Pyramid Challenge (longish)

["guest@endurance.net" <guest@endurance.net>]

Ed Roley naztari@aol.com
Angie's description of the ride site was correct. 
I just wanted to add a little and tell our story.

My daughter and I went to do the 25. The advantage
of doing 25 was we were able to watch the start of
the 50 (a ground fog lay in the steeplechase area and seeing those horses run at the start with the fog and the background of the steeplechase course with the hedges and jumps everywhere was absolutely breathtaking!)and spend more time in the afternoon riding the park and watching all of the other activities!

My daughter (15) has a beautiful 16H T-bred mare. She has 
only had her a few months now. We rode Liberty and
finished 8th and 9th with my daughter constantly
urging me to hurry up. That horse of hers has this 
relaxed canter that my horse has to run to keep up
with (and she can do it all day). Our plan was to do as well as possible on this ride. We took off with the leaders. I could barely keep up with my girl. She kept urging me on. After a
few miles there were 3 riders in front of us. They 
were really blazing because we weren't slacking. This
course was flat enough and open enough you could see 
who was where quite often. We missed a turn and after 
a few minutes of no markers turned around and headed 
back. We were then behind a group of 5 riders. We got 
to ride with one of the loose horses for awhile here
which just thilled my daughter! We didn't know the story
about this loose horse at the time. We worked pretty hard to catch up. Just before the end of the first loop through the cross country field I saw my daughter heading for 1 of the jumps! I couldn't believe she was doing this but she was going to. Then she changed her mind. Whew. We came into the vet check and it took a little longer then I like to get my horse down but we were sitting somewhere around 6-7th. The 2d loop seemed to go by so fast. My daughter pulled me along. I am accustomed to riding alone and watching my horse so much it is hard for me to just go like this. As we neared the steeplechase track the leaders were right in front of us. They turned into the track but one of them headed for the infield (off course). Everyone slowed including my daughter. I caught her and told her we 
had more then a mile to go so she picked up that relaxed canter.
I followed but about half way around my horse went to a walk and refused to even trot. OK, no problem. I get off and lead him (give him a 200lb break!). My daughter waited on up the track.
We got in, finally pulsed my guy down, and ended up with my daughter 4th and me 5th (3d BC, he was just a little tired). We 
were 3 minutes off the 1st place horse. Had my daughter not had me to slow her down...she would have finished 15 minutes ahead of the whole bunch. Her horse was fine and later in the afternoon she went riding in the event field jumping jumps all
over the place!

It was great fun and I may get my daughter hooked on this sport 
if there are more rides like this one!
Ed and Sawyer (Do we have to follow those 2 girls?)