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RE: [RC] a year of 25's - Bob MorrisIt appears what some people are considering in this discussion is quite different than others. Heidi and others are considering the horse and others the Riders. While a particular number of LD's for the rider may be beneficial, the same number can be detrimental to the attitude of the horse. So, in this discussion, which are we considering the most important? It is my learned consideration that the rider can obtain the necessary knowledge with out the actual on horse experience. There is a plethora of information available. Books written over the past several decades, manuals produced by the AERC and the Arabian association, archives of endurance related forums, ad infinutum ad nauseum. All the rider must do is make a serious effort to learn. The horse however, can shortly learn poor habits from several LD rides. Habits hard to break and detrimental to the welfare. Bob Bob Morris Morris Endurance Enterprises Boise, ID -----Original Message----- From: ridecamp-owner@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:ridecamp-owner@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx]On Behalf Of David LeBlanc Sent: Friday, October 17, 2003 11:51 AM To: 'Deanna German'; 'Ridecamp' Subject: RE: [RC] a year of 25's Deanna German said: Howard wrote:The point I'm trying to make is we need to do something here. Dane Frazier has suggested that a horse spend a year doing LD's before doingtheir first 50 miler. ?And, he adds that the horse should do a year of50 milers before doing their first 100... Have to concur with Heidi on this one. The two LD's I did on my mare taught her nothing, zero. (They were good for me to learn the competition format without having to worry about my horse and I saw some GREAT trail!) I'd have to assert that Heidi isn't a very good judge of what a newbie might learn from an LD ride. So far as I can tell, Heidi's only done 2 LD rides, and those were after some 5000+ miles of endurance. Heidi knows a good bit about endurance, but her perspective is a lot different than someone new. Heidi learned what she knows in a different way, and that seems to have worked well for Heidi, but might not be what everyone can do. Not every rider is a vet, either. I used to get A's in math by ignoring the teacher and only doing homework once every 2 weeks. Worked for me, but I don't recommend it. That said, I don't think I agree with Dane's esteemed opinion on this one, though I do agree with his sentiment that too much too fast gets you in trouble. I also think that there's too much variability to make hard and fast rules - I did have the experience of riding with a woman on her first 50 earlier this year - it was her first endurance ride of any kind, and she and her horse were in better shape at the finish than I was. Certainly not typical, but it happens. I'd assert that there's some things that _could_ be learned from LD rides, like not to get caught up in the excitement and to ride your own ride. If you don't learn that before you try a 50, the results could be ugly. It's also the case that 50's are run a lot faster than LD rides in general. On average (and yes, I have numbers to back this up), if you took the winning time of an LD, doubled it, and stuck them in the 50, they'd end up around 18th (yes, there are exceptions, but this is an average over 100's of rides compared). I recently had the experience of doing a very slow, tough 50 with the 30 mile riders on the same sequence of loops. My first 30 miles was an HOUR faster than the winning 30 mile rider. To be sure, my horse is in shape to do that. Even the back of the pack 50 mile riders run the first 25 miles at about a middle of the pack pace for a 25 (no hard data on this one, just what I know from pacing myself through a bunch of slow 50's). I'm glad I had 5 LD rides under my belt before I tried a 50+ mile ride. I learned a lot from it. If I'd made some of the same mistakes on 50's as I did on 25's, it could have been a bigger problem. IMHO, instead of assuming we can't learn anything from 25's, maybe we ought to try and see what _can_ be learned. Not everyone should just jump into 50's - some exceptional people can, and if they have a good mentor, then they're in even better shape. I do know there's things you won't learn very well on an LD ride that you do have to learn to do 50's, but I still think there's a lot that can be learned from LD rides, esp. for a new rider. It's also very likely the case that Deanna learned these things doing CTR, but not every new endurance rider has 500 miles of CTR to start with. Sorry to have rekindled the dread LD debate yet again, but I do think people can learn from LD - I know I did. =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Ridecamp is a service of Endurance Net, http://www.endurance.net. 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