Conditioning Ride 11-24-2011

HR 47

Distance: 12.3 miles

Avg Spd: 4.5mph

Total Time: 2 hours, 56 minutes

HRR 70

HR 1 Min: 64

HR 5 Min: 50

I decided to get in a ride on Thanksgiving morning before we headed over to my sister's house for dinner. For this ride we headed on up to Horsethief Canyon. I didn't take the boys along, as Mac had developed a mystery left front lameness. It was obvious his left lateral toe was abducting out away from his foot and he wouldn't use the toe properly. He would go pretty fine for a while, then suddenly be three legged lame, carrying the paw and hopping on the other front foot.

So it was just me and Hoss. I booted him up for the ride, the Gloves on the front and the Renegades behind. The size 1 Renegades had completely worn through at the toe and most of the tread was gone after Lead Follow, so I was worried Renegades wouldn't work for him. I had entered the raffle for another pair at the ride, and won a pair. I sent the ones I got – another pair of size 1s – and asked for size 2s to replace them. In the meantime, the nearly done in 1s would have to do.

I came across a problem while I was booting Hoss up. One of his brushing boots – which I had bought at Moab because he was tearing up his fetlocks with the boots on his hinds – was missing. I dug around a bit for it, but it never appeared.

My plan was to get as far up the Secret Canyon trail as I could, see how much of it I could find. So we saddled up, fiddled the HRM into working, and headed on down the trail.

When we reached the road where we'd turned left the last time, we turned right. Much of the road is too rocky or steep to trot on, so this was a slower than average ride. We continued down the road until we came to a "T" intersection. We had the choice to turn to the left, or to the right. There was no signage to give me any clue as to which way was "right," so I just decided we'd go to the right and turn around once we'd hit around six miles.

We were able to get quite a bit of trotting in. It was clear the road is more often used by off road vehicles, though there was evidence of at least one horse having recently used it. Lots of beautiful scenery. I was able to get some pretty nice pictures.

We made our way down the trail to the seasonal creek. The pond was very full. It has to be crossed to continue on the trail.

We hit the six mile mark at a wide turn in the road. There's a gate which appears to go to private property, and the road continues on after a hard left. We could have continued on, but it was time to turn back so I could make Thanksgiving dinner at my sister's house. We trotted what we could, walked what we had to. I got some nice shots on our way back, too. The area is simply gorgeous. I'm going to have to find a day to truly explore the area. And I'm gonna need to find a partner to do it with. It's more fun with a friend riding along as well.

When we got back to the trailer, I watched Hoss's heart rate come down nicely. Within a very few minutes he was under 56. I did notice the Renegade boots, while I had heard him hit himself with them, did not do any damage to his fetlocks despite the lack of brushing boots. Since he'd been having swelling problems, I took pictures of his hind legs from all angles. Of course, this turned out to be unnecessary, the reason for which will become clear in future posts.

We loaded up and got home in plenty of time to make it to my sister's house. My poor husband was suffering terribly from food poisoning and was unable to enjoy the dinner, but my dear brother in law gave him a huge "care package" of leftovers. At least my husband was able to enjoy the Thanksgiving meal, even if a day later.




Hoss's hind legs did swell up the day after this ride, and I decided I needed to take him to see the vet. While the swelling goes down with exercise, I felt I need to have an explanation for endurance vets. Since we were planning to do the Death Valley (Coso Junction) Warmup ride, and do both days, I needed to have a good explanation and diagnosis.