Endurance.Net Ridecamp Archives

In a message dated 11/20/2005 3:02:57 PM Central Standard Time, nvrider@xxxxxxxxxxx writes:

> 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.


I'll sure second this comment.  The horse I'm riding now *needed* to get into 50s right away.  We did one LD a few weeks after I bought him, he got into barbed wire a week later, and then with maybe 5 weeks of conditioning, we entered a 50, because 20+ mile conditioning rides weren't phasing him.  We got pulled at 38 miles because he slipped in some muddy ruts and bruised his hip, but he was doing great, and would likely have finished just fine without that mishap.  But he started to see that there's more than 20 miles of trail out there.  When he did his first 55s this summer, he got religion and learned to eat, etc.  Did great on them.

Dawn in East Texas