Preparing endurance horses for competition
The last few weeks have been a blur of activity; training for both horses, plans, changing plans and logistics.
After a nerve-racking few days when Chiara had a cut leg which became infected, we finally made it to the planned 2* outing in King’s Forest in Suffolk. I was still a little concerned about her leg when we arrived as it was still a little puffy although she didn’t seem to notice it. We walked her around a fair bit before the pre-ride vetting and the leg looked much better and the vetting proceeded smoothly with Chiara doing an active, if slightly inaccurate trot up weaving amongst the flower boxes.
The following day we set off as quietly as we could near the back of the pack, trying to get sufficient space to settle Chiara (it would be a long day after all so no point going out up front). Settling still took some time until the horses became more strung out and we got into the ‘groove’.
Our most problematic thing with Chiara is the vetgate. I had a top crew who tried several different approaches when attempting to get her pulse below 65 bpm quickly. She really is not easy in this respect as she still hasn’t learned to switch off and relax when she stops moving; in fact she really doesn’t want to stop moving. This not only impacts on the speed her heart rate comes down, but also makes the crews’ life very difficult trying to untack and cool her. She refused to drink at the first two vetgates and, indeed, out on course and wouldn’t eat more than the odd snatched mouthful. Thankfully the drinking improved considerably a little later into the race but this is something that has to be worked on as she really needs to drink earlier.
Out on course things probably couldn’t have gone any better. Chiara just bowled along in a nice steady rhythm alternating between trot and canter. She didn’t feel hemmed in at all and kept up a good constant speed the whole way round.
Our final vetgate was the most efficient with the presentation time being the best of the day although it enabled a couple of horses to pass us and set out on the last loop before us. However, Chiara cruised past these horses without needing to up her speed and finished comfortably in third place with a successful final vetting. That’s our 2* qualifications completed and our next goal is to successfully complete a 3* for qualification for the Europeans this year.
Chiara had three weeks rest following her race and my attention then turned to Fantom. It was time to ramp up his training so that he is on target for his 3* attempt in the middle of June. One thing I felt he really needed was some steady distance training. What better way of achieving this than doing a 64km graded ride at a local endurance event. We prepared, sorted out the kit, bathed Fantom who as usual was extremely dirty, and were pretty much ready to go. However the Jeep had other ideas and made some strange noises refusing to start. Needless to say it had to be taken away on a truck to be mended so there was no ride for us.
I now had to come up with an alternative way of accomplishing this type of training. To this end Fantom and I embarked on a mini expedition to ‘explore’ along our coast stopping off at a couple of beaches and cantering over areas of dunes and common land. In all we were out for about 4 hours and covered over 35km, albeit rather slowly.
I now have both horses in full work meaning that they each have to do three full training sessions per week with a couple of schooling sessions. This all takes a lot of time for me but I am now lucky enough to have found an endurance rider to help me. We can take the horses out together with the added advantage that they have training partners and seem to enjoy their work more. Fantom appears to be a little behind Chiara in his level of cardio fitness although I believe his stamina is right up there. He has an extra two weeks so, fingers crossed, should be ready in time!