Juniblest and I have been visiting our friends Anna (human) and Rosie (horse) in Bournemouth for a week before we ended the holiday with a 20k endurance ride at Frogham in New Forest on September 24th. We had a great time!
Before the ride I had a theory that Juniblest saves a lot more energy cantering than trotting (some endurance horses prefer canter, some prefer trot) so I let him canter a lot more than I've done on earlier rides. The reason I believed this was that he very often slips into a canter when I want him to trot faster and I thought a little experimenting couldn't harm. I'm not sure if it was the cantering or the hot weather, but by the time we went to the vetting his pulse was 51 beats per minute - which is 5 beats more than what he's had on earlier rides.
You would think that this was because we did the ride faster than what we've done in the past, but actually we did the whole ride almost 1km/h slower than 'normal' (so far we've done four rides in total so I'm not sure if we have a 'normal' yet =p).
But hey, we had a great ride and I'm very much inspired to do some more experimenting on his pulse and paces!
Another thing that made me really happy about this ride was that the vast majority of the horses we met out on the tracks were barefoot. Me and Anna were the only ones using hoof boots and these other horses were doing longer distances. One of them even did 80k on a regular basis! So basically, the whole 'you have to shoe your horse if you want to ride it'-thing is very much a myth.. The professional endurance riders will do whatever it takes to do well and if they choose to keep their horses barefoot I'd say that's sufficient evidence that 'simple is often best' ;)
Anyway! Pictures:
All buckled up and ready to go
Anna has a camera in the van =)
Just arrived. Juniblest is looking at the venue while we run around and get paperwork sorted
Getting ready..
Two knackered amigos after the ride (my camera is rather big and bulky so I have no pictures from the ride itself..)
Vetting
