Tag Archives: endurance training

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Endurance Training and pony pictures

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If you aren’t interested in the endurance training discussion, go ahead and jump to the end for the pony pictures.

First, through the support from her original breeder and others, we now have a registered Part-Shagya Arabian (and a slight correction to her name spelling).  The North American Shagya Association has transferred Mistique Lady’s registration to me!

On Sunday, Anna and I each did our training rides alone.  While we plan to ride our first endurance ride together in October, we need to be ready in case something happens and one horse can’t finish.

So, instead of using my Garmin 310XT to monitor Misti’s heart rate on our training ride, I decided to wear my HRM and see how many calories I burned. I keep a separate HRM/transmitter for my running and biking to make it easier to switch between events.
It was in the upper 70s here in CT and we rode 10.8 miles at a 5.8 mph average, which is a normal training pace for us.
I burned an average of 366 calories per hour.
My average heart rate was 112 bpm for 1:52. In comparison, my average running heart rate is usually around 150 for trail running 4-7 miles.

While 366 calories isn’t a big deal, riding for 5 or 6 hours changes things. Suddenly you have burned 1700-2000 hours during a 30 mile LD. While there are many people who can handle that without a problem, you need to know if YOU can. If you can’t handle that much of a calorie deficit, start eating a little snack every hour on your ride to reduce the deficit. It’s just like training for a human only endurance event. The goal isn’t to take in the same amount of calories you burned, but rather to reduce the deficit.

Figure out what works for you during your training rides, even if they are only an hour or so. That Slim Jim may taste good driving down the road, but the greasy chunks might give you an upset stomach trotting along the trail!

Sunday afternoon, Vicki and Devil joined others from Mystic Pony Club for some jumping lessons in preparation for an upcoming rally.  Here are a few pictures of Vicki and Devil.  She has a bad habit of looking down and right as she goes over the jumps.

When we got home, Anna grabbed a quick cup of coffee and at about 5:45, hit the trails with Dakota for her training ride of the day.  She did about 10.2 miles on pace.  She also had the added bonus of riding in the dark as she made it home about 30 minutes after sunset.  All said, both horses did very well riding solo.

Recently, as I was listening to Vicki get told “Don’t look down when you go over the jumps!” it made me think about trail riding.  Where do you look when trail riding.  I frequently find myself looking at the ground right in front of the horse as we go along.  So, during my ride, I did an experiment.  I deliberately spent a long period of time focusing my eyes 15-20 yards down the trail.  Then, I would shift my eyes to a point only about a horse length out in front.  What I noticed (and expected) was Misti tended to stumble more when I was looking down.  Just like a kid looking down causes a horse to be unbalanced over a jump, looking down on the trails interrupts your horse’s balance.  So, whether you are jumping or just riding on the trails, keep your eyes up!  By the way, it will also reduce the number of missed markers on when you are riding a hunter pace.

In other news, Amanda has been riding Huey a lot more recently.  I think the increase in Vicki’s riding and jumping has peaked Amanda’s interest as well.  As a result, she is working very hard at keeping Huey trotting on her own, working him over ground poles and small cross rails, and even asking to canter.  By next summer, she will be ready to ride at the pony club activities too!

This evening, Amanda saddled up Huey and Vicki got to ride Misti.  Vicki has a crush on my mare and is always asking to ride her.  Of course, Amanda had to sponge down Huey when she was done.  Enjoy the pictures!

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A good day for training

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This morning the weather was wonderful: mid 70s with a light breeze through the forest.  Anna and I took Dakota and Mystique out for some training miles.  One of the absolute best things about our farm is the direct access to Pachaug State Forest.

On Friday evening, we did 6.8 miles.  It was hotter, humid, and the air quality was awful.  Today was amazing in comparison.  We rode 15.3 miles at a 5.8 mph average (2:40 total riding time).  We have been slowly tweaking our tack for what we plan to use at the 30 miler in October.  We recently purchased biothane halter/bridle/rein combos and breast collars for both Dakota and Mystique from The Distance Depot.  I am very pleased with the quality and it is so nice to come back from a ride, hose off the tack, and hang it up to dry.

During today’s ride, both horses walked into some water for a drink on 2 occasions.  Both horses were calm and level headed.  Mystique even had a breakthrough when she was willing to continue trotting and pooping at the same time! It’s the little things that make me happy.  The only problem we had was 1 flat tire (boot that came off Dakota) when Anna decided the horses needed to go faster so they could have fun.  Dakota consistently over-reaches and strips a boot at about 16 mph (Dakota actually peaked at 18 mph and Mystique at 19.2 mph during that section).  Luckily, there was no damage (thanks to a bell boot) and it was a quick fix to resume the ride.

