Endurance.Net Ridecamp Archives

Christina asked:

"       That is how I feel about it, and why I get so confused when I see
all the heated debates about ld.  Why all the fuss and fighting?"

Fuss and fight is what tends to happen on internet mailing lists, and this
is one of the most argumentative bunches I've ever seen close to 20 years of
participating in such things on the Internet and bulletin boards before
that. Don't let that discourage you - we seem to leave it here, and you
won't usually see that in a real-world ridecamp.

So why do we fuss and fight about this? A lot of it is history that I've
learned courtesy of Heidi Smith - and I could be getting bits of this wrong,
in which case I'm sure someone will correct me. In the early days of the
sport, there was no such thing as limited distance. They also didn't have
much for veterinary controls, and people did ride horses to death, from what
I'm told especially so in the shorter distances. This obviously put a bad
taste in everyone's mouth. If I'm remembering the history correctly, the
original rules only allowed for distances 50 miles and up. Shorter rides
were often held in conjunction with the 50+ mile rides, but weren't
sanctioned. Somewhere along the line, the shorter rides were brought into
the rules, sanctioned and regulated. Apparently, this was an extremely
contentious decision, and it seems a few people are grumpy about it even
now.

At the time, the LD rides were regarded as being "only training rides", so
why even bother keeping track of time, except to see if someone went
overtime. A minority of RM's even today don't report times or winners of LD
rides, and there's a few others that won't hold LD rides. I just took a look
at this, and it's a small minority, primarily in the Western region. In
every region other than the West and Pacific South, all the active RMs I can
find report ride times (though there's some who do sometimes and not others
- I don't know why). In the PS region, there's only one I can find that
consistently won't report ride times, and in the West, it's about 1/4 of all
RMs. Very recently, the AERC BOD voted to enforce the rule that RMs have to
report ride times for all distances, so hopefully this practice will end.

The next battleground is whether a best condition award is available for LD
riders consistently. The argument against this is that it would encourage
racing (see next paragraph). The argument for is that it rewards riders who
take care of their horses and ride within their capabilities. It's also a
learning experience. It's pretty humbling to come zooming into the finish
way up front, stand for BC, and then find out that your horse was in least
best condition. Tells you that you did something wrong. Another good
argument is fairness - there are regional limited distance BC awards given
by the AERC, and I think riders deserve the same shot at the award no matter
where they happen to ride.

Some people think it is perfectly fine to race as long as you're going 50+
miles, and very much not OK to race if you're only going 25 or 30 miles. To
be fair, there's some good reasons for this - if you just let your horse run
away with you for 25 miles, you would likely hurt the horse if you did that
on a 50. But assuming your horse is fit, and you're in control, I don't see
any problem with going as fast as you like (as long as you don't lame the
horse). The bit about "training ride" seems elitist to me, and not a very
nice way to welcome new people to the sport - though some other countries do
it this way - Australia is one.

For example, I once posted to this list how I was happy that I came in a
close 2nd for BC on an LD ride. Boy did I need asbestos undies that day - I
had people ripping me a new one left and right about how I shouldn't be
'racing' an LD. Of course they didn't bother to check and see that I came in
10th with a ride time of about 4 hours in a 25, which is hardly racing at
all.

One of the other perennial issues that comes up is the 'real endurance' vs.
'only a LD rider'. Due to the history, the phrase 'endurance ride' is
defined as 50+ miles, but we're all members of the American Endurance Ride
Conference, so go figure. The argument here is that there's something
mystical about 50 miles, and you miraculously get so much smarter once
you've done a 50 that it qualifies you to change your title. 

I think that's a bunch of hooey. 50's just aren't all that hard. They've got
almost exactly the same completion rate as LDs. If you ask me, the 'real'
endurance riders are the people out there doing 75's, 100's, and multidays.
THOSE are HARD. The people doing 50's lording it over the people doing 25's
are the same as the Star-bellied Sneeches vs. the Plain-bellied Sneeches.
They're all just a bunch of Sneeches. I'm also kind of cranky about titles -
last title I got took 7 years to complete (Ph.D.), so I'm suspicious of
titles that can be accomplished in a few weeks. If we were going to do
titles, I'd do it similar to Bridge - the more experience you get, the
better your title. 1000 miles of 50+ mile rides means something, 10,000
miles means quite a lot, but one ride?

I think the only difference between LD and regular endurance we don't argue
about is that LD's require pulse down to finish. Seems to make sense that
this is safer for the horse, and the riders, too.

So I hope that answers your question, and doesn't create the most horrible
flamewar ridecamp has ever seen. I think I've touched on nearly every hot
button we have on the list except for helmets, barefoot horses and loose
dogs in camp.

And BTW, I really like Jeanie's attitude, too.



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