The realities of having signed up for an endurance ride FINALLY are sinking in and I realized that I needed to do more than dressage flatwork in prep for Don't Fence Me In. With Cortney's change in work schedule, my flexibility and the fact that summer daylight sticks around in the PNW, a park that closes at dusk can be ridden in after work if you leave just a bit early.
Skeptical face, no friends have arrived
I left work early, around 3pm. I had already hooked my truck up to my trailer and driven the full rig to work. This let me head straight to the barn. Thankfully, breeches are technically lab appropriate where I work. And boots are obviously closed toe.
We met up at Lord Hill, in the Tester Rd trailhead at 5:15 and were in the saddle before 6pm. The park technically closes at 9pm. For an endurance rider? That's not even an issue.
The day was still a bit warm in the upper 60s but cooled immediately as we hit the shade of the trees. Tester road lot is ideal in many ways because you start at the bottom of the park and you have to climb if you want to go anywhere. So we started with the hill climb on the gravel road up out of parking which brought us to the rock quarry. From there you have a choice of multiple single tracks, going straight up the pipeline (something I've done once and will never try again). We opted for the switchback to get up to the pipeline.
The 'end' of the pipeline
From there we rode the entire pipeline to its terminus at a road at the park boundary. Then turned around and at the first option to leave the pipeline, we hopped off and took some windy single track until we got to the main trail path that you pop out onto if you park at the top of the park.
That mass of pony tail is gone now, thanks to a hair cut
Since it was warm, we headed down the river trail to let the horses soak in the Snohomish River. There isn't a lot of water on the trail and the little streams we did cross the horses were unwilling to drink out of.
Gwyn immediately plopped herself belly deep in the water and drank and just... sighed happily.
The river was higher than the last time I was down here, which makes sense since it's fed by snow melt and it is that time of year...
This was a sandy beach the last time I was here. But at least it gave me confidence knowing the footing was solid.
Because we had dropped back down to the river, below where we'd been at the start, we climbed back up onto the hill and came up through the quarry. Then it was back up the switch backs to avoid the straight pipeline trail.
Cortney poses with Reign at the top of the straight steep trail.
Sunset view from the "top"
From there we followed the pipeline trail again to its terminus then instead of making a loop, we retraced our steps backwards and all the way down to the trailer.
The sunset was beautiful in the parking lot and we tried to get the mares to pose together for pictures.
Reign is finally coming around to Gwyn. Gwyn does not trust Reign again.
Saturday was the second clinic date with Marc, this time focusing on Speed and Accuracy. I had accidentally double booked myself for Aug 1 but then one of the events (a 30 mile endurance ride) got cancelled. Boo... but I didn't have to choose at least.
I splurged on myself and got some purple cross country Majyk Equipe boots for Gwyn
Happy ears
For this session, we started with just the gallop and being able to regulate the power, influence and balance by shifting our own body in our rider positions (gallop, balance, three point, two point and landing). Usually I consider myself relatively fit but THIS was kicking my butt, literally and figuratively! So I've dug out my Rider Fitness book and I'm gonna buckle down with that. Remembering that I was really riding on my toes last time, between the two clinics and at this clinic, I really pushed myself to sink into my heels when I was starting to feel insecure. It definitely helped. I did not have any of the tipping issues over jumps that I did last time! So progress there!
This face tho... (Bend your GD elbows...) PC: Stephani
The big thing that we focused on was using our body and seat to signal to the horse. So the lower you go, like a jockey, the more stretch and reach you want from your horse while they maintain the same rhythm with better efficiency but while covering more ground. So we practiced galloping around, with the image of our chest touching our pommel and then rising upright to shorten the stride and act as a signal to balance and focus on the line. It was very core intensive!
He talked about how you watch 2 and 3 star horses who don't seem to change their rhythm on the xcountry course, but you can see the stride change coming into and out of a jump. For a lot of this I was really recalling my time as a jump judge at WEG and it was pulling memories up confirming what Marc was describing.
