Friday morning, D and Sam, and me and Bhen trailered up to Antelope Island in the middle of the Great Salt Lake to get ready for our first endurance ride of the 2008 season. My riding buddy, MJ, and her husband host the ride every year. Antelope Island is a great place to ride. Most of the trails are sandy (but not deep sand) with only scattered rocky sections. Nothing is too technical and none of the climbs are too steep.
D had been tapped to take photos of all the riders. (MJ gave those out as prizes for completing the 25-mile or 50-mile races, no matter what place you came in.) Bhen and I got signed up for the 25-mile, which is technically a "limited distance" race and got vet-checked in. Before each race, a staff vet will look over the horses, check their pulse, respirations, gut sounds, capillary refills and check for lameness and general soundness. You are issued a card that you carry with you that has all the pre-race check information on it, and it gives the vets an initial standard to go by for your horse as you come thru all the checks during the race.
MJ normally has a lot of people who are either on horses who are new to endurance, or who themselves are new to the sport, so she plots out a couple of extra pulse/respiration checks during the race course for the 25-milers to make sure no one is pushing their horse too hard. The limited distance races are a little different than the 50-mile races. There's a slightly different strategy to them. While both races have a vet check at about the halfway point which has a mandatory hold time (meaning, you wait for - in this case an hour - after you have met pulse/respiratory criteria - 60 bpm pulse rate here - and feed and water your horse), the 25-milers also had two ride-by checks. So, we would dismount at about the 8 and 18 mile points and have a pulse check. If you had pulsed down to 60 bpm, you were allowed to mount up and ride off immediately. Otherwise, you got a hold imposed, about 10 minutes, until your horse pulsed down to the 60 beats per minute. This is important, because if you come into a check hard and fast, you'll likely lose time because you'll have minutes added on for the hold.
My goals for Bhen and me were threefold:
A. Ride our ride by ourselves. No crew, no support horse, nuttin. So we'd have to work on pacing and watching metabolics, and all of that alone. You know....just to see if we could do it solo, after MJ had helped us at our last ride in the fall.
B. Come into every pulse/respiratory rate check at or under criteria. See above description about why this is good strategy.
C. Come in within the top 10 riders.
The ride started off with a controlled start, meaning we had a sort of pace-car horse go out in front of our group for the first mile and a half. There is bad footing with rocks and a steep decline down to the water coming out of base camp. MJ doesn't want anyone trotting or going too fast here. So, we dutifully all followed the rider out and when we got to the shoreline of the lake, it was a free-for-all. I stopped Bhen and got off and let him graze while a buncha wild cowboy types went out at a full gallop. I waited until they had gone out of sight, but before the slow group who were leading their horses downhill came up to us, and then remounted and set off.
Bhen's no dummy tho. He knew there were a bunch of horses ahead of us and his job is to go GET THOSE HORSES! The first seven miles - I kid you not - we were going along so fast all but one of the braids in his mane blew the ties out. He's also got this "interesting" habit in that when he sees a horse ahead of him he will call out to it incessantly until we catch up, then pass the horse (politely - we always ask to be yielded the trail, please) and then he completely ignores the horse. He doesn't mind being out by himself, but lord help the horse that's in front of him. You'll know he is coming.
I was a little bit worried about the first check, since we had been going so fast, but we came in already under 60 bpm, Bhen had a drink at the trough, and we were off again. We trotted along and made good time until we caught up with a couple of other folks that were riding, and then a HUGE bison grazing on the trail (who we all went wayyyyyy around at a slightly slower clip so as not to disturb him), and then continued down to the southern tip of the island where the old ranch is, and the halfway point/vet check.
There was a long steep hill climb up to the vet check, so I got off and walked up with Bhen. When we reached the top, it wasn't very busy yet (the 50-milers hadn't started coming in by then), so we immediately had offers to check us in. I wasn't sure Bhen had pulsed down - hell.... I was breathing pretty hard after the hill climb - but I told them to check him, and he was well under 60 already. Because we came in sensibly, we actually beat 4 other riders out of the hour-long hold. Four of the cowboys who had pushed their horses too hard had extra time tacked onto the hour because they couldn't get their horses pulse rates down. See? Wily like a fox.
On the way home, Bhen and I were pretty much all alone except for the wind (and there was a lot of that, with blowing sheets of dusty sand) and the few people we passed. I didn't push him at all and he came into the next pulse check already down under pulse criteria, and actually in better shape at the 18-mile mark than he had been at the 7-mile mark. (This is a very good thing.) We enjoyed the scenery and the beautiful spring day and trotted our way back along the shoreline before making the final turn up the initial hill into base camp. We came into camp, had a quick drink and checked in with the vet. Already below pulse criteria. When the vet looked us over for his final full vet check, he asked if I had had any worries, which I didn't. He said "You guys look like you could do another 25 miles today without issues." and told us to go jog off toward camp, and since he didn't see anything even worrying not to come back unless he whistled for us.
We were the only horse/rider team that came in within the top 10 that had no extra holds for pulse criteria! Yay Bhen!
So Bhen and I met all our goals for the race, rode smartly and sensibly I think, and had a blast. Can you tell?
All for now......
