[RC] Enduring at the Michaux Madness Extreme 2004 - C. Eyler
This was the first 50 miler for both me and
for my QH gelding. The bad news is that we did not get a completion,
because we were 13 minutes OT. The good news is that my gelding finished
in great shape, with plenty of energy to spare and very good vet
scores. It's a great feeling when your horse is still spooking at big
white rocks after 45 miles or so of what many experienced riders said was a
very tough ride.
The miracle is that we got to do the ride at
all. We arrived in camp Friday morning and set up in a lovely,
clover-filled field that happened to have lots of holes. Friends were
joking about the holes when I stepped down from the dressing room of the trailer
into a major hole, twisting my ankle horribly. My ankle just blew up like
a balloon. By the time a friend got to me, the swelling was the size of a
golf ball. A couple of minutes later, it was more like a
tangerine. I elevated the foot and began on-and-off icing. After
about 90 minutes I hobbled over to the RM's trailer to check in. Pat Oliva
saw me limping, heard the story and inspected my ankle, and then ordered
me to get off, and stay off, that foot. (She also ordered
my friends to wait on me hand and foot. LOL) She even found someone
to drive me back to our campsite. About mid-afternoon, I massaged horse
liniment into the ankle, and, after putting on the tights I planned to use for
the ride, Bonnie Snodgrass wrapped it for me. Bonnie also kept me
supplied with major doses of Aleve. Another friend and I went out for a
short "test" to see if I could even ride at all, and, while it didn't hurt a
lot, I began to wonder how it would feel after 30 miles. I kept those
questions to myself, though, since my friends did not want me to attempt the 50
-- fearing for my safety if something happened and I was alone on the trail, and
arguing that my own discomfort might end up soring my horse. But I
couldn't not at least try to do it. When asked if my sneaker would
fit over the bloated ankle, I told them that I'd cut the left shoe if need
be.
The start was about a quarter-mile out of camp on a
hard-packed road, and I allowed a half-hour for warm-up (it was a deliciously,
and unusually, cool morning). I made sure that I was at the camp end
of that stretch, away from the starting line, at 6:30. At 6:35 we started
trotting up that road. After about a half-mile, a woman trotting behind me
asked if we could try riding together, since the pace I was setting was a good
one for her Arabian gelding. And we rode together for the rest of the
day. Bless you, Judy (help! I don't know your last name) -- your
companionship and upbeat attitude were a real boost.
Our plan was to keep an ECTRA pace. The first
loop (18+ miles) took us about 15 minutes longer than we'd planned, but we
were right on the money for the second loop (17+ miles). Our horses
both pulsed down quickly, and we thought we were in good shape with 3 3/4 hours
to do the final 14 miles. Wrong! Neither of us felt it was safe to
trot through all the loose rock, and we weren't crazy enough to go faster than a
walk on the steepest parts of the climbs. We probably could have gone a
bit faster on the steep, filled-with-loose-rocks descents *IF* I'd hadn't
had a ravaged left ankle that made leading my horse impossible. Our real
mistake, though, was to trot and sometimes canter the stretches of good
footing. We needed to be moving out much faster when the terrain made that
possible. Neither Judy nor I would have failed to stop, though, when
another rider needed us to hang around a creek so that horse might drink or to
wait for another rider to adjust her saddle and remount.
Would I do the Michaux Madness Extreme ride
again? Absolutely!!! The trail marking was fantastic, there was
lots of water on the trail, and the views from the mountain tops
were breathtaking.
