What to do next?

Estrid has had her mid-season break after achieving our 2023 goal of completing her Novice qualifications and upgrading to open, so now I am wondering what to do next. She is not psychologically ready for vet gates, although she has improved tenfold on her anxiety and shakes at venues her heart rate still hovers around the 50’s and spikes into the 90’s as soon as she’s spotted anything. But physically she hasn’t found 40km an issue at all.

Everyone is different and there is no ‘best’ way to go about progressing through the levels in Endurance but my ethos is minimum competitive mileage. For me this means I only do the required 3x 40km. I don’t think Estrid needs lots of 50-64km rides to get used to venues so I don’t feel the need to do them, I also have experience as a rider of doing the longer distances, if I was starting from scratch I would definitely progress through each distance but I feel that I am comfortable with the jump from 40 to 80km. Though I do see the advantage of steadily increasing the distance by using incremental rides and I may even do a 64km next year (a distance I rarely consider). I still don’t want to put unnecessary competitive mileage on Estrid and also it’s an extra cost that doesn’t get me any qualifications.

Instead, I will be taking Estrid to lots of Pleasure rides for venue experience and I’ve booked cross-country course hire and groundwork clinics to add to that. However, Estrid does need two rides to progress to advanced, which we have an opportunity to do in September. (EDIT: I misunderstood the rules on the website, a two day 80km does not count towards advanced qualification). I love two day rides, they offer a different challenge and it’s a nice way of doing a longer distance. Well within Estrid’s capability fitness wise and with 11 weeks to prepare, plenty of time to tweak her training schedule to train for it.