Endurance.Net Ridecamp Archives

If you put an external antenna on the top of your helmet it would help. Your
body and your horse's body can also block the signal.

Truman

Annie George wrote:

If it was out on the desert not any/many hills, and no trees would it be pretty accurate? Annie

Anne George Saddlery  www.vtc.net/~ageorge

----- Original Message -----

From: Karen

To: rides2far@xxxxxxxx ; AERCMembersForum@xxxxxxxxxxxx

Cc: aercmembers@xxxxxxxxxxxx

Sent: Friday, July 11, 2003 1:09 PM

Subject: Re: [AERC-Members] Tevis entries/multiday speeds

At 06:55 AM 7/11/2003 -0400, rides2far@xxxxxxxx wrote:
>Just curious. What's the shortest reading you ever got? I've gotten
>private e-mails from riders who have done "50's" as short as 32
>miles...and consistently below 40 on a 3 day ride, one day of which was
>billed as a 55.

I've gotten 24 miles once :+>.  The ride was in the trees, and it wasn't
accurate.  Most GPS readings are *not* going to be accurate.  I've used an
external antenna which makes it considerably more accurate.  It still does
not always pick up everything.  That can be remedied by going over the
trail on the map software tho, and you can still get a general feel.  Most
rides are within 5 or 10% either way by GPS readings.  At a lot of rides
since so many people have GPS's now the differences that each person gets
can vary quite a bit so take it all with a grain of salt, you are
absolutely not going to have an accurate reading without using an external
antenna OR on a ride that has canyons, tree cover or even cloud
cover.  Once you've ridden enough rides with a GPS, and on the same horse
like I have it generally is pretty easy to figure out how long a trail is,
or how fast you are going.  After trotting on a horse a few thousand miles
at XX speed you get a feel for it.

>So shouldn't that make your ride times look *slower*?

Okay, let's say I do a one day ride and each time I go into the vet check I
have a long walk from in-time to P&R, or I'm not the fastest person at
removing my horses bit and tack, so I blow 10-12 minutes each time.  That
is 30-36 minutes of wasted time.  Then, let's say I get ready to leave camp
but the out-timer is 5 minutes farther away so I blow that too. That is
10-15 minutes there. That makes my one day ride time 7:50.  On a multiday I
only have one vet check, don't have to pull tack so I just mosey on in, I
can take the same ride time -- 7:50 once you subtract holds but now my
horse has basically had all day to use up that additional 45 minutes of
time going at a slower or more consistent pace.  Or, let's say it is one of
the rides that has a vet and go with no hold time, the only thing is that I
get into the check with only 2 vets and 12 riders ahead of me.  so it takes
me 35 minutes to get thru that check, so that adds on to my ride time.  Now
I'm up to almost 8 1/2 hours.  I could have done the multiday ride in a
faster time but ridden the horse slower.   This is an example based on
reality (mine, others may vary <G>).

Karen
West Region

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