Endurance.Net Ridecamp Archives

I ended up sleeping ?ok?, not great. I woke up around 4:30 am when I heard the 55-milers moving around, so I got up and fed Ice his breakfast. I set the alarm for 5:30 am and crawled back into bed. I woke up at 5:30 am and Dan made me breakfast while I checked on Ice. He had gobbled his breakfast down and munching on hay. Mary Anne and Kori were getting ready to go out on their 55-mile ride. Kori needed help getting on her horse, so she borrowed my step stool and I held her horse while she got on. After breakfast I took my time and saddled up Ice. At 6:45 am I hand-walked him out of camp to the timer, gave her my number, and walked Ice back to camp. At 7 am, I saw the 25-milers trot away from the starting line. I started my stop-watch and mounted up. Ice was a little prancy but not too bad. I walked him around the trailer a couple times and moseyed down to the timer and starting line, and then down the trail to the first loop, which was the 15 mile red-cut loop. The first ½ mile I tried to keep him a walk but he could see a couple horses a ¼ mile in front of us. I let him do a slow trot, but had to hang on his mouth pretty hard for the next 30 minutes. While we were still within eyeshot of the horses in front of us, we came to a huge dark mud puddle as wide as the trail. There was a sign that said ?Stay to the right?. Yes, I remember something mentioned during the meeting about this spot. If you didn?t stay to the far right, your horse would be up to his chest in water. Some wonder Ice would have absolutely no part in getting near that water. So much so that he wheeled around and did a little rear or two. I got off and tried to lead him through. He still adamantly refused to go near the water. Yikes, what was I going to do? This really wasn?t a good start to my first 25-miler. Then I remembered that there were two riders that left camp behind me, so I waited around for a couple minutes until they caught up with me. When I saw them approach at a trot, I explained the situation as I quickly tightened Ice?s girth, and lugged myself up unto his back from the ground. Wouldn?t you know that he followed right behind them as they crossed the water?

I asked to pass the two women and we continued down the trail at a steady trot with no further problems. We trotted most of the way, stopping to walk only for about a minute or two at a time. The trail was very well marked, but at one point I was worried that I didn?t make the turn left for the 25 milers and had instead continued on the 55-milers route. However, I finally saw the pie plates marking the turn I was supposed to follow. Towards the end of the trail, we were traveling along a nice wide dirt jeep road. It seemed a nice place for a canter, which Ice did nice and relaxed. The time seemed to pass fairly quickly and I really like riding out there by myself, picking the pace that I wanted to do without having to check with someone else if it was ok with them to trot or walk. When we were about a mile from camp, I hopped off, loosened his girth, and hand-walked him in. We made it back into camp from that 15 mile loop in just over 2 hours, and Ice still seemed very strong. I took him back to the trailer, took off his tack, sponged him off with cool water thoroughly, and presented him to the P&R crew. He pulsed in just fine so we went to the vet-in. He once again got all A?s. At this point, I had just less than 40 minutes to give him a snack, to feed myself, and to rest at the trailer. Ice wasn?t too interested in eating, but he ate a little of his beet pulp with some electrolytes in it. I hand-feed him some carrots and apples, but I could tell he was a little tired. Dan had a snack ready for me which was nice.