Well I was just enjoying my morning coffee with EN and read the "Big
Ride Training" in the junior news column and there's a couple of statements
I take exception with. The author says: "Eight weeks before whichever big ride
is on the calendar, make sure to get a 90 mile training week in"
Whoa. Any of you ever done a 90 mile training week? Quotes like that are
what make people think 100 milers are out of reach. I don't want to be
real critical. The article is written by a high school senior Elise Travers.
It's well written and has some good tips. She has 460 lifetime miles and her
last ride was Tevis 100. I admire her for not spending 10 years inching up one
mile at a time. She just did it and that's impressive. If she does a 90 mile
week, OK, for those of you out there wondering how to do a big ride, let's just
say "She did a 90 mile training week". I personally wouldn't.
One other quote that I disagreed with was "Performance horses should be fed
at least three times a day and have free choice grass: the point is to make food
available for the horses at all times. Most riders will find that even when they
provide and abundance of hay, their horses still have difficulties keeping
weight on."
I guess I just imagine someone reading that who can't feed 3 times a
day and doesn't have grass and they think, "Oh well, that leaves me out".
Nope. You're not off the hook. Mine get 2 times a day and hay year round and I
have to monitor it to keep them from getting fat.
Under electrolytes lost she lists Sodium bicarbonate. Sodium Bicarbonate
(if I understand this correctly) is in electrolyte products made for foals with
scours, but those horses are acid and ours are alkaline. Here's a quote from
Karen Chaton's electrolyte comparison page:
AccuLytes adds the buffering
power of mineral
carbonates while avoiding the
negative effects of the extremely alkaline sodium bicarbonate found in
other
electrolyte supplements and
pre-performance products.
So, the article is worth reading. Good job to the author, just wanted to
point out a couple of things in the event some newbies read it and think it
means they're not up to the task. There are many different theories on how to
train. I believe Julie Suhr is more in the "don't lame them before you get there
by overtraining" camp.
