(Hoanna, my 13yo Morgan/QH mare, on her first 50 at Bryce...one of my most favorite pics of her!)Looks like it was April since my last post. APRIL! Holy cow! I know I have had a busy spring/summer, but really... Sorry all! Anyway, I suppose I will backtrack and post some of the fun things Storm and I have been doing this spring and summer, before I head to Bryce Canyon with him (and hopefully! do his first 50 there....). I am REALLY excited about taking him to Bryce. This is one of my most favorite places in the world to ride, and I have shared it with every one of my riding horses so far, even the dingbat 5yo, Eowyn, who got to do some trail riding there last year. It was also where my mare, Hoanna (dingbat's mom) did her first two 50's as well, with no problems whatsoever. So let's hope that good luck rubs off on Storm and all will be well :)
Anyway, back to an update. I will start with a recent event, then work my way back. We have a great, local endurance club here...Redwood Empire Endurance Riders (REER), and every year we offer 4 endurance rides in this beautiful county of ours. Chalk Rock, near Bridgeville, Ca in June, offers a ride on a private cattle ranch in the coastal mountains. Redwood 1 and Redwood 2 (the second I have been conned into managing for the last 3 yrs, so don't get to ride it, but that is ok!) in Orick, Ca in July and August, offer some stunning riding in the Redwood National Park. These are the ONLY AERC endurance rides held in the bounds of a national park. You get to experience pristine, old growth redwood groves and scenery straight out of Jurassic Park (in fact, one of the 3 JP movies had scenes filmed not 10 miles from this ride, and I believe parts of the 3rd original Star Wars movies, Return of the Jedi, was also filmed near here, or in the Redwoods State Park not too far south...either way, similar scenery :) ). Even living 1/2 hr away and getting to ride these trails as often as I want, I never tire of these majestic trails. Riding through the giant trees and fern carpets, I feel the breathe of eons past tickling my hair, and expect a dinosaur to pop out from behind a tree at any moment. If you ever have a chance to make it out here for the ride, DO! Or just come on up whenever, and Storm and I will give you a tour :) The final ride, Cuneo Creek, is held near Honeydew, Ca in September, in the Humboldt Redwoods State Park. Cuneo is a great horse camp (with corrals and real toilets/showers), with a fun variety of coastal redwood groves and more warmer weather loving trees like madrones...and the only ride we have with poison oak! ICK... This is a great ride as well, and now is a 2-day event, so if you can't justify coming to a one-day ride, come on out for Cuneo and you still get to see some great trails!
(Some pics from riding around on the Redwood 1/2 trails a few yrs ago....this is how it usually looks, fog included :) )Ok, this ends your commercial interruption, now back to our regularly scheduled programming. I was just returning from taking Storm to another ride (that will follow in another post) and didn't feel up to taking a horse out to Chalk Rock, so I helped out at that ride instead. But Redwood 1 was plenty far away (July 17), so I thought it would be great for Storm to do another "real" (as opposed to the non-aerc Duck Miles we did in May, which will be in another post) LD and earn his keep as an endurance horse :) Since I have been taking him up to Orick occasionally for training rides, we'd be on home turf and I knew he could do this ride if I took it easy (I thought he wasn't quite in top shape yet, but as you'll read later, I was being fooled by his lazy attitude!), despite some good hills on this trail Really! Don't laugh! This ride has some hidden terrain that you wouldn't expect on the coast... and the humidity can really knock a horse down on race day if you go faster than you are used to or think just because it is 'cool out', you will be fine...heat index is a big factor here as it never drops below 70% humidity, often being 90%+ with the trees literally raining on you.
But before the ride, the trails had to be marked and I thought it would be a good gauge to see how Storm was feeling (since I hadn't done much but putter on a few short trail rides since June) and make a final decision about whether I'd ride him, or ride Cheyenne on the 50 (my original intent and the horse I had sent the ride entry in with). We did a 12 mile trail on one day, with mostly walking (my marking partner's horse was way outta shape, so we took it really easy) and he was fine there of course. Then we went up to what is the Vet Check, to mark the 'far loop' for the 50's. This was about 18 miles and my partner for this trip had an in shape horse, so we did a mix of walking, gaiting (and her horse trots pretty fast, so he had to really gait up and at times would choose to canter instead...), and canter/galloping. The latter was about 3 miles of it on a nice logging road that takes you back to the VC at the end of the loop. We would trot a tiny bit, then fall into a canter (or even a gallop as her horse likes to GOOOOO and when the road looked clear, would just take off without telling us, lol...so Storm learned to go for a good run too) for a little while, til we decided another ribbon needed hanging. Than BRRRTTT! Brakes on, find a suitable tree branch, hang ribbon, walk a minute or so, then repeat the cycle. Great fartlek training as the books call it. Get the heart rate up a good bit, rest a little, heart rate back up, etc.
