Well, I've come back to earth after the high of watching the WEC, and would just like to comment on a few things:
1. Thank goodness for Ridecamp and endurance.net! There is NOWHERE else on earth that endurance riders can get the information that Steph and John put out there! Well done, guys!!!
2. Thank you Kathy Brunjes! I find it hard to believe that Kathy found the time and energy to continuously update the rest of the world as to her WEC experience..... before, during, and now, after! And she was a rider! This kind of reporting takes a great deal of mental energy, and her reports were timely and informative, with lots of colourful insight that made us feel that we were sharing her experiences. What a top job, Kathy! I took the liberty of forwarding all of Kathy's posts to our Aussie_Endurance list, and everyone here was just as pleased as I was to read her view on the WEC.
3. Thanks also to Merri Melde, who was able to relay information when the links were down due to the storm. Also, Merri must have been a ferret in a past life, as she certainly knows how to ferret out information from other websites around the world and make sure that Ridecamp is kept up-to-date. Not to mention her own photo essays, which I eagerly await every day!
4. Thanks to Becky Hart for also updating us prior to the ride.... again, these posts were forwarded to our local list for perusal. I am astounded that Becky, as Chef d'Equip, found the time to write these posts.
5. I'm not there, so can't really comment on the overall results for the USA team, except to say that I was a bit surprised that the team did not do as well as I had expected them to do. But then again, neither did our Aussie team!! :-( We got 2 out of 6 riders through (18th and 19th placings) and the USA got 2 out of 6 riders through (24th and 25th placings).
6. The total recovery times (TRT) for several horses really have me interested. Kathy's horse had a total recovery time of 57:40, while Valerie's horse had a TRT of 1:21:26. In comparison, the Australian horses had TRTs of 37:59 and 23:51. And the lone New Zealand rider, Andrea Smiths' horse had a TRT of 27:02!
The USA horses were trained for some time in Florida prior to the ride, in order to let them "acclimatise", and then were shipped to Malaysia nearly 3 weeks prior to the race. The Aussie horses didn't have any specific "acclimatisation" prior to departure from here, but were in Malaysia at approximately the same time, coming out of winter here. The New Zealand horse came out of a VERY cold winter in NZ, and also arrived in Malaysia 3 weeks prior to the race. The UAE horses arrived 3 days prior to the race.
The TRTs for the UAE horses were: 20:49, 27:50, 24:54, 25:48 and 20:06 (which was Zakah Zahara, who had the second fastest TRT for the entire race, behind the winner). The TRT for the winning horse, Nobby, was an incredible 13:43. Nobby is also trained in the UAE, and also arrived in Malaysia 3 days prior to the race.
7. All of this tends to make one think about the need to "acclimatise". Is it necessary?
8. And as for the training regime of the horses/riders prior to the race, well that's a whole 'nother kettle of fish!!!
