Endurance.Net Ridecamp Archives

Yesterday, I left my job (no longer unemployed am I) with errands 
to run. I just knew that I would be unable to use the gorgeous day 
for riding. Dealing with banks is not my favorite thing to do and 
I knew the afternoon would slip by way too fast.

To my amazement, my stops at both financial institutions were quick 
and painless (imagine that!) and I headed home with a thought to 
grab Tanna and take him for a ride.

Arriving home, I changed and snatched up Serts' halter and lead rope.
Tanna is a pain in the rear to catch. He thinks it's a game or something.
Grrr. So I usually catch Serts first and either tie him to a tree 
or turn him out into the other pasture. Divide and conquer. Without 
a buddy to encourage running, Tanna will usually give up after a 
few minutes.

But Serts wanted to play, too, so they both took off. Running up 
our steep wooded hill, tails in the air, heads snaking about. Grrr.
Pretty, but GRRRR. I climbed to the top, knowing full well, they'd 
just tear down it when I got close. Sure enough. So back down I go.
I was hoping my husband would be home. I was estatic when I saw 
his truck parked in the driveway. I called to him and motioned for 
him to go cut off the horses' escape. Tanna looked shocked as he 
came towards me, deciding the gig was up. How could I call in reinforcements? 
We were just playing a GAME! Goofy horse.

I prepared for our ride while Serts tore back and forth along the 
fenceline. I had Tanna tied where the house separated Serts' view 
of him. Oh, the calling and carrying on. Oh, welll, at least Serts 
got some exercise, too! Two for the price of one. Tanna pretty much 
ignored him, paying more attention to me and what I was doing.

First things first. I picked out Tanna's feet and proceeded to wrestle 
his black easy boots on. I have new red ones that really need to 
be broken in, but due to an unfortunate weekend incident with EASY 
(I think not) foam, the red boots were in no shape to be used and 
I sure wasn't going to spend an hour cleaning them when I had perfectly 
good black boots all ready to use.

I carefully wrapped his feet in a couple rounds of vet wrap. Then 
pulled the boots on, stood on the buckle to close them, then grabbed 
the roll of duct tape. First time to try duct taping the boots on.
I knew it wasn't a good sign when the tape broke while just trying 
to wrap. I wrapped as best as I could. Not pretty, but looked ok.


Whew. Brush, brush, brush. Lots of hair flying in my face and my 
mouth and covering my riding tights. Boy, what a mess. I paid particular 
attention to the saddle area.

Recently, I had a dilemma on what kind of saddle pad to get. Thanks 
to a convention sale at Sportack.com and some feedback from ridecampers 
(thanks!), I decided to get a Toklat woolback round pad shaped for 
endurance saddles. I had ordered a high profile, but it is still 
on back order. When I was told the back order could take a couple 
of weeks, I ordered a regular (non-high profile) pad. This was the 
pad I used. I was thrilled with the look of it and the fit around 
the saddle! I couldn't wait to try it. Pretty pad! First time to 
use this pad.

Tanna's heart rate was a bit high. Low 40s. He's usually around 34-
36 when I get him tacked up to the point where I can get a HR. Maybe 
it was excitement. It'd been 2 weeks since I'd had him out for a 
good ride. I was glad I had decided to use the HRM (I had thought 
to not). That starting number alerted me to keep an eye on his HR 
for the ride. Luckily, he had no further indications of trouble. 
His HR was normal throughout the ride and his attitude and breathing 
were ok, too.

Next new thing (this is the 3rd new thing for this ride) was a new 
GPS. A Garmin Geko 201. A tiny little thing as GPS receivers go. 
This one we bought at Bass Pro Shops for $140 + tax. We could have 
gotten it for $127 (including shipping and tax) from an online merchant,
but the unit was on backorder and we wanted to start testing it 
for endurance use.

