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Re: [RC] 25milers - heidiYet again I read "making LD into endurance..." etc. etc. I will repeat again that 25 milers were riding endurance when endurance rides first started. They weren't called LD until sometime after 1975. They were 25 mile endurance rides. The change was made by the board of directors behind closed doors a long damn time ago for whatever reason. Did the Great American Horse Race mileage have something to do with it? I don't know. Ask the directors who were there. No input from the membership was required. Not quite. There was only a brief time during which 25s were sanctioned as endurance rides. Originally the AERC minimum was 50 miles (1972). Then existing rides asked to be sanctioned (I know we had a 35-miler and a 40-miler at that time in the NW) and shortly after AERC came on the scene, managers also got the idea of offering two distances, so 50-mile rides would offer 25s. In the mid-70s these were sanctioned, but not for very many years. It opened such a Pandora's box that the BoD (and not behind closed doors, either--there was a LOT of input, especially from ride vets and concerned riders!) once again set the 50-mile minimum. (And no, it didn't have anything to do with the GAHR, to the best of my knowledge--just to the abuses that occurred when the 25s were sanctioned for points.) For awhile, there WERE no sub-50 rides associated with AERC at all. But many managers still saw the virtue in having a "novice" distance, since getting the points chasers out of the 25s made them much more manageable. I know that in PNER, we were using the pulse-down-at-finish concept long before AERC decided to sanction LDs. And when AERC first did this, many areas (NW included) started having 24s because they felt so strongly that AERC needed more restrictions on LD rides. After a couple of years, AERC finally settled into pretty much the sort of LD routine that we have now. Can't remember exactly when this was, but I WAS on the board during this process, so it was in the 80s sometime. And with minor fine-tuning, the LD program has functioned fairly well ever since, despite the lambasting by a few. I'm sure it can still use minor fine-tuning--but the basic concept as different from endurance riding has proven to be a very good one. Joe is correct that the "limited" name was the most applicable of several choices. "Novice" was rejected for obvious reasons--not all who ride them are novices. "Training" was likewise rejected--again, clearly not all ride them for training. "Limited" seemed to fit, and certainly was not intended to be derogatory in any way. Heidi ============================================================ REAL endurance is eating egg salad sandwiches for 3 days straight! Heidi Sowards... but then again... REAL endurance is riding behind someone who ate egg salad sandwiches for 3 days straight! ~ author unkown ridecamp.net information: http://www.endurance.net/ridecamp/ ============================================================
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