Her pointed nose of concentration... 😆 PC: Stephani
I have a conundrum with Gwyn. When she's fresh and ready to gallop, she doesn't offer a lot of steering control, especially if she's magnetized toward other horses or the trailers, etc. And we had a lot of runaway moments, always to the right, where I'd have her nose at my left knee and she was still moving sideways right in the canter. Damn Goober Mare is too flexible. And at one point, she had locked onto a bank complex instead of making a turn toward a steeplechase brush fence. Marc laughed at that and said "She's learning, but she still needs to listen to you." When she started to get tired she was much more willing to rate and steer at the canter. So now I need to figure out how to merge the stamina of fresh Gwyn to the control of tired Gwyn.
Marc really insisted that in those moments I turn her the direction I intended, otherwise she's learning the wrong thing. Yeah, guilty. I'll accept that. Again, I think I need to go recreate those moments and see what I can do in the moment to fix things. I don't think I had all the tools I could have used ( I didn't carry a bat this time or spurs) but I do want to fix it.
And I have to say, even with the corrections he demanded, I never felt bad, instead, I felt empowered. He's an amazing clinician and so supportive of the riders. He was fair and wanted you to ride correctly and improve. He was never mean or bullying.
Once we'd strung together a couple lines, especially working on letting the horse take simpler questions out of a gallop stride where our position didn't change because we were already ready for the jump being in gallop position, we moved on to accuracy.
For this, Marc set up three jump blocks as a skinny jump. Something low but that had challenge in the narrowness of it. We went over it as three, then he removed it, we went over it as two and then down to one block. The goal was to teach the horse to lock on and treat any object you present as a jump, and he described how if you really drilled it, you could get your horse to jump a traffic cone. That's serious goals!
If the horse didn't quite make it over the blocks, we had to immediately halt and back up to put the horse back on the line. No circling around. Back up. It was as much to teach the horse that, no, I want you to try again with a different answer. Gwyn was the most proficient at backing up of the three mares there 😂 And honestly... was straighter backing up than going forward, a fact that Marc joked about.
... and even succeeded a few times with the single! PC: Stephani
We eventually strung all three skinnies together in an S bending line. It was super challenging but SUPER fun and I want to recreate it at home! I think this is an exercise that could really help us.
Simplified diagram by me
Marc used imagery like keeping the horse on a railroad line made from your legs. What I learned from this is that Gwyn is VERY wiggly between my legs. This was tough!
There was a moment where we made it over the first and she turned and locked onto the second and then we turned again and locked onto the short barrel brush and sliced through it like a dream. It was like I was a teen in pony club again with Clyde where we were fearless and he took care of me over any jump I pointed him at. Everything felt perfect and EVERYONE cheered, even Marc. It was perfect and with all of our steering struggles, we nailed it. Just.... nailed it. I am still riding that high today!
The final skinny was a short barrel top with brush. We sliced this one to avoid the harder one that was in a line right after PC: Stephani
The resting period while we all tackled this gymnastics exercise was enough for Gwyn to recover from her long bouts of galloping and when we strung a longer course together with the gymnastics, her steering went wonky again (and Goober Mare was very much present and wanting to GO)
I had half a mind to take her on some trails because we'd only been riding 90 minutes and only done 4.5 miles of work... she was fit to keep going. She keeps reminding me that she's more fit than I credit her for. And by that, I mean, she took off on me in the moment between her bridle coming off and me getting her halter on. The Shadowood crew helped me catch her and since I still had my helmet on, I tied the leadrope back onto her halter and hopped back on to ride back to the trailers. Of course she was steerable in the halter and leadrope 😒 😆
She got a bath at the newly installed washracks by trailer parking and then I made her hydrate by dumping some timothy cubes in a bucket of water.
Mom, dis bag here has the good stuff. Imma bite it.
All in all, it was a fantastic clinic.
Quick notes for myself:
Shorter stirrups for jumping, this also emphasized after a timely Denny Emerson post on similar topics. My lower leg swings back too much. So shorter stirrups it is
Better fitness for myself to be able to hold an effective rider position in the canter/gallop
Straightness straightness straightness!
Correct in the moment and BACK UP if necessary to reset the horse on the line immediately
Tiny jumps in all the ways to work on accuracy!
Pre and post-electrolyting with powerade/gatorade before the clinic really helped this human. Use that strategy going forward for endurance rides and shows. I did not finish with a sun headache like last time
