TevEd Gear Review

Before I say a word about gear I have to tell yall that I feel great.  I mean, really great.  I've never felt this good after any ride longer than 10 miles, ever.  And you know what I did?

I ate.

I hate eating before/during rides.  It's awful.  I don't get nauseous, thankfully, but I am completely uninterested in food.  I can go 30 miles on a powerbar without bonking.  I can do a 50 on two powerbars and survive.

But I feel like shit for several days afterwards.  I am wracked by starvation-level hunger pangs for several days.  I always get DOMS (delayed onset muscle soreness, that horrible pain you feel two days after you go to the gym for the first time in a month).

And during the ride, my seat gets worse and worse.  That's the whole reason I made a vow to myself to eat at TevEd - because my horse deserves better.

Several of my friends told me to just make eating on the trail a chore - something I have to do, whether I like it or not.  So I made up 8 little packets of food for each day.  Each little packet was about 100 calories, and most of them contained some fat, protein, and carbs.  A lot of e-riders swear by stuff like applesauce packets, but I personally know that eating just carbs will crash my energy fast, so I must have some fat and protein too.  Your mileage will vary.

I checked my watch when we left Foresthill and every single hour on the hour I pulled out a packet and ate it.  I had: hard cheese, half-powerbars, beef jerky, nut clusters, and 2:1 almond butter and nutella.  Everything went down ok, and there wasn't so much food in any given packet that I got bored - eating a whole powerbar is just too much chewing when I'm thinking about riding.  But five little nut squares, or a finger-sized piece of cheese, that much I can do.

And I have had no DOMS and no famine-victim hunger pangs.  You really must eat and drink on the trail if you want to be a good partner.  You must at least try it.

***

Other gear:

Aarene loaned me a sheepskin seat saver.  It tied on to my saddle a lot more securely than I thought it would, and it never slipped or bunched up under my girlie bits.  I am ordering a full fleece but I don't think it'll show up before Sunriver.  Really looking forward to ditching the half-chaps - they look awesome but they hot me up when I'm running.

I tied my pommel bags so they hung completely forward, on Dixie's shoulders and off of the saddle.  That, plus the sheepskin, plus paying a lot of attention to my seat, let me ride the miles and miles of downhill without bruising myself.

So I officially love my Specialized saddle now.  I wanted to love it before, but it did me so wrong at Washoe -  I slipped forward and banged into the pommel and pommel bag seams and I got so bruised I looked like a DV victim.

I mentioned hooves already, but I gotta say the Easyboot Gloves just keep working for me.  My usual caveats apply:  they're not for everyone, they don't stay on some horses' way of going, and there are better boots (Renegades, Back Countries) if you can't/won't touch up your horse's trim.  But Gloves work shockingly well for Miss D.  I'd love to test-ride some of the new Renegade Vipers at some point, but I know Gloves stay on well enough for the next ride.

In general, I try not to tie on stuff I don't need, because it's just increasing your weight, heat load, and risk of rubs.  But I added a cantle bag, an old-school Griffin's model that looks like a tiny duffel bag.  I threw two old spare Gloves in it, and I actually used one - I lost one rear Glove entirely in the first couple miles of the trail.

My Kolorful Cages worked great; they didn't pinch or rub my toes at all.

In one of Mel's Cache Creek posts, she talked about how wonderful her "helmet skirt" was in the heat.  In the jumble of moving, I found a cooling helmet skirt I bought last year and never used, so I took that to TevEd and it was absolutely amazing.  When it was hydrated, it kept me quite comfortable - but when it dried out, it just trapped heat and contributed to my heat exhaustion.  I must remember to re-wet it at every vet check.  That particular model has four velcro loops, and I attached it to my helmet by punching holes in that mesh that covers the helmet vents.

I had my GPS, but as usual I hit the wrong button several times and the results aren't useful.  I don't know how much longer I'll keep carrying it.  I've gotten a decent sense of how fast we're moving, so I don't need it for that, and I've started wearing a watch.  I can check Dixie's pulse (one beat per second means the horse is down), keep track of when I should eat, and keep track of my overall pace pretty well.  I guessed we'd do the ride in seven hours, and we did it in 7:15.  When we left LQ, I looked at my watch and thought we'd make the finish at 1:45, and that's exactly when we came in.  :smug:

Sometime in April I lost my little crop.  I keep thinking it'll turn up in the garage or at the barn but perhaps it's gone for good.  I did Washoe and TevEd without needing it, so I guess it's off the usual roster.

Mel reports that her spackle recipe doesn't work in GoToobs, but my nutella/almond butter stuff works perfectly in them.  I, er, haven't actually cleaned them out yet so I don't know how awful that's gonna be, but it's definitely worth it.

Everything else was pretty much unchanged - Merrell Lithe Gloves on my feet, Butt Butt'r on my butt, a 1.5 liter Camelback that I drained between every vet check, Hammer Endurolyte pills with my mandatory food (probably should package the pills with the individual food packets, and up it to 2 per hour in the heat), a long-sleeved runner's shirt and gloves to keep me from getting too toasted.  C recommended me a new shelf-bra runner's tank top that worked wonderfully, but I bought the last size L in existence and that model is discontinued, so I won't taunt yall with a glowing description.

And no panties.  Death to panties.