I don't have as much experience as you,Jody, but I agree with
everything you said. Here in the Midwest LD is an accepted
discipline in its own right. There are riders that will probably not do
longer distances, and are still respected as serious competitors. We often
have riders that switch their horses around between CTR, LD and endurance
depending on their training goals(we hold all three over the same
weekend). However, I don't think they should be combined. They are
two different disciplines with corresponding levels of difficulty. From my
personal perspective, it would be to my advantage, since Cheers is about 300
miles short of his 3000, and probably will not do 50's again. However, I
would NOT want to accrue the rest of my mileage doing 25's. It's not the
same and I would feel like I'd cheated. I would rather stop at 2700
endurance miles and be proud of what we've accomplished over 13 difficult
years.
