Endurance.Net Ridecamp Archives

One thing that was pretty glaringly obvious at the Convention is that a lot of people are looking for black and white answers, but the sport of endurance not only is all shades of gray, but the whole damn rainbow thrown in.  During the Ask the Experts Panel, John Crandall was asked his conditioning schedule for Heraldic.  You could almost feel the poised pens in the air of people planning on taking down every word and then attempting to duplicate this on their own poor unsuspecting horses.  Same thing with feed, what do you feed, how much, what brands, etc.?  Could also be electrolytes, etc.  Luckily all of the "experts" knew enough to sidestep these questions and not give a set answer.  I think this is probably the major drawback to finding these types of articles published, every person and every HORSE will have a huge variance.

 

On the SERA website there is an article on how to condition for your first ride, I can't remember if it is geared toward a 50 or a LD, but it recommends conditioning your horse 3+ days a week.  There is also something on the AERC site about this, I think it recommends 3-5 days a week.  But there are a lot of people, myself included, that only condition maybe 1-2 days a week.  Heck I know people that ONLY ride their horses for a short bit in the spring and then in actual endurance rides, they don't get any "between-ride" conditioning.  So which is the "better" formula?  That all depends on your horse.  And it very well may take a lot of trial and error to find out what works best for you (and your schedule) and your horse.  I'm interested to see the series of articles from the new members that were featured in...  Dec?  Jan?  Even those 3 ladies tend to ride more often than I do and I'm doing 100's with my boy, albeight we're doing very slow 100's!  =)  Heck, if my schedule was different you can bet I'd love to be riding like that. 

 

One of the things that I really took away from John Crandall at the Convention was to MAKE YOUR RIDES COUNT.  Have a plan/goal in mind for your horse and work towards that.  Just because you get your horse out and walk/trot 20 miles once a week, if you aren't really WORKING your horse (and they are already "legged-up", not a new horse getting the foundation) then there is not a good benefit return on your time investment.  Sometimes the horse may need a slow ride for a brain-break or a rest period, coming back from layoff, a ride, etc.  But I've been trying to make sure my horse and I are getting a greater benefit for our time lately and I'm hoping I'll start to see some results from that this year.  I was finding it too easy to put him into his effortless trot and just cruise out some steady miles, now I'm working with a different focus and goal in mind.

 

~ Crysta & Sinatra