Conditioning Ride 12-17-2010

HR: 36

HR Return: 68

HR 10 min: 48

Miles: 7.9

Moving Average: 5.1mph

Time: 1 hour, 33 minutes

We went for another quick spin around Hollenbeck for this ride. Seems Hollenbeck is the only place I have enough time to get to these days. I really hate the shorter days! I'll be very happy when the days start getting longer again.

At any rate, I once again had somewhere else to be, so had to make it a quick ride. Since I want Hoss to have ten days or so off before the start of Death Valley, this was also the last day I had to get a ride in.

We did the ride at a pretty good clip, but not too fast. Slower, really, than the last several rides we've done at Hollenbeck. I was working on my new leg lesson thingy. I have to think, "thigh, calf, thigh, calf," as I go along in the trot. This is relatively easy, although my mind will wander as I think about where we're going to go or whatever is playing on my iPod. Well, at the walk, I really need to think, "this thigh and that calf, this thigh and that calf," doing opposites. Not so easy. I can think "this thigh, that thigh," or "this calf, that calf," but not about opposite structures. Much harder. And I discovered that I really didn't get the canter part down as much as I'd have liked, which I had suspected.

Hoss doesn't exactly do his best to tell me I'm doing things right when he's amped up for a trail ride, either. And on this particular ride, he seemed extra amped up. He was acting like he was utterly convinced there was something gonna get him. What's supposed to happen when I do my riding right is he's supposed to lower his head. I'd get him to drop his head for a stride, maybe two, but he'd immediately pop it back up, staring off into the distance. I know I was still doing it right. It's really nice, though, when I actually get the feedback from him!

About halfway through our canter down the long flat, a pair of bicyclists was cruising toward us. Hoss acted like it was the scariest, most horriblest thing he'd ever seen! I got him slowed down and mocked him roundly for behaving that way. I needed to really work on getting what Beth had tried to teach me, so I got him back up to the canter and concentrated on what I was doing.

It feels good to trust Hoss enough to really concentrate on what I'm doing and not feel like I need to be spending a whole lot of energy on what he's doing. In fact, at some points I was draping the reins over my saddle bag and strictly using my legs and seat. It was good practice. At some points I had to pick up the reins and correct him when he just didn't want anything to do with what I was telling him. That happened when we reached a turn where going the way I wanted to go was longer than the other way.

When we got back to the trailer, Hoss was staring hard at something I couldn't see. I wasn't even convinced it was there. He was so spun up about it that when I initially took his heart rate, he was at 80bpm. I didn't believe that was true as a measure of what was going on strictly due to exercise, so I redirected him got his attention focused back on me, and tried again. This time I got 68, which I believed. After I'd untacked and we were waiting the remaining time until I checked his heart rate again, the bicyclists arrived, as well as two people with a tracking dog. Okay, so maybe he had heard/seen them and was freaked out about them. Not that he should have been!