Luckily I actually had a working heart rate monitor on him (was not working well at ALL at the June ride) and was able to see how he was really feeling. Gaiting along at a Runwalk, he was usually in the high 70's/low 80's range. At a rack (trying to keep up with the bigger trot of the other horse), he'd be more in the 150-140 (the high end when he was REALLY working to keep up...this would be when he'd willingly pop into a canter, and the HR would then drop...good!) range. In his mellow, rocking-chair canter (and I am LOVING that he is finally 'finding' this gear! It is so smooth, and fun, and keeps his HR lower too!), he'd be in the 120's. Then of course in the gallop, he'd up into the 150+ range. Now for the key though...what about recoveries? Those of you not into endurance (skip this if you are, or are bored by all this! LOL), a horse's fitness is measured more in how fast he recovers from working, vs how high his HR is during work. Though there are 'averages' for where you want a resting and working HR to be, all horses are different (and most averages are written by ppl with Arabs/TBs...a whole different animal than most these gaited horses!). Some have low resting HRs (in the low-mid 30's) and some are higher (in the 40's). Some 'work' at a lower rate (high 90's-low 100's are what some ppl are looking for), some higher (1oo's-120's) and it really isn't that important. What IS important of course, is knowing what is normal for YOUR horse, then going by that. Say for example with Storm...if he is over 140 while 'working' (faster gait/slow canter), then I know I am quickly approaching the anaerobic zone (meaning we are burning energy too fast..we want to keep e-horses in the aerobic range instead, to slowly burn energy over time, and not wear themselves out before the ride is over). Ideally for him, I would like him to stay in the 120's (oh, and this is all in Beats per Minute...or bpm) at his highest, with of course the lower, the better. As a horse gets fitter, this can of course be improved upon, but some horses just never get as low as others...and that is fine! (Too many 'new to endurance' ppl are scared off cause they think there horse isn't fit enough for e-riding...usually they are comparing their horse to a very fit horse of a friend, who may be a totally different breed/body type on top of it!) As long as your horse is doing alright for what is normal for him. Now..back to the magic word, RECOVERIES. This tells you much more about a horse's fitness levels (or if he is getting tired at a ride, sick, hurt, etc..even before more evident signs are noticed). Basically, at most rides, we the criteria for a horse to get into a vet check or complete (LDs don't get to finish til this HR is met, 50's 'finish', but must meet the criteria within 1/2-1hr of finishing, depending on the ride) a ride is 60bpm (some rides have higher or lower, but for training purposes this is a good 'set goal'). So when training, you see how long after raising the horse's HR by working, it takes to get the horse back down to 60bpm (or lower of course...the lower the better!). You can do long/slow training (lots of gaiting in the aerobic range) or fast/high HR, ie fartlek, training (lots of cantering/pushing HR up into the anaerobic range). This is all the cliff notes version, so I am leaving lots out (masses of books have been written on this, LOL), but for myself, if the horse takes more than 5mins to come down (without using water or any cooling method on the horse, and still tacked up...my preference), you are seriously out of shape... if it takes more than 2mins to come down, then you still have work to do. 0-2mins is great, esp if it is warm out (all this has variables accoriding to speed/terrain/temp of course...again, cliff notes!). Sooo, what this boils down to, is that I want to see Storm recover to 60bpm or less, in less than 2 minutes after 'working'. We tested this a few times on the trail, and he was always dropping to 60, or below within a few minutes, or right away if we were not doing much (walking, slow gaiting). Final test was after that fartlek stretch...we walked the final 1/2mile into the vet check are (where our trailers were) and it was in the full sun, so about 75 deg that day (which for us is hot!). The last water on the trail had been about 5 miles back, and no water (to drink, let alone cool off the horse with) at the trailers (we have to haul it up there for the actual ride). So to test, I just took the bridle off, left tack on (just loosened the girth a tad), and looked at my watch, while watching the HR...bit by bit, it was dropping (at a ride of course, I'd toss water on him if needed, strip the saddle, etc...we train more extreme than we need to be at a ride, so it will be easier AT a ride :) ). As it got around 62-3, we were a minute in...by 2 minutes he was at 58! Whoo hoo! At 5 mins he was at 52. I called it good and stripped tack at that point :) Great! So not too shabby and out of shape after all! I promptly called up the Ride Manager for RW1 that evening, and told her to switch my entry to riding Storm in the 25. This was about 4days out from the ride.
More in the next part....
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