The Geko is sweet. Tiny and very cute. Weighs only 3.1 oz including 
batteries. Can hold 500 waypoints and 10,000 trackpoints! The smallness 
and the number of trackpoints were what attracted me to this unit.
My Garmin V that I usually use only holds 3000 trackpoints. And 
the more trackpoints I can get, the more accurate my track will be 
when downloading it to the computer. The V doesn't hold enough trackpoints 
to do a 50 mile ride with good accuracy. But the Geko can hold enough 
trackpoints to store readings for a 50. You can set it to every 5 
seconds or every 26.4 feet to get maximum benefit.

Anyway, so I was anxious to try out this new toy. My husband took 
a cellphone case and modified it to hold the Geko and to strap the 
case to my upper arm like the Timex GPS watch receiver.

The last new thing for this ride was a different loop. I am very 
sick of doing the same 11 mile loop, so I had worked in a map program 
to map out different routes along the roads. Since I wasn't sure 
how much actual riding on the road I would have to do (versus being 
able to get onto grassy knolls) and Tanna is barefoot, I put on his 
easy boots to protect his hooves. Only the front hooves, though.

Whew, so we take off. Tanna does excellently as we are attacked by 
4 of the neighbors dogs barking wildly and growling and doing their 
best to intimidate us. He basically ignores them and we just walk 
past. They follow for about a quarter mile and then head back to 
their home.

Tanna was marvelous. Spooking at a few things, but in general behaving 
himself and staying to the side of the road. I checked the boots 
several times, but they never came off. Tanna felt great. Really 
moving out and enjoying himself. I think he enjoyed having different 
scenery! And that nice pad probably contributed, too.

All in all we covered just over 11 miles in an hour and 45 minutes.
Just about our normal pace. I think it's time to speed up on these 
shorter weekday rides. Kinda hard to do that though. Limited by the 
terrain. 

The Toklat pad was, dare I say it, wonderful! I could feel the cushioning 
while I was in the saddle. Especially under my lower thighs. I was 
quite amazed. When I unsaddled, there was almost a perfect sweat 
pattern. Only one dry spot. Tiny, smaller than a dime, on his right 
withers. It was really cool, I took the saddle off, but left the 
pad so I could look at it before looking at the sweat pattern. The 
top part of the pad had molded to the shape of the underside of the 
saddle! Totally weird. I wasn't expecting that. And the pad just 
stayed on him. My Tacky Tack pad will bunch and move, especially 
when Tanna shifts around during unsaddling. But not that Toklat pad.
Just stayed right with him! Maybe it was a fluke, but it sure was 
cool. The pad was dry to the touch by the time I was done unsaddling 
and unbooting Tanna. So far, I'm quite impressed with this pad. 20 
miles was where we got into trouble with the Tacky Tack pad, so I'll 
be anxious to see how this pad performs on 20+ mile rides.

The GPS. As soon as I got into the house, my husband swiped the Geko 
and downloaded the information into his computer. One thing we had 
been concerned about was the Geko receiving satellites while on my 
arm. It doesn't take an external antenna. But the points were even 
and the Geko never lost satellites. The computer calculated that 
we went .4 miles more than the Geko's trip mileage said. The case 
that Daniel had made for my arm worked quite well and I never had 
a danger of losing the GPS. I was able to turn it towards me and 
see the face while riding and get my current speed, average speed,
and total mileage in one glance. I think my Garmin V has been replaced 
as my GPS of choice for endurance riding and training. We'll have 
to see how well it can hold satellites on a wooded trail now.

And the easy boots. While the boots did not come off, I was right 
about the quality of the duct tape. There was a big tear in the tape 
where Tanna's heel met the back of the boot. The tape still helped,
though. No doubt about it. It bonded to the vet wrap and held very 
well. When I pulled off the duct tape and vet wrap, my husband was 
able to remove Tanna's boot without the aid of a screw driver. Which 
leads me to believe the boot probably would have come off if the 
duct tape hadn't been there. So, what's the best brand of duct tape 
for keeping easy boots on?

What a fun ride! Gorgeous day, wind blowing. Tanna sweated up some 
and dried quickly because of the nice breeze. Definitely my kinda 
day. :)

April
Nashville, TN



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