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.

Spring fever

I went out Friday and had a ride on my crazy mare. It was very windy - a storm front was blowing in - and Dixie has come into that first raging spring heat. She had completely forgotten all of her ground manners - she kept trying to run over me as I groomed her, and she tried to yank her feet away. The first mile had a lot of stopping to stare and hope a stallion came charging out of nowhere for some sweet lovin. We did the scenic hills and the mines - a pretty short ride.

Garmin - we did 6.99 in 1:40, average of 4.2 mph.

The full mines trail - what we did Friday - has a lot of very twisty singletrack. One day we'll be able to trot it or rack it, and I suppose I should go ahead and push Dixie to try it, but it's not the easiest trail in the world to head down at speed. More importantly, I wasn't pushing her too hard. I was very happy to just be back on my horse, back in these mountains I've come to love so much, watching a storm front roll in. She's just starting to shed seriously, and it was surprisingly warm (mid 50s) but with sustained winds of maybe 40 mph. Just didn't seem like the kind of day where you should push your horse to work hard, and I wasn't in the mood to work her hard.

Anyway! Comparing today's ride with one month ago, I see some nice improvement. (Oddly, one month ago was almost the same pace/time/distance.) Dixie's walk is improving - once she hit her groove / became resigned to her fate, she kept up a very businesslike walk above 4 mph. Her mid speed and her canter are improving in duration, too. The middle speed is switching around quite a bit - seems like it's trot maybe 1/3 of the time and something else more comfortable the other 2/3ds, probably a bit of RW and a lot of step pace.

Digression: sometimes I get incredibly discouraged that we'll never finish a 50 on time because she isn't making heroic gains in her cardio fitness / middle speed duration. It's cause I'm fat, or maybe cause she has cancer, or cause she's a gangly Walker and not a teeny narrow Arab. Then I breathe slowly and deeply, back away from the ledge, and talk sensibly - she IS making reasonable progress. That's why I have the blog and the GPS, so I can look back and see how she's improving. The winter coat will fall off, and she'll cool off faster, and I'll lose some weight now that the bar's over, and if she does have cancer that's just shitty luck, but she doesn't look in any way unhealthy. (If you're a somewhat new reader, I lost my heart-buddy gelding to fucking liver cancer, of all things, almost a year ago.)

Anyway. I don't know of any other endurance wannabes, much less non-arab endurance wannabes, who have posted GPS info as they first legged up a horse. If I had someone else's progress to compare to, I might feel better (or worse). But we'll muddle on through.

Today was stormy, and hopefully tomorrow will be clearer. I am going to rig up some cross ties and try to get off the loose winter hair, whether she likes it or not! Then we'll head out for a long ride, maybe 15 miles?

Home!

Made it back home safe. The bar was pretty brain-melting - the multiple choice MBE is really long and tough, really a brain endurance race thing. The essays went ok, I think, so it all depends on how well I did on the MBE.

I only have to wait til May 9 to get my scores. MAY NINTH. This is so absurd. I will just do my best to put it out of my mind til then.

Vegas really kind of sucks if you don't gamble, you're all alone, you're in a second-tier locals casino, and you're taking a stressful exam. Glad to be home in snowy Reno!

I thought Cersei was going to explode with happiness when she saw me. :3 Can't wait to go see Dixie tomorrow - I doubt she'll be quite so delighted to see me, but I will be happy to see her!

I only have 67 new posts from my horse friends to catch up on. Eeek!

Snowmygod

You know how I mentioned it was snowing? Yeah, it's still snowing.

Snow Pix

The airport's open, so we're headed out soon.

Convention loot!

So I went to the convention yesterday! Just the vendor hall; I didn't think I could pay enough attention to the speakers to justify the cost. There were three people I already knew there (Hi C, Zach, J!) and they introduced me to people who were in fact perfectly nice and friendly. Whew. We looked at all the stuff, then ate lunch, then looked at more stuff and finally started shopping. Except at lunch I started to get a migraine - I guess some of the flashy lights on the damn slot machines triggered it. It wasn't the most excruciatingly painful one I've ever had, but it made me seriously stupid. It feels like my brain is short-circuiting and it's very, very hard to think. About anything.

But I'd figured out a plan at lunch, and I was determined to do all the shopping I meant to do. It took a lot of looking, partially cause I'm picky and partially because I have a big-headed Walker, but I got the tack I wanted. A purple rope halter, with extra knots and rings to convert to a sidepull. A black biothane horse-sized snap-on headstall. 8' purple biothane reins. And a black horse beatin' rope.

Yes, I know, I just bought biothane reins, but they're too short! I love the snaps and like the material, but they're 6 footers and they make my shoulder blades knot up if I ride more than an hour with them. I will save the short brown reins as emergency backup reins, but I'm going to be much happier with slightly longer reins.

