Tag Archives: Rusty Red Waggin’

dog, health

The Border Patrol Challenge 2024

2 Comments

Friday, I skipped out of work a little early to run 13 miles on the Arcadia Trail with Rusty and my friend Ian. It was 25F and icy. The trail took us 3.5 hours to complete and we finished about 45 min after sunset. While it sounds a bit stupid, we didn’t have a choice; we are in the Border Patrol Challenge and had to get it done.

The Border Patrol Challenge is an annual running challenge that highlights various trails along the CT/RI state line. The BPC began on the Winter Solstice (Thursday, December 21 2023 at 10:27 PM EST) and ends on the Spring Equinox (Tuesday, March 19 at 11:06 PM EST). There are 20 total trails range from 1.9 miles to 26.5 miles. The total of all 20 trails is about 164 miles and 99 people signed up this year.

The way it works is, you download the gpx file for the route and go run the designated courses whenever you want within the 3 month Winter season. Once complete, you upload a link to your own file (Garmin, Strava, etc.) and your time gets ranked amongst those who have completed the course. Each course has a technical difficulty rating that combines with the distance to create an overall multiple. Using some hidden math formulas, points accumulate for each runner as they complete my courses. But the rankings are constantly changing as more people complete the courses.

I participated last year, however, I got sick multiple times and wasn’t able to make as much progress as I hoped. I love this challenge because it pushes me to try a different local trails I probably wouldn’t otherwise experience. It also creates motivation to push myself through the winter season.

My goal for this year is to complete all 20 courses; so far I have made it through 10 of them in the first month, so I’m definitely on track. The fact that days are getting longer helps. The warmer temperatures that are coming again this week are also beneficial. Considering that I was coming off no running as my ribs healed, I have been very pleased with my progress so far and I have laid out some running goals for 2024:

  1. Complete all 20 Border Patrol Challenge Trails
  2. Complete the Traprock 50k trail race in April
  3. Run at least 1000 miles in 2024
  4. Run the Twisted Branch 100k in August

Rusty loves to run with me and has completed all 10 of the trails so far. The 3.5 hours on snow and ice did a number of his paws, so he is going to be limited to shorter runs whenever we have the ground covered. If everything thaws, he can probably do all but the 26 miler. Here is a photo from another trail we recently completed that passes by this marker at the corner of MA, RI, and CT.

hunting

Fall hunting!

Leave a comment

Fall is my favorite season and November is my favorite month of the year. While I don’t love the earlier nights, the cool weather and changing leaves make spending time outside awesome! Anna gets mad because riding horses takes a back seat to hunting. Today was about as good as it can get.

I didn’t have to drive any kids to school this morning (election day) and temps dropped into the 30s last night. I headed out into Pachaug State Forest from our house and was in my spot in under 10 minutes. I had been in place for all of 3 minutes when I heard deer moving towards me through a creek. I took the shot with my crossbow the minute shooting was legal and recovered the 7pt, ~180lb buck 30 minutes later. Not bad for my first deer hunt of the season.

Since the hunt was so short, I decided that I would do a little work for the day, but I couldn’t resist another hunt in the afternoon. This time, I decided to take Rusty over to some state forest where pheasants are stocked. It was a great afternoon for a walk and Rusty did his job finding some nice birds.

Life is too short to spend every day in the office!

endurance, horse, kids

They Grow Up So Fast

Leave a comment

I’ve been at endurance rides where I see parents putting their young kids on these full size horses and hitting the trail. We have always stepped the kids up through various size ponies until they graduated to full horses as teenagers. Until Amanda. She is the 3rd child, so rules tend to go out the window.
Amanda has been spending time riding Mojo on short 2-3 mile trail rides with Anna. She rides Mojo in the arena at the walk, trot, and canter. But she wanted to give Teddy a try. So, this evening, I was planning to go out for a training ride with Mojo and I decided to let Amanda join me on Teddy. Of course, Rusty went too. It was her first time riding Teddy on the trails and she loved it. Teddy was a rock star.

  • Snack break for the horses
  • All smiles
  • open road – time to go fast
  • convincing Teddy to enter the creek
  • Waiting to see if Teddy will drink
  • Rusty checking in

We did 11 miles with lots of trotting. Of course, when we hit the nice open flat road, Amanda was begging to let them run, so we did. At one point, I looked down at my Garmin to see Mojo and I were moving 17.8 mph and Amanda and Teddy were passing me. Post workout analysis reveals we exceeded 24 mph this afternoon. Not bad for a 10 year old girl on an Arab.

As we rode, I kept thinking “So this is what it’s like to trust a horse.” Teddy isn’t perfect, but he takes care of Alex and now it seems he takes care of Amanda. Maybe Teddy will be Amanda’s next endurance mount (Huey isn’t done yet). They grow up so fast; the kids do too.

dog, Uncategorized

Rusty Red Waggin’

1 Comment

Our new Brittany puppy, Rusty Red Waggin’ came home yesterday night.  He has had a busy first day meeting Mack and Turbo.  It was a rainy day, but finally cleared up enough this afternoon that they could run around outside for a while.  Mack was happy to have another dog in the family.  Turbo was more skeptical, but finally decided it was ok.

Today is also Vicki’s 12th birthday.  As usual, she demanded to bale her own cake.  Anna bought her a new cake pan that is a 3-D cupcake.  It is baked as 2 cakes and then assembled and decorated.  She made a unicorn cupcake, complete with fondant ears and horn.