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[RC] [RC] trot/canter/condish - Dream WeaverWould some of you like to describe a typical week as you get ready for Hi Diane -- it's hard to say without actually going out for a ride with you :). All horses are different. What I do now with my horses is going to be vastly different than what you need to do with your horse, and it'll vary because of the climates and terrain that we both live in too. My horses are all fairly fit right now, so they are just being ridden for fun with friends two or three times a week when the weather allows and I'm not away at a ride that week/weekend. When I am getting a horse started, I generally start slowly (example - 4 mile walk/ride) and build up from there. I have used stuff like GPS and heart monitors over the years to help verify my mileage and speed and how the horses are doing. I've also done a lot of riding without that stuff, and don't really need it any longer. I have one 12 mile loop that when the horses start out going on, they take about 3 or 3 1/2 hours to get thru. I can also do that loop in under an hour on one of my horses. Over the course of many months I go faster and faster with the young ones so that they go from the longest time of 3 1/2 hours to doing it in 2:45, then 2 hours, but it takes me months and months to do that because in the meantime I am also doing other rides of various lengths and working on other things, like pushing their HR's over 200. I start them going at a trot trying to keep their HR up above 100 for 10 minutes at a time, then I add on to that, a couple of minutes at a time over several weeks, and then a year from now they will be trotting at 30 to 40 minute intervals with their rates up like that. Same goes for incorporating cantering into the program, we start out slowly, maybe even just a couple of minutes of cantering at a time. Just keep in mind when you are doing an endurance ride, not to do anything that you haven't done at home in training. Such as trotting downhill, or thru deep sand -- even if you've been thru deep sand at a walk, or have trotted it thru 1/8 of a mile, don't trot thru it for a half a mile on a ride. Same for speed, boy it is sooo easy to not realize that you are going two or three or more mph than you normally do because the horse feels so good, and you are just riding with your friends! Sorry I couldn't give you any better answers to your questions than that. Karen in NV =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= Ridecamp is a service of Endurance Net, http://www.endurance.net. Information, Policy, Disclaimer: http://www.endurance.net/Ridecamp Subscribe/Unsubscribe http://www.endurance.net/ridecamp/logon.asp Ride Long and Ride Safe!! =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
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