A good 50 mile ride at Sunriver – just not quite the ride I thought we would have

One of the things I love about endurance is it's complexities. It appeals to the problems solver in me. There all these details and they all make a difference, some little, some big and you do you best to manage them all in ever changing conditions. Things like how fast you condition, how far you condition, how often you condition, rest time, how you feed, how you electrolyte, how you train yourself and your horse, how you start your ride, really the list is very, very long.

The good news for green beans is that as long as you are willing to ride conservatively you leave yourself some room for trial and error. The more you decide to start to push the envelope a little the more right on you have to be with all your little details.

I didn't get a chance to post my full plan for Sunriver so I'll give you a quick rundown. I had decided to let her go a bit more than I have previously this season. I was planning to average between 8mph and 8.5mph for the entire ride, so finishing just around 6 hours, plus or minus a few minutes. I've done this before at Old Salem last year and felt we could have even gone a bit faster so it this wasn't some far out there plan. Plus Bunny is more fit now than then.

I knew the first 18 miles was mostly a gradual, steady, decent down to the river. She's made great strides in her ability to carry herself like a champ down hill so I decided that we'd do between 8 – 9 mph on that stretch, depending on how she felt.

The 12 miles back up to camp we wouldn't exceed an average of 8 mph. We'd move out when it was flat and back off on the speed on all the uphill, to conserve energy.

Then on the last 20 miles I'd see how much horse I had left. I'd shoot for 8mph and if she still had a lot of gas left in the tank there were some great stretches of road I was going to let her make some time on.

It's nice knowing the ride a bit and being able to plan better, have I mentioned I like to plan?

So we got to camp, vetted in with all A's. She was calm in camp, eating and drinking great. I took her out for a ride and she was the best she's been this season. We pre rode the first couple miles of the start and she was a champ. The footing was great, I decided my plan was good, we'd see how it went.

In the morning I had a hard time. The prednisone, I'm on to help me recover from the Crohn's flair up has a nasty side affect. It makes you anxious and irritable. Not much fun. That morning as I was getting ready I was having a hard time not feeling really stressed. I knew it was the meds but I also knew it would make a difference. I did a lot of praying, yoga and just tried to relax. By the time I mounted up I was doing pretty good but still more anxious than usual.

I rode over gave them my number at the start and then rode out of camp in the opposite direction. I didn't want to be anywhere near the start. Bunny was anxious but not bad at all. A few minutes after the start time, I rode back to camp and headed out, about seven minutes after the start.

It was a great start. The only problem was that since there was 58 people riding the 50 I knew there was going to be lost of people going slower than us, so lots of people to pass. The problem with that is it brings out “Race Bunny”. You can feel her whole body get more tense and she wants to charge down the trail seeking out people to hunt down and pass.

We did a lot of passing in that first hour and most of it as soon as I saw a horse I would look for a good place to go ahead and pass. Bunny thought it was great. She was listening pretty well, she needed reminders every time a horse came into view but things were going good.

At the second water trough I dismounted to electrolyte her and discovered that a tree had swiped my electrolytes. I got a new camelpak for my birthday and it has a great outside pocket that I'd put an electrolyte syringe and a baggie of grain. It looked super secure and I figured it would be easier to get out later. Well I didn't think about the fact that with riding a taller horse I whack a bunch of limbs. I wasn't very happy about it but we were almost to the river and I'd packed electrolytes for the hold and the trip back to camp so figured we'd still be okay. Now I know I have to put the syringes in the inside pockets.

 All in all I love my new camelpack! It's bright pink, lighter than my other one and holds more water. 

Thanks for the birthday money Dad!

I got the river right on time and watched her heart rate fall as she drank. I let her drink, walked her to the pulser and she was down. She vetted great, ate great, everything was great so I decided to stick with my plan.

Heading out of the river we made time when the going was good and slowed down, sometimes to a walk on the hills. I felt really good about out ride. We passed a few more people including this group of three that leapfroged me for a while. I hate that. I would pass them and keep going the same speed. They would lope up and pass me and then slow down. Then I would pass them again. Finally I decided I was going to look for a good stretch, pass them and speed up for a bit. I only did maybe ¼ of a mile at a faster pace and then I didn't see them again.

When I came into camp, right on time, I was in 10^th place with no one right on my tail. I was pretty happy. Again her pulse dropped as she drank but then three 100 mile horses left and she got excited and then it took her a few minutes to pulse down.

My giddy feelings quickly vanished, however, when I saw the vet. The vet said she looked great except that she didn't have much in the way of gut sounds. The vet told me if she ate great on the hold she should be fine but if not keep a close eye on her.

We headed back to the trailer and I breathed a sigh of relief as she dove into her mash. Unfortunately, that didn't last long, though and then she was standing around not eating anything. It was a 45 minute hold, I expected her to rest for a bit and then eat some more. She didn't. I got out some grain, some different hay and even walked her around to see if she would graze on the grass but couldn't get her take a bite. She didn't quite look as perky has her normal self either.

Now I was beginning to worry a bit. I decided to take her back to the vet and see what she thought. She checked her gut sounds, said they had picked up a bit but where still pretty quite. She did a full re-check on her and said the rest of her looked great. Her heart rate was 40 and everything else was really good. I told the vet I was trying to decide weather to stay longer on my hold or to just go out and slow down a bit. She said she thought either would be good, if I went out to try to get her to snack along the trail.

