Bliss, EEEEEK, bliss

Man, today was just amazingly nice. After yesterday's rainy windy blah, today was warm and sunny with calm winds. The high was near 60! For some reason, I thought that Rides of March was two weekends away - it's actually 3 weeks off. Anyway, I figured I should do half the race distance today, then do hill work or short rides until maybe 4 days before the ride, then let Dixie rest up. (Is that a good plan? I only ride every other day or every two days, to give her recovery time.) So today's plan was 15 miles, as fast as possible, hopefully in 3 hours.

First, I had to clean my nasty nasty sheddy beast.


I sort of faux cross tied her and set to work. She pinned her ears the whole time, but she stood like a rock while I got her mostly cleaned up. (Look how long her mane is getting! She's such a My Little Pony.)


Dixie never pawed until I started futzing around with the saddle. She seems unhappily resigned to her fate when I'm just brushing her, and ready to GO already when I start tacking up. I am taking this as a good sign that she's happy with her work.

We did part of the mines, all of Palomino Valley, and part of the canyon. We managed 13.51 miles in 3:05, which is 4.4 mph. Garmin. It was pretty hilly, though - 1,925 feet of elevation gain! I am very pleased with how well she moves out even when she doesn't want to. That's a "both of us" accomplishment - I have raised my expectations for her, and stuck to them, and she's lived up to them. She doesn't dawdle along like a WP QH - she walks out when I tell her to walk.

I took Cersei, of course. Remember how I've been turning around halfway down the Palomino Valley roads, because of the pit bulls? Yeah, they were loose today. They are the stupidest-looking backyard bred "tough" pit bulls I've ever seen in person. Anyway, these two clowndogs came running up to us right as I noticed a pack of dirt bikes and quads tearing down the hill in front of us at about 40 mph. I briefly considered that maybe I was going to die, then I gathered up my (PURPLE!) reins and rode it out. The dogs came charging up, I yelled "GO HOME!", Cersei thought about circling around to sniff one, I started calling her back, and the bikes went ROARING by. One of the pits had to go chase the bikes and Dixie leapt and spun and I lost a stirrup. I jammed my foot back in quick as anything, calmed my horse, checked to make sure my dog was ok, and decided it was time to walk. Dixie was a snorting retard for about half a mile, then she calmed down. I snapped the reins back on the bit and she started pawing for me to get back on her already. Awww :)

We trotted a bit and step-paced a bit down the last flat stretch, then very slowly climbed a very large hill. It looks like it was about 800' of ascent in a mile and a half. A 10% grade, if I'm figuring it right? Pretty steep, regardless. Dixie was only managing about 3 mph, but she was very game. Good heart in that mare. We found a few clumps of fresh green grass on the way up, and those perked her up considerably. Found a clean puddle at 7 or 8 miles, but she didn't want a drink.

On the downhill side, the road was sloppy sandy mud, and I just wasn't comfortable letting her trot or gait down that steep slope on that slick footing, so I insisted she walk. But Dixie had figured out that she was close to home - she'd turned the "magic corner" - and she really stretched out and rolled down that hill at 5 to 5.5 mph. It was awesome! Then once we hit flat ground again, she took off in a beautiful easy step pace. A little taste of the future, I hope - I could ride that walk and that pace for 50 miles, sure!

The PV loop is only 10 miles, so I thought I'd finish off with the Canyon trail - it's about 6 miles out-and-back. We headed down the hill to the canyon and made it a couple miles down the trail before I executed a strategic withdrawal. The canyon trail is very pretty, but it's hard to make any time. You'll get 50 feet of good trail then a small section of rocks, then maybe another 20 feet, then more rocks. They're not pointy gravel rocks - either big rounded river rocks or big broken up river rocks. Slippy or jagged. I wouldn't ask any horse to trot/gait over them without boots or shoes and pads. It's just asking for a slip and a pulled tendon, or a bad footfall and a stone bruise. Not worth it.

I got some leads on extra trail, though. The big hill is crisscrossed with jeep trails of varying quality, and I took a couple short doglegs down a few nice looking trails, just to get them marked on the GPS. None of them look like they're actually driveways, so maybe we'll go explore around there this week. And I found an offshoot mini-canyon off of the big canyon - the sat photos look like it's a couple miles of trail. I will have to go out there with S and Summer - she'll really like that.