10 Best Endurance Tips
| August 30, 2016 | Posted by Melinda under Uncategorized |
Ten years ago I brought home my first endurance horse and began to condition for endurance. Eight months later I did my first ride. In celebration of those 10 years I’m going to share my best-est 10 tips on being a better endurance rider.
1. Start with the horse you have. There’s a long ways between here and where you are going and even if you get a different horse to finish the journey, you’ll learn a lot and make a bunch of mistakes that maybe you won’t need to repeat next time.
2. Don’t be afraid to give up on a horse. Not every horse is cut to be an endurance horse.
3. Go ahead and throw your “never ever’s” out the window. Maybe you aren’t barefoot and treeless this year, but that doesn’t mean you won’t be so next year. Seriously. Been there, said those “nevers”, ate my words eventually.
4. There is no perfect anything – no perfect saddle, pad, boot. It’s “good enough” for now and be prepared to have to change it in a season or two.
5. Take lessons. Even if you know how to ride, or have taken lessons in the past.
6. Ride for time, not miles in conditioning
7. Don’t assume because you haven’t had a particular issue or a particular injury that you won’t. Ride enough miles and I can practically guarantee you endurance will keep throwing you weird sh*t.
8. The dirty little secret of endurance riding is that you don’t have to be in good shape or an athlete for your horse to do 50 or even 100 miles. Makes it a lot easier on both you if you are.
9. Stop overriding your horse. It’s better to come to the start line with a horse rested and uninjuried that is and than a tired fit horse.
10. Sound enough for endurance doesn’t necessarily mean 100% sound in all circumstances. The better I get at lameness, the more lameness I see. Horses are no longer sound or lame. It’s a matter of degrees. Sound at a trot in a straight line at a speed picked by the person on the lead line is a starting point. Whether you ask the horse to go 50-100 miles or even on a conditioning ride is a judgement call and one that hasn’t gotten easier over the years – I know more, but I see more. The two balance each other out.
this is a great list! makes me think I should write my own ten. of course, since I agree with you, my list may borrow a bit from yours, although I am still contemplating your #10.
🙂
It took me a long time to figure out what words to use to convey what I meant by number 10. I see more subtleties now. She’s a little stiff, or she’s not quite using her hocks right today. Or at the vet check we see a little something but decide that they trail can sort it out and then we never see it again. Some lamenesses are really obvious and some aren’t so obvious but I can track them down to things that I would not want to ride through. But some lameness I feel like it’s OK to ride them. Either they get better or worse with riding. sometimes the lameness is something a little mechanical, and it’s not going to Cause damage or pain. I don’t think there’s a hard line in the sand for me of and less she’s 100% sound I don’t get on her back. It depends, and it depends on what we’re doing for the day. And I can pick apart pretty much any horses gait and find something nowadays.
Sound enough for endurance is more sound than a lot of disciplines require,but it doesn’t require perfect soundness either.
Sometimes when I go running, my knees and joints etc. don’t feel hundred percent. Most of the time after about a mile I warm up and everything feels great. Occasionally and me or something else just will continue to not feel quite right and I’ll stop my run turn around and go home to write another day. I’ve done this with my horses too. Just because a horse will warm out of a lameness doesn’t mean it’s OK to ride them so I’m not saying to apply that rule to everything which is why this is so hard to talk about , but sometimes for something non specific they just need a mile or two to warm up before everything is working well (and yes I’ve aborted rides early when it hasn’t)
Another thing to consider – many horses we pass on a straight line in endurance show lameness when trotted in a circle. Yet many of those horses complete ride after ride. However those horses would fall Into the category of not completely sound.
Gotcha. For myself, I’ve kept Fiddle out of action all year because she is “not quite sound.” Yes, sound enough to pass the in-vet, and *probably* sound enough to pass the finish line of an LD. But definitely a bit wonky on a circle…which, to me, means, “wait another 6 months.” I’m not ready to retire her, but I’m invested enough in trying to heal up whatever mysterious thing she did back in January that I’m willing to throw more time at it.
Also, for me: if I’m worrying that I’m going to make an injury worse by overwork, I won’t have any fun. And since “have fun” was the #10 thing on MY list of tips, I’m taking my own advice! 🙂
You also have something specific you are treating right? A stifle injury? I would not ride Farley if I thought her previously bowed tendon was reinjuired not matter how slight the lameness was. Same with stifles. So I’m firmly in your camp there!!
I love this. Is it okay if I link to this list in my own riding blog?
Sure
[…] got through the ride based on my running fitness which once again proves that #8 really is […]
Can you expound a bit more on your rule about riding for time, not mileage? It seems a bit counterintuitive to me, but You’ve mentioned it multiple times.
It comes from a running training principle where it’s not necessarily the miles you run that determines how far you can go, but the number of hours on your feet. for long distance you aren’t taxing the limits of the cardio system since all the work is aerobic. Going a pt a sub aerobic pace for a long time is what you are training for. Whether that pace is 5mph or 7 or 8 mph doesn’t matter much to the cardio system as long as those paces are all sub aerobic. What is going to be limiting is the muscle fatigue from being out there, and the mental fatigue from keeping going and decision making.
It is my personal experience that time in the saddle while training for endurance is very similar to the time on the feet principle for running. How many HOURS we were out has a much better impact than number of miles. If you are training by time and not distance and focus on the principles of never tarry and never hurry than you will ride your training rides at a pace appropriate for terrain. What I see more often is people focused on distance – I’m going to ride 20 miles – while at the same time setting a pace requirement – in a 6 mph pace or better. Then, when things don’t go to plan they are pushing across terrain on a conditioning ride to make time and dramatically increase injury risk. Combining time and distance increases stress as well.
I do not combine goal pace and distance unless I’m at a ride. In conditioning I may do one or another but not combine. a long ride is a long ride that is done at an easy pace. A shorter ride where we work on pacing is separate from the long run. I build elements of training and on ride day combine them.
Having ridden 50s anywhere from really fast to just beating cut offs I can say without a doubt that the faster fifties left me and my horse feeling much fresher. Hours, not just miles in the trail make a difference, and I think that training for time offers mental benefits, injury protection, and still prepare me for a ride effort while staying further away from the “overridden” line between fitness and overtraining.
Thank you!!
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