for an hour. When the episode is over, we cool down.

I put Blue in the German martingale, and we began some very basic gymnastic work under light contact. Blue tends to stay bent to the left, so my goal that night was to get one good, even, consistently paced volte to the right. And I got it eventually.

The hour went by fast for me, because I was incrementally asking Blue to pull himself into some semblance of a balanced frame. We had moments, friends. It was a start.  By the time Ira Glass was signing off, we were doing neat figure-eights, flexed but not braced.

Blue and I both took Saturday off. My back was killing me (probably because I went for a run Friday night), and I spent most of the day flat on the floor listening to college football. When Brian got home, we went out on a date, which I only mention here because between dinner and the movie we had some time to kill. We went to a bookstore and Brian bought me this:

We didn't get home until well after 1 a.m., but I still stayed up and read the first 20 pages or so. Obviously Blue is no dressage horse, but the advice and some of the exercises that Becker recommends are within his ability now. And others we can work towards. Everything is focused on creating that lightness and oneness of purpose that makes riding so fantastic... on the rare occasion that the stars align that way.

And I have to say, Sunday was one of those days when things just felt great. I took Blue to the lake for a little alone time, just the two of us. I wanted to get him out and let him work at his own pace instead of trying to keep up with Bunny or thinking about how he could cut corners to get home.

Was it the weather? The day off? Some unconscious dressage-by-osmosis from the book? I don't know. But Blue and I were rock solid and full of energy. Nothing could spook him—not mountain bikes, dogs or deer leaping up from almost underfoot—not even Dean's horses calling to him as we bombed down the road next to Mill Creek. Blue attacked every hill with equine zeal, and I just focused on staying out of his way.

I wasn't GPS-ing, so I don't know what our actual speed was. And really it doesn't matter anyway. We were moving at a speed that made us both happy and got us home with plenty of daylight to spare.

Light skies, light hands and light hearts. It was a great ride.

Plagues

It was 93 degrees outside on the first day of fall. Ninety-three degrees and bone dry. How dry?

So dry that I raised a cloud of dust just by standing.

So dry that every photo I tried to take was blurry yellow-brown.

Yes, the dust is unpleasant. But the light, fluffy soil that fills the air (and is great for growing onions), also grows my mortal enemy:

Puncture vine.

AKA, goat heads.

AKA, the things that I track around with me everywhere I go.

Heat and dust and puncture vine are not what we're here to talk about though. I'm here to talk about culicoides.

They call them no-see-ums, so look closely while you can.

We had a cold spring and a late summer, so here, all of a sudden at the end of September, the bugs have arrived.

Quincy stopped shaking long enough for a picture. I see at least eight flies on him.

Bunny's tail never stops.

Blue's eyes were red and swollen from the constant irritation.

 Something had to be done. So I got out the arsenal:

The nice thing about it being 93 degrees is that I could safely give Blue an early-fall scrubbing. I spent an hour working medicated shampoo into this:

Hair loss and dermatitis caused by culicoides and the neck threadworms that they transmit. Blue has a lot of these nasty patches of so-called sweet itch.

Then I drenched him in Flysect, smeared his face with Swat, hit all the sweet itch patches with EQyss gel, and topped it all off with a fly mask. The end result looks a lot like what I started with... minus the flies!

Who's a pretty boy? Blue is!

Run or Roll

Some of you probably saw my triumphant post to Facebook on Friday. I was running my C25K workout while leading Blue. I was also taking a picture and posting to Facebook. All of this was possible at the same time during Week 1.

See, isn't this fun?

Day 1 of Week 2 started off a bit more challenging. Yes, the time spent running increased. But the more challenging part was literally dragging my extremely barn-sour horse down the road with me. It is one thing to go for a run when you aren't fit. It is something else entirely to do it with 1,200 lbs of dead weight behind you (and still not be fit).

I thought the plan was a good one in these days of waning daylight. It is dim by 7:30 now, so I wanted to multi-task. We have an established loop of about 6 miles of road. The first section doesn't have a shoulder and people bomb down it at a ridiculous speed. I figured I'd run/lead that section since it is so dangerous to be mounted on it, then hop on and finish the loop once my half-hour run/walk was done and we were on a more horse-friendly stretch of road.

I didn't count on my horse leading so sluggishly, or on the road noise being so loud I couldn't hear the prompts from my iPhone. The leading problem was such a mess that I finally stopped and picked a good switch from a bush next to the road. When Blue lagged, I gave him a little smack and he smartened right up. Except then he was rushing ahead, dragging me down the Mojonnier hill. 

So then I had to jerk him back into the correct leading position again. Then he'd start thinking of home and lagging. Smack. Jerk. Smack. Jerk. ...for half a mile or so.

I knew he was lazy on the lead line, but it wasn't a training priority until now. Now we need to establish that his place is at my shoulder, on a loose rope—no exceptions. I think we made a lot of progress in that direction on Monday, but I didn't set out for this run to be a training exercise. Of course, all that jerking and dragging and switching and stopping to rewind the program to hear if I was supposed to be running or walking meant that I did a lot more work than I was really meant to. C'est la vie.

So, workout complete, I mounted up to finish the loop. Of course, Blue thought he knew a shorter way home. (And actually, the way he wanted to go would have been shorter, but that wasn't the point. I am the one who picks the route. I am The Decider.) We trotted along beautifully at a nice clip on a loose rein for about 100 yards, then, with no warning at all, Blue simultaneously broke into a canter, turned back on the pavement (as luck would have it, there was no traffic at this point) and attempted to high-tail it back to The Pen.

