good ride: Kenlyn Flat

["guest@endurance.net" <guest@endurance.net>]

Teresa Van Hove tvanhove@uswest.net
Sighhhhhh,

theres no really good stories, or humor on RC today.  So I'll post
about my weekend ride though I'm not good at telling a nice story
as many of your.  Thanks Linda for hosting the Kenlyn Flat aka urban
challenge ride.  I had a good time and it probably wraps up my season
for the year.  

I guess the west region riders can't relate to this, but Linda's ride
is only about 35 miles from my home, so I tend to put off packing for
it since I can just run over in the morning (normally I'm driving 4
hours to a ride.)  So Friday night I ended up working late, and I 
hadn't done any ride packing yet.  The weather had been yucky -cold
and wet, and I was just thinking I wished the ride wasn't till Sunday
so I could pack leisurely on Saturday and we'd have warmer weather.
But since Linda was going on with the ride and I'd called her and
said I was coming earlier in the week I climbed into my endurance attitude; 
'you can sleep Sunday' and started packing.  I was too tired to finish and
decided I may as well finish in the wee hours when I rolled out to
feed so after stumbling out around 2 in the morning to feed -6 hours)
to even out that insulin spike Susan :); I finished up packing, 
enjoying the unexpectedly balmy night.  Ahhh -its going to be pretty
nice after all.  Well mother nature surprised me when I went out
at 5:30 to load up with a chilly fog.  Yuck, yuck, well press on
and pleasant surprise drive out of the fog in just 5 miles.  

I have been seriously turtling with Grey this year - wont bore ya'll
with the details but decided to try to ride this time at a moderate
mid pack pace.  So I started with the pack and Grey thought he was
super-horse, from now on he may get started with a bit instead of
the sidepull.  He'd been fine all year, but I'd not been starting
with the pack.  Thank goodness I had gloves for the chilly weather
or my hands would be raw today. At the first vet check Grey showed
his wimpy side, shivering like mad in spite of the rump rug and 
blanket (very few other horses needed more than rump rug.)  What
with trying to keep him moving to help warm up and getting re-checked
for gut sound - 1st time too shivery to get more than a C, plus my
usual inability to get out of a 30 min hold in less than 40 minutes
the front runners were gone when we left.  Hooked up with someone
else who wanted to do a mid-pack finish and Grey and her horse really
traveled nicely together so we pretty much rode the rest of the way
together.  Grey got a little stiff on his right hind, and sore on
his back on the right side so I've definitely got to do dressage
again this winter, and possibly will have to switch saddles again
(knocking wood that I was riding uneven and can fix the problem
by fixing that)  Anyway finished almost exactly in the middle and
at about the pace I thought I wanted to ride so that part was great.
Grey was in fine shape metabolically.  I don't know if the rh stiffness
was from the back soreness or the cold weather.  I have to fix the
back soreness anyway, so it doesn't really matter.

Teresa and Grey (1060 miles)