Anna and I both ride with a Garmin 310XT and we have the V-Max heart rate kits that allow us to use the watch to monitor the horses’ heart rates during our training.  Just like for people training for marathons or triathlons, the heart rate data is very valuable to evaluate the conditioning of the horses.  It has been interesting to watch the changes in their average heart rate over the summer.  For example, on June 7th we rode in the WGHA 1st hunter pace for 9.4 miles at a 5.7 mph average.  The weather was similar and Mystique had an average heart rate of 119 bpm.  Today, she did 15.3 miles at a 5.8 mph average with an average heart rate of 102 bpm.  For the same 2 rides, Dakota had an average of 111 bpm in June and 101 bpm today.  That’s a significant improvement in fitness.  And even better, I have no doubt both could have handled another 15 mile loop.  We still have 8 weeks until our first endurance ride, and everything is well on track!

 

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Endurance training has begun

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As some of you may have seen Anna’s Facebook post on Friday, we celebrated our 16th wedding anniversary.  We didn’t go out to dinner or do anything special.  We are saving our celebration for later this year.  Anna and I have decided to ride in a Limited Distance (LD) Endurance race in October.  The one we have chosen is in Vermont and is only 30 miles long.  Others will be doing 50 miles that day, but we want to start out smaller and try it out.  Right now, the plan is Anna will ride Dakota and I will ride Mistique.  I’m pretty sure Dakota is already in good enough condition to handle the distance.

To support our plan, we are working to have at least 1 longer ride each week (typically on Sundays since that is the only day Anna and I are both available).  Since we will be logging a lot more time in the saddle this year, we decided to try out some different trails in Pachaug today.  Anna on Dakota, Alex on Nike, Alexis on Ace, and me on Misti.  We were planning for about 10 miles, but we took a few new trails.  One of the problems is the trails in Pachaug are not really maintained, so we end up riding the gravel road a lot.  That’s rough on the horses and not as much fun.   Unfortunately, the trails we tried out today are not the ones we will be using for regular training.  We hit some trails that were wicked rocky and there was no going faster than a walk.  We also went through a lot of areas where we were hugging the necks of our mounts to avoid having our eyes poked out by the pines branches.  I actually had to get off and walk with Misti for a while it was so bad.

In the end, we covered 11.8 miles and it took 2:53!  It was a significantly slower pace than our hunter pace speed last weekend, but the trail was much more technical.

What we have learned so far in our endurance training:

1.  Dakota can destroy some boots!  We ride all the horses with Easy Care Gloves on their front hooves.  Dakota tends to over-reach with his hind left, step on the neoprene gaiter, and inflict a mortal wound on the boot.  So far, he has proven this ability 3 times this season.  All 3 times occurred on the same hill as his speed exceeded 15 mph.  Something about his canter and over-reaching.  We are going to try him in bell boots to see if that fixes the problem.

2.  It’s time for some endurance style stirrups.  Both Anna and I will be upgrading to wider, padded stirrups to ease the strain on our knees.

3.  Triathlon shorts under riding breeches are much more comfortable than cotton underwear during a 3 hour ride.

4.  We need to do a shorter loop of 5-6 miles and then drop the kids at the house with the sitter keeping Amanda before going back out.  Alex and Alexis did great today, but they were pretty tired by the end.  After Alexis got off, I asked how she felt and she said “My legs are shaking.”

5.  There are no shortcuts in Pachaug.

6.  Both Anna and I need to drop a few pounds and spend some time running/jogging to be in condition to handle the mileage.  Anna is headed off to ice her knees as we type. I’m just going to bed.

Here are a few pictures.  Amanda was waiting for us when we got back and insisted on helping me wash Mistique.

 

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Back in the saddle and hitting the trails

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Now that the weather has improved, we are back in the saddle and riding regularly.  The kids are riding 5-6 times a week.  Considering last year my rides were measured more in “times per month”, the fact that I have ridden 4 times in the last week is a huge increase.

Last week, I took 2 days of leave.  On Thursday, all the kids were at activities, so Anna and I hit the trails with Dakota and Mysti.  I was our first longer ride of the season and we went a little over 6 miles in just under 2 hours.  We definitely were not pushing the pace too hard, because we were testing out a number of new items along the way.

Anna decided she wanted a Garmin GPS watch for tracking her mileage on the trails.  We also decided to buy 2 horse heart rate monitors that interface with our Garmin watches.  It isn’t a big concern, but more of a neat thing to have and see how the horses are doing from a conditioning perspective.  Since my goal with Mysti is to ride some limited distance endurance with her, it will be a nice accessory for training.

We did get plenty of water and Mysti is fine with it now.  The horses both did well, although, I’m not knocked out with the fit of my English saddle on Mysti. I have an Endurance saddle on loan that was used on a 4 mile ride this evening for the first time.  While that fit her much better, I’m not sure I like how it fit me.

Overall, we are off to a good start and will be ready for our first hunter pace in early June.