We had a conversation involving backing, bending, turning, some mild swearing and an application of spurs, and set off again in the correct direction at a very smart "working walk." I only had to dismount once more as we passed the two gray mares who like to run up and down the field fence as we go by. Normally, I'd ride past them for practice, but Blue was still pretty volatile, and I didn't want us to end up tangled in the barbed wire on the other side of the road.

Once we were at the end of the mares' enclosure, I mounted back up and we made tracks for home. Back on familiar road and facing the direction of The Pen, Blue perked right up. To keep it interesting, I switched diagonals 10 times in one straightaway and then made him go slower and slower the rest of the way home. We even saw Heather and family out for a walk as we neared the house, so I turned Blue back to ride alongside them for a little bit. He was none too pleased, but as I said before, I am The Decider.

Once we got back to The Pen we had another short lesson on bowing—we're getting very close now! I look forward to the day when he will bow so I can mount bareback. Wouldn't that be a cool trick?

 

[Tuesday update: I did Monday's running program again today, sans horse. Guess what? It was waaaaayyyy easier.]

Have you hugged your horse today?

He only looks bored.

Elbe Hills Challenge: The exciting conclusion

OK, truth be told, it was so long ago, I don't have any detailed information about the finish. I was really hoping to have some photos to share by now, but no.

So here's the pertinent info in bullet points without any jazzing up:

• Heather and I completed the trail ride with nothing lower than a B on either vet card, and both horses pulsed in the 40s.

• Once I had lunch and a little nap, I grabbed my book (Dick Francis, of course) and my camp chair and went to watch Laurie come in on the 50.

• Laurie and Otto were 11th in the 50-miler, in spite of getting seriously lost at least once, and taking a break to talk to the radio guys out on the trail. I definitely have a little of that "proud momma" feeling when it comes to Otto. I knew he had it in him, and at the same time I am soooooo glad not to be the one riding him!

Laurie and Otto at the end of the 50 at Elbe—they were both surprisingly perky!

• At the awards ceremony, I won the raffle for an American Trail Gear $25 gift certificate. Guess who's getting a new crupper? :)

• After another great, long drive with Laurie, we got home just as the big storm clouds were building over the valley in the late afternoon. But this is Walla Walla, so it rained mud, not water.

Funny how Elbe got me thinking about next year. I'm already looking forward to HOTR!

Stretching

I had kind of a long holiday weekend. It was my MIL's 60th birthday, so we headed over to Boise on Thursday to celebrate with her. Contrary to popular belief, my natural state is introversion, so it is a test of stamina for me to spend several days in a strange place with unfamiliar people—and without any "alone time." By Sunday afternoon, I had stretched my social graces to the absolute limit. We got home that evening, and I didn't hesitate to tell Brian that he probably wouldn't be hearing from me during the day on Monday. I had a date with Blue. I needed to get out on my own and ride the tension out of my system.

That's normal, right? Using a good, hard ride to clear your mind and drain off the stress? (I hardly know the answer because before I had Blue, riding was a stressful activity too.)

Since I was looking forward to a day of solitude tackling the Cache Hollow/Lincton Mountain loop, it was pretty much inevitable that I would wake up to facebook and phone messages asking me to do that very same loop in a group that afternoon.

Sigh. So much for alone time. One of the (very few) disadvantages to boarding with your main riding buddy is that she can tell pretty easily that you totally ditched her to go off riding by yourself. Luckily, the group plan was for 2:30 in the afternoon. The clock said 11:30 a.m. I had just enough time to squeeze in a solo ride before the group ride.

I took Blue out to Madame Dorian, and we blasted out 5 miles of deep sand trails in blistering noon-on-Labor-Day heat. Yes, it was an hour of driving in order to do an hour of riding under the worst possible conditions, but that's missing the point. It was the wind and the sagebrush and the solitude that I needed. I would have hauled Blue to the ends of the earth just to find a quiet patch to ride on.

We had a steady, fast, happy ride, and were home by 2:32. Not too shabby, if I say so myself.

I had no sooner turned the trailer around in Heather's driveway than she loaded up Bunny and we headed to Cache Hollow to meet Shana.

Shana's husband made a video of her a couple years ago that shows some of the Cache Hollow Road loop. In my opinion, it doesn't capture the difficulty, though.



Google maps doesn't really do it justice, either, so here's a simple illustration:

You Western Washington people are probably rolling your eyes at this little climb, but I grew up in a county in Nebraska where the highest point was about 10 feet above the lowest.

We had some pretty sweaty ponies by the time we crested the hill, but we pushed on past that until my GPS said we'd gone an honest 4-plus miles, all uphill. Then we turned around and flew back down again.

Bunny trotting downhill on good footing is a force of nature. I couldn't clock her because I couldn't keep up. Blue and I were well behind, with Sinwaan somewhere in the middle. Blue and I were pretty well spent after this. He'd done 5 miles of sand that the other two hadn't done, but he stayed willing and soft all the way back down the mountain. He is by no means ready for an LD, let alone a 50, but I like what I see so far. The mind is willing, but the body needs conditioning. We just need more days like Monday to keep stretching the boundaries of his fitness.

And speaking of stretching our fitness boundaries, I started "Couch to 5K" on Tuesday after work. If you aren't familiar with the program, here's an overview. I bought an iPhone app that tells me when to run and when to walk over the course of a half-hour workout. So far, so good. Every step of running under my own steam makes me appreciate my horse all the more.