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IMO the best way to learn to pace your horse is CTR. You and your horse 
will learn what a 6.2 mph pace means. There is too much "confusion" in 
an endurance ride - at any distance - to get ingrained into the rider 
and horse pacing. The CTR is all about consistent pace.

For a new horse - and I have one out there - I would start out with a 
couple very slow (we are talking her 5 plus hours ride time) then move 
up to CTR's (in FL CTR's maintain about a 6.mph pace or about 4 hours). 
After a few of those then it would be a 50. I think too often the part 
of the training that is missed in starting a new horse is the pacing 
training, and a CTR can do that better than anything else.

Truman

Dream Weaver wrote:

> couple of comments....
>
> I could never learn how to pace my horse on the shorter distance 
> rides.  I'm not even sure I ever figured it out by doing 50's.  
> Definitely not in 25 miles though, even on a 100 the horse usually 
> settles in about 35 miles into it.  On a multiday it'll sometimes be 
> the second or third day, till the horse gets enough experience.  Even 
> then, I can only name a handful of riders that I think are excellent 
> at pacing.  It's not easy.  I still struggle with it.
>
> The only thing with doing a 25 on a horse that you do have 
> conditioned, is that if he is any sort of an athlete at all, that 
> distance isn't going to phase him.  So that horse just might learn 
> that he doesn't really have to learn very much about endurance at 
> all.  It really did used to make me so mad at one of my horses that 
> could do a 50 even, and get all A's and wasn't taking care of 
> himself.  He did always drink, but not eat.  He finally figured it out 
> on a multiday, but I think that I delayed him getting that by allowing 
> him to do a couple of LD rides.
>
> Karen
> in NV


--

"Problems worthy of attack prove their worth by fighting back."

- Paul Erdos (1913-1996)




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