Find other juniors in your area to ride with
occasionally. They will excel around peers and have a lot of fun! If the other
kids are riding farther, they will want to. Also take her to an endurance ride,
try to help crew for someone, a junior would be GREAT and see what happens. One
of my daughter's got the endurance bug BIG TIME after crewing for me and
spending the weekend at a ride.
This is not to open up the discussion about whether or not kids should be
doing endurance/LD. I'm looking for input on how you got your kids physically
ready to do an LD. My daughter wants to do an LD with me, but so far, I
haven't been able to get her over the 15 mile mark. we are currently camping
and riding for spring break and we rode 15 miles yesterday. We're about to go
out and do it again, but she's now not sure she's "up to" a 25 mile ride. It's
OK if she doesn't want to do it as I won't push her, but I do wonder what
"props" might make her life better.
here is what I have done and know about my daughter...
1) she needs food constantly on a long or hard ride
2) we've bought her half chaps and that helps a bunch
3) I encourage her to eat/drink every time we stop
4) She never wants to quit riding until she totally just quits on me and
who knows where we'll be.
5) she's completely comfortable at all gaits.
I'm just wondering if I need to get her just riding more miles or if
there is some sort of exercise we could do outside of riding?
She is only 7 so it's not like this has to happen this minute...I'm just
trying to figure out how to help her physically achieve something. I know that
other kids who are younger have ridden more miles. I'm not sure why she's
having such a hard time with it.
