On June 12, 2015, we celebrated our 16th wedding anniversary. We didn’t go out to dinner or do anything special. Instead, we decided to spend the summer together training for our first horseback distance competition. We chose Vermont’s Green Mountain Horse Association (GMHA) 30-mile AERC Limited Distance ride as our entry into the sport. You can read the blog post from our first competition here or all of our endurance related blog posts.
Since then, all three kids joined us on the trails and we have 3,175 AERC miles as a family on 15 different mounts from 11.2hh to 15.3hh.
Our record includes 108 completions in 115 starts as a family over 11 seasons with all 5 of us having completed at least 1 50-mile endurance ride. In 2024, Quinn became the ride secretary for Pine Tree (a 4-day competition in Fryebrug, ME) Amanda and Anna have set a goal to complete their first 100 mile competition in the summer of 2027.