Below is the past six weeks of conditioning. With only four more potential ride days available to me I am thinking I should focus on careful hill work probably right on our training track at home. We have hit it pretty hard the past nine days. She is going to have three days off with decreased feed, and we will go back to hill work on Friday, Sunday, and pleasure ride from that point forward to just keep her loose.
October 18, 2010 pleasure ride walking pace to just loosen up 5 miles.
October 16, 2010 Distance 24 miles.
October 12, 2010 Hill intervals 1 hour.
October 10, 2010 Hill intervals 1 hour.
October 9, 2010 13 miles of mostly sustained trotting.
October 2, 2010 Versailles State Park 24 miles.
September 28, 2010 slow hill intervals for 1 hour.
September 26, 2010 Clark State Forest 20 miles.
September 24, 2010 10 miles LSD
September 20, 2010 an hour of hill training, a short breeze home.
September 18, 2010 17 slow miles Versailles State Park.
September 17, 2010 an easy pleasure ride of 5 miles.
September 14, 2010 Hill intervals (7 quarter mile climbs), breezed the field home. Total 5 miles.
September 12, Sustained trotting (except for the downhills) 17 miles.
September 10, 2010 Hill repetitions. 5 miles.
September 5, 2010 Pleasure riding, just stretching out a little to limber her up from the work yesterday. Five slow miles.
September 4, 2010 We covered 24 miles today. Her pace was awesome! After we finished pulse was 55 bpm immediately!!!
EG, You and Phebes have made such progress! I am eagerly awaiting hearing about the upcoming ride! Best of luck to both of you- I think you'll have a great ride!
ReplyDeleteAre you planning to do a 50? It looks like your training program is set up for success! I have never done a LD, but I don't think I have ever ridden so far in training as you have! My training for 50's probably consists of one long ride per week of maybe 8-10 miles.
ReplyDeleteGood luck!
It boggles my mind that people can do this, and I keep hearing that they do! Sometimes I wonder if I'm just riding all the go OUT OF HER...
ReplyDeleteWe are trying to do LD's well vs. LD's badly like we've done in the past. Still working on many issues, especially eating and drinking, so I have not tried a longer distance than 30 miles yet.
In our first few 50's Boomer didn't drink well at all. In fact, I was beginning to think that he just wouldn't ever drink until about 30 miles. That was his trend. Then I did 2 50's back to back. On the first day, he was his usual self, refusing water until about 30 miles. The second day rolled around and he drank at every water stop we found, starting at about 5 miles in. Ever since then, he has never had a problem drinking. Any horse can go 25-30 miles without eating or drinking, they just don't NEED it at that distance. I really think that the distance and knowing that they are going to keep on going is what trains them to eat/drink well. You can't teach them to drink, they have to figure that out for themselves.
ReplyDeleteJust some thoughts. Everyone has different training strategies, and clearly I am no expert as I only have 350 competitive miles. I personally decided to start straight away with 50's because I wanted Boomer to understand off the bat what we were getting into. We walked almost half of the first ride we did, but I feel like it helped him wrap his mind around the sport and not just think we were going out for a playful trail ride.