Great Northern Connection

[Trish Dowling <dowling@skyway.usask.ca>]

Got back yesterday from the FEI sanctioned, Pan American Games Pre-ride at the Great Northern 
Connection in Manitoba. First of all, a big thank you to Myna Cryderman and her family (Mike, Scott, Lisa 
and HRH Jane) for hosting a fantastic weekend, with 50's and 25's each day, and the Pan Am pre-ride on 
Saturday. Congrats to Ridecamp's own Lari Shea who won the Pre-ride in a spectacular time under 10 
hours. Lari showed the advantage of training on the beach for this ride, as the sand is very deep and took out 
a lot of good horses. 38 horses started and and 25 finished - and I'm delighted to say that Cruise and I 
finished! It was his and my first 100 miler and we made it through with the help of my husband and our 
friends (who dubbed themselves the "Crew Sluts"), and Denise and Debbie (who's last names I never knew) 
from Colorado who helped me and Cruise around the last 35 miles. We were the turtles, but with respectable 
times of 16 hrs, 18 minutes for all that sand! But to finish is to win and in this case it also got our FEI 
qualification. It was great seeing the other Ridecampers: Teddy Lancaster (with whom my hubby spent a 
fortune on tack!) and Steph and John Teeter (who both had a very successful weekend competing). 
Carbohydrate loading the Canadian way (BEER!), paid off as the Saskatchewan Long Riders did very well: 
Jerald Thiessen won the IAHA 50 miler on Friday with a spectacular 4 way race to the finish. My hubby had 
to pull his horse on Friday at 30 miles with a sore ankle, but rode a horse of Christy Janzen's to a 5th place 
in the 50 miler on Saturday. And Vikram Misra, the WCVM's virologist, rode his horse to a middle of the 
pack finish in his first 50 miler on Friday. Other SLR riders did well over the weekend, but I didn't keep up 
with all the results. Hopefully, Myna will post them all.

And for all the armchair discussions about electrolytes and carbohydrates, we got to see how our horses did 
in action. The gang from the Equine Research Centre (Gayle Ecker, Mike Lindinger, Art King and their crew 
of volunteers) offered performance profiling. I am sure that they will publish their results soon, but I can tell 
you that the ability to monitor these horses during the ride made a huge difference to some horses. I'm going 
to mention a few, and I apologize in advance for any inaccuracies in my reporting (the riders will get final 
reports from the ERC). Cruise's results were fairly normal, but I did learn some things that I can improve. I 
use Perform N'Win, and his electrolytes and blood glucose remained normal throughout the ride. But he got 
very excited at the start and was nuts the first 20 miles, despite my efforts to calm him down. After that, he 
was his normal self. But we paid a price - he lost 22 liters (about 44 pounds) of (presumably) water in the 
first 24 mile loop! After that, his fluid deficit remained steady, as he ate and drank well, but he did not 
recover those losses until the next day. 10 hours after finishing, his deficit was only 8 liters (16 lbs). So I 
was advised to do everything I can to get him to drink in the first 25 miles (yeah, right!), but also to preload 
more aggressively - as horses drink when their sodium concentrations rise - not when their water 
concentrations decrease. So if he had more sodium pre-ride, he'd have a stronger thirst urge. And I should 
do everything I can at checks to get water into him - soupy beet pulp, etc. I got patted on the back for my 
after-ride management, as he had recovered so well in 10 hours. Cruise's glucose concentrations remained 
normal during the entire ride, indicating no need for carbohydrate loading beyond my normal feeding during 
the ride. However, another person had a horse that typically went strong until 30 miles and then was washed 
out for the last 20 miles. The ERC group found that horse to have very low glucose levels at that point and 
told the rider, who got feed and carbos into that horse, and this time he finished grand. Another horse was 
found to have very low sodium levels, even pre-ride. This horse typically looks washed out after the ride. But 
on the ERC group's recommendation, the rider aggressively treated with Perform N'Win and the horse looked 
marvelous post-ride. This rider also gave his horse a human carbohydrate supplement, and before and after 
samples showed only a minimal rise in blood glucose. It will be interesting to see if anyone else saw any 
real effect from a carbohydrate supplement, but based on Cruise's results, I'll save my money. That way I 
had more to spend with Teddy! And I highly recommend the ERC group's performance profiling to anyone 
who really wants to know how best to manage their horse during an endurance ride.

BTW, for anyone who was at the GNC, there was some confusion about camping fees. There was a fee for 
vehicle passes that the rangers collected, but there was also a $5 Cdn per vehicle per day camping fee. By 
Sunday night, only 9 people had paid this camping fee. This leaves about $600 owing to the Friends of 
Spruce Woods Provincial Park, which Myna will cover, but reduces the funds going to next year's Pan Am 
Games. So if you didn't pay this fee, please send Myna a check made out to the Friends of Spruce Woods. 
We need camping sites like this one to be kept open for our sport!

Cheers,
Trisha

Trisha Dowling, DVM, MS, Diplomate ACVIM & ACVCP
Associate Professor, Veterinary Clinical Pharmacology
Western College of Veterinary Medicine
Saskatoon, SK S7N 5B4
306-966-7359/FAX 306-966-7376