First depletion ride of the season done, CHECK!

I've been looking forward to and dreading this ride for quite some time. The reason, my foot.

A couple of months ago I was riding 5-6 miles at a time and that was about all my foot could take. I was starting to get discouraged. My wonderful PT friend worked on my foot again and told me the majority of what I had left to work on was a tight tendon, running along the bottom of my foot. She showed me how to stretch it and it started getting better in a hurry. Pretty soon I was riding 10 – 15 miles at a time and my foot was feeling much better. That was a lot better, at least I could start conditioning again. But there was this question in my mind of how far could I really ride on it and how would it feel when I was done. This ride would give me a much better idea.

So here was my plan. It's three weeks out from Home On the Range. I'm planning to do a slow 50. The last six weeks we've been slowly picking back up the speed in our rides, we normally do all of our distance miles at right around 8 mph and faster for speed work. The last couple weeks we've been adding back in some interval work. So three weeks out I wanted to do a 25 mile depletion ride with my average ride speed being right around 8mph. Then I plan to ride HOTR at a little slower pace, probably right around 7mph.

I planned my route to be roads with nice shoulder to ride on and include a good stretch of hills that we would go over twice. We did a 15 mile loop, a 15 minute hold at home to take care of necessities and 10 1/5 mile loop. I wanted to do the whole thing in right around 3 hours 15 minutes total time.

The weather was just about perfect, 65 degrees and only a little bit of wind in a few places. We set out on our 15 miles and got right in our groove. At 4 miles I got off to jog for just a bit since I could feel that tendon in my foot was a little tight. It's tight because just over a week ago I got really sick, throwing up sick, and haven’t been exercising as much since then. It was better once I got back on. I got off again one more time on that loop to stretch my foot and then headed home.

Pulled in the driveway at 1 hour 55 minutes. Bunny's heart rate fell to 60 as she drank, good deal! After I set her up with mash I headed inside to chug Poweraid and stretch my foot really well for a few minutes.

Heading out on the second loop my foot felt better, that tendon finally got stretched out well and we were good to go. Bunny is almost always great to ride but she really hits her prime after 15 miles. That's one thing I like about depletion rides and the actual endurance ride is that I get to rider her then. She settles in even more, her trot becomes even easier and freer and we just chug along. It's like magic!

Our magic was rudely interrupted, however, by a dilapidated white wicker chair that someone had set on the edge of the road. We'd already passed that spot twice so we were just going along minding our own business when Bunny saw the chair and pulled up short. In her mind a white chair appearing on the side of the road, a road she's already been on twice, means trouble. I'm pretty sure to her horse brain the sign on the chair read “Horse Eater” (in human it really said “Free”). I jumped off her and lead her up to the chair and she gave it a few good snorts and then decided it really wasn't worth her time. It took us another mile or so to really get back in our groove though. Bunny is funny that way. She doesn't like things to change in her space. If we would have seen that same chair on a new stretch of road it wouldn't have been such a big deal.

We finished the rest of our loop without incident in 1 hour 20 minutes. I lead her up the driveway and as she got a drink her heart rate dropped below 60. An hour later I went back out to check her heart rate again just to see how she was recovering. It was at 40!

The best part of all was my foot was good. A little tired but good. I could have kept riding on it and that makes me happy. I have a lot of hopes, plans and dreams for this season and I dreading that my foot was going to hold me back. I know I'm going to have to work extra hard to get my foot back to 100% but now it feels doable and that's a terrific feeling.

So now Bunny and I take it easy and enjoy each others company with some easy riding over the next few weeks till Home on the Range.

Maybe I'll see some of you there!!!