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2011 North American Team Challenge
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2011 North American Team Challenge
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The Party Before The Calm Before The Storm || Winding Up
Kutt Breaks 7 hours at Lake Almanor!!
Heather's Blog - Reynolds RacingSaturday, 06 August 2011
On Friday we headed up to the Lake Almanor FEI Rides. Jeremy was going to ride Kutt on the 100 and I was riding Turbo on the FEI 75 with Dominique Freeman who would ride Razin.
Our drive was uneventful. Once we got there we set up and spent our day getting prepared. Skip and Shar arrived later in the afternoon as well as Lili Wren, one of our exercise riders.
All three horses vetted in great. We pre rode and then went to the meeting. At the meeting it seemed like the crew points might be tricky so after the meeting Skip, Jeremy and Lili went to go find them. almost 2 hours later they came back. It was vague but they thought they had found them.
On Saturday morning Jeremy and Kutt headed out at 5:30. There was a pretty mist hanging low over the high meadows, very scenic.
On the first loop there was a large front group of about 10 horses. Kutt and the other 9 covered the first 25 miles in a very short time. (The entire course had various amounts of rock involved.) Kutt was the first to recover.
Loop two there were now 4 in the lead group, it was 12.5 miles and again the speed was great. All 4 arrived together and Kutt recovered first again.
Loop three was 20 miles and the group was still 4 strong. The pace was blazing.
By the last loop it was down to three horses...
Patriot FEI 100 - MONK wins plus Best Condition
Monday August 1 2011
Monk and I arrived at the Patriot ride on Thursday afternoon and set up camp with enough room for our crew rigs. Our crew consisted of myself, Susie and Steve, Bob Spoor and Eric. Lindsay and Crew arrived about 3pm on Friday. I did ride MONK on Friday morning at about 8am, he was quite as usual, seemed very relaxed on controllable. We went out on loop two for about 4 miles and then turned around and came back. The trail was somewhat rocky but was nice enough to cantor. Since Lindsay would be cantoring most of this ride, that is what we did. MONK and I have been working on some pretty tough training rides, all envolving cantoring in preparation for this ride.
Our goal for this FEI ride was to obtain the new "Elite" horse status. The rules say that if a horse does a sub 9 hour 100, then they are considered a "Elite" horse. So, with the ride starting at 5:30 am, I calculated that we needed to finish by just before 7PM to make the sub 9.....
Lindsay braided MONK and we went to vet him through. All A's of coarse so we returned to the trailer where we saddled up for a short test run and tack check. All was good, Lindsay was very happy with his attitude, he is a happy horse, not very friendly but happy, he loves what he does and you can tell, especially when you see him on the trail. He pretty much does not make a real good presentation to the vet, but that is just him, he just chills.
Ride meeting was at 6:30PM, lots of rider. I think there were 30 in the 100, 10 of those were FEI. Lots of the FEI horses are trying to get back on the training list so they can ride the North American Endurance Team Challenge on Sept 24 th of this year which will be held in the same general area but different location. Actually it will be held on the same trail where MONK won the 2009 AERC championship ride.
Not being the rider I pretty much space during the ride meeting and just hear what I want to hear. Criteria was 64 all day, tack off on the 50 minute holds and can stay on for the 30 minute holds.
We had decided that we would pull tack on all holds, as cooling is critical. MONK does well in the heat and can get chilled easily.
Lindsay was up at 4:30 AM Saturday morning, taking MONK for a walk and let him graze a little. She is always in the saddle warming him up 30 minutes before the ride. We did have a pre ride conference to make sure we were on the same page, no racing non FEI riders, try and get MONK by himself so he can relax and not pull her arms off...
We did walk the 1/3 mile out to the start line and watch them all take off in a cloud of dust, too dark for photo's, could not even tell where Lindsay was, but only 30 or so riders. Loop 1 was 25 miles, first rider in was a FEI rider, Deanna by a minute or so, the rest showed up quickly. MONK was probably in the top 5 or so, we pulled saddle and walked him to the water trough, we had talked about probably NOT using water on him on the first check knowing he chills, but for some reason I think we got a little frantic when it looked like we getting seriously behind, so we started using some water on him. This mistake cost us 6 minutes as he chilled and then was not at criteria when we went into the pulse box. You have to go out and get a new pulse time and then go back in. Hopefully a lesson learned. MONK drank well at the water trough pre vet check and really ate good during the 30 minute hold.
Lindsay left 6 minutes after the first 3 or 4 horses... Actually quite a bit changed on the first loop. First rider in was way behind Lindsay, another of the front AERC riders was pulled...