That's what I decided to do and we set off on our last loop after taking a little longer on our hold. She was a little doggy at first and the footing was really deep and terrible so we just took it easy. Then we got passed and she decided she didn't like that. We picked up the pace a bit but were still only moving out at a moderate pace. A few more miles down the trail we had someone lope past us at a high rate of speed and Bunny decided to not be passed. It took me a few strides to stop her and then I decided we were going to hang out on the side of the road and chill and graze for a bit. We weren't going to do race crazy. She grazed well and that made me feel good, but a few miles down the trail she was slowing down again and just didn't feel quite right. This also corresponded with more awful, deep footing so we took it easy. I tried to get her to eat some a while later but then she wouldn't touch a bite, not grain, not grass, sigh. I just didn't know what to think so we just continued to take it easy. Mostly walking, sometime me on foot and occasionally a little trot if the road was good.

Over the coarse of the next 6 miles or so, she peed three times and pooped twice and then started eating a bit and perked up again. Throughout all of this she always drank well so that was good.

All my lolly gagging gave me lots of time to think. I thought through a lot of things, I knew that our loosing the electrolyte didn't help but I didn't think that was all of it. I just didn't know what to make of all of it.

The last 5 miles of the loop my horse was perky so we picked it up a bit, still conservatively, and trucked on back to camp. I think our total ride time was 7 hours 12 minutes.

When we got in I took her to the trailer, pulled her tack and then took her back to the vet. Her vet card had a ton of B's on it. Very out of character for her. Her gut sounds were better but she was dehydrated. The vet didn't have anyone else waiting so I chatted with her for a while. I told I was baffled. I told her about our ride and what I expected and how I wasn't really sure what to make of all of it. I'd come to the conclusion that she didn't get get enough electrolytes. Probably not just from loosing the syringe but she probably needed more than I had planned for. The vet agreed with that. We talked about how much rest she'd had after her 80 and decided that sounded reasonable. The vet said maybe she just didn't have as much in her that day. The vet said she wasn't worried at all about Bunny, she was fine, just a little dehydrated.

Our ride card, in case you want to see all the details. I hope it's a long time before we see that many B's again.

After that she was eating everything in site so that made me feel good but I just kept pondering, trying to fit all the pieces together and make sense of all of them.

Later that night I was talking to a ride and tie lady, sitting around the campfire and waiting for the 100 mile riders to finish. This lady has a quarter horse who gets all worked up and because of that has a problem with tying up. She said she was talking to the head vet who was telling her it didn't matter if her horse was fit, you just couldn't beat the stress. Then it slowly began to dawn on me....

Although Bunny was controllable and pretty level headed that first 30 miles she had been in race mode. In her mind she was playing a game of track them down and pass them as fast as we can. I'd let her do it and in some cases encouraged it because it fit with my plan. She was happy to be moving out and was pretty good about listening but she was definitely in find them and pass them mode. At Old Salem she'd been much more relaxed. It had been easier to accomplish because there was less people.

If we had seen a horse at Old Salem she'd perk up and say, “Can I pass the?” If the answer was no, she'd begrudgingly let them go and return to her relaxed self. When we saw a horse at Sunriver she didn't ask she said “Let's go get them”. If the trail was good my answer was yes, if it wasn't we only waited long enough till the trail was good and then passed. The difference was subtle in a way but huge in another, she never really relaxed and I never made her let a horse go till probably 25 miles in. What it meant was that she never really relaxed the whole first 30 miles. I didn't think about it because she wasn't spending that whole 30 mile arguing with me.

I was monitoring her heart rate, her speed, everything else but her attitude and in the end it made a big difference. Her tearing through the first 30 miles in seek and destroy mode was much harder on her body than if she would have been going the same speed but nice and relaxed.

How to fix that, probably lots more practice. Getting her relaxed on the way to the river would have been hard but now I can think a few things that would have helped. When I had a minute without someone on my tail I should have stopped for just a minute, just to let her rest mentally. I should have found a good horse to stay behind for a bit or let them go for a bit, of course at a time where I was pretty sure someone else wasn't going to pass me. Making Bunny at least question weather or not we were going to pass the horse would have helped her to relax.

Bunny is a good horse but I'm determined to turn her into a great horse. Right now this race brain is our biggest enemy. We are going to keep working on it though and by golly we are going to kick it! We'll get to the point where she'll ask if she can chase them down and if the answer is now be able to relax and keep going without a bit fit.

So in the end here's my thoughts. It's okay to push the envelope, do it thoughtfully but be ready to slow down if things don't pan out. If everything would have lined up, if I would have had enough electrolytes, if I wasn't on prednisone and if I had gotten my horse relaxed I think there's a good chance the ride would have gone a lot differently. But in the end I learned a lot, we had a great ride, still finished and my horse still looks like a million bucks.

To finish is to win. Sometimes we finish in a blaze of glory, sometimes we just finish. I think sometimes we probably learn more from those just finishes than from the rides where everything goes as expected.

So I'll continue to keep thinking about everything, working on myself and my horse and trying to have a really great rest of the season. I hope you all do too!!!

p.s. I'm hoping to have a ride photo later. The photographer doesn't have them up yet.