Planning for the fall riding season...

An entire week off work and away from the horses has me tired and ready to get back to the barn.

Joe's laid out his fall calendar, and from the sounds of it, I'll be limited to only getting to ride on weekends.  Which hampers my conditioning plans immensely.  Frustrating, but I know it can be worked around. 

So, I'll spend Saturday mornings doing my conditioning rides; which means riding solo.  Unless I can hook up with other endurance riders, I know for those I'm better off just riding alone right now.  I need to work up some speed and distance, and to do that, I want to just hit the trails and get it done. 

Someone on the AERC or Green Bean page laid out a conditioning program for those of us who can only squeeze in a ride once a week, and while it's a 12 week program, Strider already has a decent base, and I know he CAN complete an LD at a turtle pace. 

My ultimate goal is Decade Team though.  And to be a decade team, you've got to do at least 1 endurance ride (and COMPLETE!) every year for 10 years. 

So, with that in mind, I started considering this conditioning plan, the future rides for this year that I want to attend, and when might be a good time for me to try and attempt our first 50.

The first ride for my fall season will be Armadillo in mid-October. 

I have EXACTLY 12 weeks to condition prior to that ride.  I'll be doing an LD at it as I want to ride with Beverly again.  And I want to see what kind of horse I have under me at the end of that ride.  If he still has gas in the tank and pulses down well.  He'll probably always be slow to pulse down, and I'm okay with that as long as he still acts like he's got some "go" to him.

So, there's Armadillo in October.

In November is Shuffle.  In Athens.  The trails that kicked our asses previously.  My single OT (you know, out of all 3 rides I've done). 

 This photo is from after our OT at Off Road Warrior.

And our two loops from that day:

First loop (the shorter loop!).

Second loop (the longer loop!).

If Strider does well for me at Armadillo, and we're not suffering under weeks of rain, I want to try it again.  I want to beat these damn trails.  Yes, they're technical.  But I KNOW we can do it.  And now that I feel slightly better prepared, I want to do it again. 

Planning on that one being another LD ride. 

And then, at the beginning of December is a brand new ride, River Run.  This is in San Antonio.

And, depending on the horse I have under me at Shuffle, I might give our first 50 attempt at River Run. 

My thinking is this; he's a heavier/thicker horse.  I'm a heavyweight rider.  The temps will be cooler at the beginning of December, so this might just work FOR him in this attempt.

Or, if I just don't think he's ready for River Run, there's High Roller on New Year's weekend, so I can try him there and see what I think.  I've ridden the 7iL trails once, and while I know they're sandy, I think he could still make a good run at it.

The other thing I'll need to do for those rides?  Clip him.  Which has me somewhat anxious.  I don't really own clippers, and I've never clipped a horse.  I'm thinking just a trace clip, but, I'll need to do some research in clipping and what might work best for him.

I did buy a lightweight blanket for him for the cooler rides to wear during holds.  I should also look at a rump rug as well I suppose.

But for now, my focus is on conditioning him. 

Every.Weekend.  Consistently. 

My last solo ride with Strider where we just went out and had fun alone together included LOTS of wasted time trying to get him to stand still so I could get in to the saddle.  He hates being alone, so standing still for mounting as well as side-passing to open/close gates is a training session we need to have.  The standing still one in particular.  That's one I can do on my own sometime.  It's not fun, but it's necessary.

But, in our solo ride, we covered 5 miles at an average speed of 4.27mph in 1:10.  A little too slow, but, factoring in the time I burned waiting to mount up and ride, we were perhaps closer to the minimal target of 5mph.  Maybe more.  I know with just a little more conditioning, he'll be able to hit the minimum without a problem.

I got my equine HR monitor in, so I'll be clipping that to him as well to see where we're at during rides as well.

In a separate post I'll lay out the program another rider uses.  It's completely rideable and something I can do if I get to the barn before the heat gets too bad, and even be home before most of the day is burned for the first few weeks.

I'm ready to get back to it!  And, honestly, Strider was so perky on our last solo ride together with seeing new trails that he was ears forward, head up, let's go and gait this mom and see what's around the next turn kind of horse. 

I'm ready to go.  He'll be ready to go soon enough!