Never have I ever been so grateful, elated and generally pleased to finish a 40km. Now I don’t mean to belittle a 40km, it’s a great achievement for very many, it’s still a long way for most, but I had always taken it for granted that we’d get round, we’d be successful and we’d hop onto the next level without a single doubt. That’s because I had an incredible horse, who completed every ride she ever set her hoof to, and I truly didn’t appreciate how incredible that was.
Over the last few years, I have had many an issue, many a doubt and failure. I have never lost sight of where I want to be and how I can get there, but there have been times where my hope has dwindled. The major positive of this, is that I have learnt to appreciate EVERYTHING! Every week of training completed without injury, just getting to the start line of a ride, every km ridden, every crew point, just every single damn thing that goes right, and I truly believe this is a much better mindset than I had before.
I go into competition with the mindset of ‘this is going to go right, we are going to do well’, but I don’t expect the outcome to always go my way anymore, so when it does I get all the feels I would of crossing a 160km finish line for every ride we do!
Roo had one 40km left of his Novice qualifications, we chose a ride I’d never done before due to it’s proximity to the yard. Roo has proven that he can handle tough terrain so I wasn’t worried about tackling something unknown.
The ground was so hard though, and there were moments on course where I thought ‘is this going to be too concussive, will he stand up to this’ but he never faltered. Roo has a very laid back trot, he puts so little effort in it feels like you’re going in slow-motion, his real love and best gait is canter, we’d started to introduce more canter work two weeks before this ride so I let him canter wherever we could, he ended up doing 12km of the ride at canter and we trotted the rest with very little walk.
Although Roo looked tired when we presented to the vet (he always looks like he might fall asleep any second) his recovery at the finish was impressive, we could have presented in under 2mins. But because I want to learn how his HR reacts to certain aspects of crewing, walking, eating, sloshing I wanted to wait longer as an educational exercise for me. So we waited 12mins before presenting with a HR of 41, a typical Roo minimal effort with added dramatic effect big sigh trot up, an average speed of 11.8kph (it was actually 12.9kph but I added 6km onto the route by doing a section twice, oops) and a Grade 1 to upgrade him to Open!!! YAY!
Thank you to all the ride organisers, helpers, vets, farrier and stewards for a lovely ride and relaxed atmosphere. So now we plan our first 80km together, eeeekkkkk!!
Beth Endurance 