IRL June 2015
| July 2, 2015 | Posted by Melinda under Mel's Life, Pregnancy |
I could swear I just did one of these posts, but here we go again. What happened (and didn’t) last month.
MerryLegs
Got ridden in the roundpen 1x. Got a couple of ground sessions. Got vaccinated and wormed. You know, normal young horsey stuff.
New stuff last month: introduced her to the dremmel. She’s not a huge fan, but holding her hoof in my hand and having it on full blast isn’t a problem after our first session. Actually doing a mustang roll with it on her hoof was too much for that first session but I anticipate it won’t be long. I’m hoping to have her used to the dremmel and (cross my fingers) be able to do a little with the grinder so I can minimize the rasping as I get bigger.
This month:
- Get in the saddle a couple times a week.
- Go see her and either groom/groundwork/or just hang out 6-7 days a week.
- Go on a trailer outing.
YMMV Young horse tidbit: For trimming her feet she’s much better if I do it in the roundpen, rather then tying her. I *think* it’s because she’s still working on patience when tied, combined with her not feeling 100% comfortable with being trimmed. Having trimmed her in the roundpen and having her be on level with Farley when it comes to feet handling in that environment, I *think* she likes finding and choosing the right answer of standing in the roundpen, rather then having her choices limited by being tied when doing something she’s not 100% sure about. However depending on her mood sometimes the choice (and consequences) of choosing moving around versus standing isn’t quite in my favor, so I tried something new yesterday. I left the leadrope on her and let it just hang to the ground. It’s Farley’s signal to ground tie – if the leadrope is still on, then the expectation is that she will stay put where ever she is. It’s not that ML *can’t* move around with the leadrope dragging, but I can tell it makes the experience a little more unpleasant and it confuses her…which makes her want to stop. Odds just tipped in my favor of her standing >:). The lead rope also signals to ML that we are doing something where the point is for her to stand. She doesn’t have to watch my every body language signal to determine whether she is being sent out or not – she can be confident that the right answer is to stand and if we move on to other things, I will either remove the leadrope, pick it up, or signal very clearly and directly that I want her to move.
Farley
Before moving to mare camp at the end of the month, Farley got ridden a total of 23 miles last month. 20 of those miles was at Wild West endurance ride. She was off most for the first couple weeks of the month after an end of May conditioning ride where she got rock bruised. Then after Wild West she was off again because of aggrevating the rock bruise.
At mare camp. Farley’s the one in the flymask.
Besides being ridden 2x, she got handled more then usual – assessment and treatment for the rock bruise, hoof trimming and boot gluing (and removing) for the ride, routine vet stuff (vaccination and wormer), and was one of my demonstration horses for a teaching opportunity at a horse camp. She was used for a conformation evaluation, handling during vet exams, worming and vaccination/injection techniques, and what happens during prepurchase exams.
…but Banana suturing was of course the favorite activity of the afternoon.
See you in a month or two Farley!
Rider Fit
Being pregnant is like wearing a 20+ pound weight vest AND it’s a great time to work on the mental and finer points of running a 100 miler.
That is, when I’m not sidelined by bronchitis since I absolutely refuse to run through any sort of respiratory thing that goes beyond just simple seasonal allergies or asthma. Both of of those things have improved during pregnancy. However the cost of that improvement seems to be a hypersensitivity to various “stuff” whether it’s pineapple or some sort of *other* sensitivity. Then instead of some normal sane chronic response like what’s happened most of my life, it goes into overdrive and (lucky me) allows some sort of secondary bacterial bronchitis to set up shop, which takes 14 days and one entire bottle of cough syrup to resolve. It’s happened twice so far and so far I’ve been lucky – I’ve been able to take 2 weeks off from running and still pick it back up again.
I ran 3 times in June for a total of about 11 miles. My last run was June 14th since I made the decision that I didn’t want to injure something leading up to WW and compromise that ride. After WW the dreaded coughing started and I’ve been on forced rest until yesterday (July 1st).
Fortunately I have a job that keeps me moving around and active which seems to be helping both mentally and physically.
What’s in store this month:
- Yesterday I did a long walk with a couple of very short running breaks, and when that went fine, I went on a 3 1/2 mile run this morning that also went well. Plan is to do that long walk, or run every day. I’m at that point in my pregnancy that some days I’m too uncomfortable to run (right now hip pain is my limiting factor) and some days I feel great. By getting out there daily I can take advantage of the days I feel good and not miss them. Overall my guess is that I’ll run an average of 3 days a week and have a nice morning walk with the dog the other days.
- I’m also going to make an effort to hop on the treadmill for some hill hiking work 2x a week.
- There’s an aquatics center a couple miles from my house and they have lap hours so if I get to week 30 and I’m having more bad then good running days I may switch to swimming. (Week 30 falls at the end of July).
- There’s a half marathon the weekend after next in SF that I may try to do. Will just depend on how I feel that morning. I wasn’t kidding yesterday when I said I was going to try and do them as long as no one, including the baby, seems to notice.
YMMV pregnancy running tip: I was being serious with that 100 mile training comment. At this point I seem to have unlimited cardio capacity – my limiting factor is “other” stuff which is true of my non-winning-EVER ultra finishing self. I’m finding pregnancy to be a perfect time to take advantage of my “weight vest” training and practice running exclusively by feel on mental energy that is often less positive then it was on runs pre-pregnancy. And hey, since I don’t have to fit in speed training right now, I can actually fit in sucky things like hill hiking training.
There was about 1000 words after this paragraph that I have decided should be in their own blog post….so if you are curious about that 100 mile running thing, click “next post” :).
