Endurance.Net Ridecamp Archives

At Angie's encouragement, this is the
first installment of the Old Dominion.
This is the preface that I wrote at
Jayel Super's urging.  The rest
of story is told by Super with a little
help from Drubin and myself. 
Note that Super claims he is sharing
some of his secrets.

On Friday evening before the Old Dominion
I gave a clinic entitled
"To Finish a 1-Day 100 is to Really
Win" to encourage riders
to try 100s.  I asserted that there
are 4 "P's" that are key to 
successfully completing one-day 100s.
 As you will see all
of these came into play the next day,
some in rather ironic ways.

The Four P’s are:  Patience, Practice,
Pacing, and Pulse.
Will just mention some points related
to these that came up
during the ride.

Patience is necessary because it takes
years to get a horse
ready to do tough 100s.  Patience
is necessary you must go at your horse's pace
and not get caught in riding somebody
else's pace.  The first 50 is just a
warm-up for the second 50.  Patience
is necessary because no 100 will ever go 
exactly as planned.  You must have
the patience to deal with it and adjust.  .....

Practice is key so that the horse is
trained as well as conditioned for whatever
is needed.  Practice is key so
that as much as possible is routine.  Then one
is better prepared for the unexpected.
  I had actually planned to practice
the finish by trailering to the last
check, Liberty Hall,  and then trotting and galloping
up over the mountain and running down
the otherside to the finish so Super
would be eager when we arrived at Liberty
Hall.   However
it was raining the day before the ride
and we did not want to take the trailer
out so I settled for riding from the
finish up to the top of the mountain and
just down the otherside a little way,
turning around and trotting and galloping
a short ways to the top and then running
down Hickerson Hollow until
the last fairly flat part into the finish.

Pacing is critical if you are going
to have a strong horse for the second half
of the ride.  I made the point
that a 100 should not be ridden as a competition
with other riders but as a test against
the trail where one sets a pace based
on the toughness of the course, the
weather, the capabilities and condition
of the horse ....  And the pace
should be set for each leg of the ride depending
on how the ride is going.  And
no, it's not true that I was trying to convince 
everybody else to slow way down.

Pulse is key sign of whether the pacing
is proper.  The horse should
be staying well within the aerobic range
most of the time.  This is
one reason I strongly recommend riding
with a heart monitor as
pulse is the best indication.  The
other key pulse indicator is time
to recover at the vet checks.  Unless
the weather is hot and humid,
in a 100 the time to meet parameters
should be just a few minutes
throughout most of the checkpoints and
the horse's pulse should
be way under the parameters by the end
of the hold period.

Before the ride Sue Greenall and I agreed
to ride together.
Sue was riding Charlie, owned by Maggie
Price, my mentor and the breeder 
of my horse Ramegwa Drubin [some of
you may have heard me him mention once
 or twice or ..... :>) ].  
I was delighted to ride with Sue as Super is a horse who 
likes a companion, Sue is superb at
pacing, and has a great sense of humor,
something very helpful on a 100.

And now a CONFESSION.  I did have
as a goal that I had shared with
very few people.  No horse had
ever won the Old Dominion 3 times.  
Super had won the Old Dominion in 1999
and then in 2001 
when he finished in under 13 hours and
set the course record 
for the course used from about 1995
to 2001.  My goal was for
Super to be the first horse to achieve
that feat.  Super, who has a very
healthy Arab ego, told me he could do
it and was ready.  However to be consistent
with what I said above about pacing,
the specific goal I set given the good
weather  was to ride a pace of
just over 8 miles an hour except for the really 
rocky sections such as Habron Gap and
Sherman Gap.  That would
put me on a pace similar to 2001  :>)
 .