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Donna asked:

> But I think it?will take more work/ more horse/ more rider to peak and top
ten at the 50s. [...] My question is, when is it the appropriate time to
move a horse up to a slow 50?

I'm sure more experienced people than myself will have things to add, but
here's how I go at it. I think it depends a lot on the characteristics of
the horse and how in shape you are. If a horse is young, I'd keep the
distance down. We have a mare who is 5 now, she's slightly built, and needs
more work. She'll get lots of trail rides this coming year, a year of LD
next year, and start 50's after that if all is going well. If a horse was
older and had nice, strong ligaments and tendons, maybe they could/should
move up sooner. Another huge factor is mental. Is the horse in control? Do
they take care of themselves? Both positive signs to move up. Your beating
all those people in the vet check (and the fact you didn't have to stay with
them) are all good signs.

A friend of mine does it like so - year 1 is conditioning at home. No LD for
her, but that's just the way she likes to do things. Year 2 is slow 50's -
maybe 5-6 of them. Year 3 is more 50's and maybe some 75's or so. Year 4 you
can think about 100's. Works really well for her - she's had 2 5000+ mile
horses, and I think one more with 3000+ miles - and she has an amazing
completion record.

I wouldn't worry about running top-10 in a 50. Depending on where you live,
you could be dealing with some fierce competition. There's days I ride
really fast and come in 20th or so. Also depends on who shows up.

How in shape you are has an effect, too. We talk about getting the horse to
eat and drink - that starts getting to be important in 50's.

BTW, take ride speeds with a grain of salt. The 25 could have been 27.4 and
the 30 could have been 28. And there's terrain to take into consideration.

I did a 60 for my first 'endurance' ride - what made me think I could do it
was that we got lost on top of a mountain one day in the rain on a training
ride, and we were out for 8 1/2 hours. So we picked a nice flat ride, and
off we went - nice and slow, taking plenty of time to graze. We finished on
time, but we were an hour and a half behind the next riders up. We just took
our time and had fun with it. If you're going slow, you have a lot of room
for error. Something I had the good fortune to learn my very first ride is
that if you have extra horse because you were going under capacity, you can
choose to use that later. If you're going over capacity, you can correct,
but that's more likely to be a problem.

My $0.02 - 


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