I got a black headstall because I really don't think the purple biothane is vibrant enough. The rope halter is that shocking royal purple I love so much, and the slightly faded violet of the "purple" biothane doesn't look fantastic with it. Black looks pretty fantastic though!

The horse beatin rope (technically called an over 'n under) is to replace the lead rope I no longer need to carry. Previously, I rode with leather reins that tied on to the bit with slobber straps, so I needed a lead rope if I had to tie or walk out with my horse. I carried a lead rope snapped to the breastcollar and draped across her neck - it was also handy to have if I needed to whack her in the neck to persuade her to walk past a killer rock or garbage can or something. I hate to kick like a 5 year old on a pony, I don't wear cowboy boots with spurs anymore, and I like having something to encourage the horse if I need to. Thus, the horse-beater. I'm going to clip it to a carabiner and sling it across her neck, exactly where the lead rope used to live.

Anyway, I made it home yesterday, took an immitrex, and fell out on the couch. Today I feel much better, and I got my husband to take pictures of Dixie in her new headgear.

She thought maybe he had some food?


I think it all fits ok!


Somehow she stopped playing with the reins long enough for this picture. (I think the halter knot was too loose here.)




Now it's snowing, so if I don't die in a firey plane crash tomorrow, I will try to blog something weird or amusing from Vegas next week. Hope everybody has good weather and happy rides!

Progress!

We hit 4.9 mph today! 8.95 miles in 1:50. It's hard for me to justify spending more than 2 hours riding my horse for fun, so I think we'll stick with 2 hours and just try to cram more and more miles in. If I can get an endurance buddy out and do more miles on the weekends, great, but if not, 2 hours should be enough.

One of the things it's hard to tell with any of the tools I have is how her intermediate stamina is progressing - can she trot/rack/pace/whatever at, say, 8-10 mph for a longer distance than last week? The Garmin site graphs our speed, but the length of the graph is static so the results are skewed. I have a couple of spots where I always ask her to move out at an intermediate speed for as long as she can, and she's definitely going a little further every time. Today she did every intermediate gait, sort of at her whim. I'm very happy.

Today we went about halfway along the trail into Palomino Valley. There's a house with two loose pit bulls at the halfway point, so we went til I saw the house and turned around. We made a friend, too - a Great Pyr came trotting up from its house and joined us. I thought it was all going to go horribly wrong - visions of this enormous white dog eating my little yellow dog and Dixie bolting and me flying into a tree were flashing through my head. But Cers got along great with the GP, and the GP is apparently imprinted on guarding horses. She (I think it was a she) went about 5 miles with us. Dixie did not approve, but she never approves.

Tomorrow I'm going to the convention. I am so nervous. I'm a yahoo from Mississippi, and I haven't even completed an AERC ride, and it's full of strangers. Oh well, it's a small nervous in the grand scale of things - taking the bar will be much, much worse.

Better living through science

Today I deliberately learned two new things and accidentally learned another!

I ran two little pseudo-science experiments on my mare. I don't think it's really following the scientific method if you only have one experimental subject, so I can't announce this as the reproducible truth, but it's good enough for me.

I've been intermittently confining Dixie's mane on our rides, and I thought that it does make her sweatier to have that thick wad of hair on both sides of her neck. For Saturday's ride, I braided her mane on one side, and she really didn't get very sweaty at all, despite about 15 miles of intermittent trotting. So today I left her mane loose, flopped down on both sides of her neck, and rode 7.78 miles at an average of 4.3 mph. That's .1 mph faster than the NEDA ride, and less than half as far - and she was drenched when we were done. Sweat all over her neck and chest, on her back, even her flanks were sweaty. That's good enough for me - ponytailing/braiding her mane does make a big difference in her comfort, so I'll start doing it all the time.

Second, I thought that perhaps she was gaiting better when I wasn't sitting all the way back in the saddle. She racks ok on the flat, but she hit that probably-a-running-walk going up a hill when I was leaned forward in two-point. So for today's second experiment, I stayed well forward. I actually learned three things from that! One, it kills my shoulders to ride like that. Two, she possibly gaits more - I got some really smooth pacing and step-pacing. Three, it's bad for her back. She had dry spots at the front of the saddle area. Woops. I won't do that again. I poked at them and she didn't seem to care, so I don't think I did any permanent harm to her.

I took some more pictures of her hooves. And I got a decent shot of the weird toe rocker I was talking about:



Then I accidentally learned more about it! This post on the easycare blog talks about what I'd call a foxtrot, and why the author thinks it's a good thing for endurance horses. In the section Quarter and Toe Scoops, he says:

Similarly, the toe experiences increased abrasion during the break-over and the propulsive components of support phase. High-mileage barefoot (unbooted) horses often develop a toe-scoop on their front feet: a slight depression of the hoof wall and sole at the toe between (roughly) 10 and 2 o’clock. Like the quarters, this toe scoop simply reflects an area of high wear.

That's pretty much what Lytha said and what I suspected. She's just wearing her toes off in the sand/rocks.