Learning Endurance & other stuff

Tigger’s next ride after our shortened NI outing was 40km at Waitomo.  This was always another well supported, well enjoyed course.  Kerry rode him, I can’t remember why… perhaps Bill was sick, perhaps I had something else on?  A pretty quick run for that course so he must have been feeling just fine and fully recovered.

So on to a one star at Waikato’s Orakei Korako course.  By now we were in the middle of a drought, the grass was brown.  There was no grass to be had on base except a few nibbles here and there, everybody had been told to bring extra feed.  No water problems this time thank goodness! 

Only three weeks out from the Nationals the main aim was to get around safely, just complete a final run as build up for the next 160 attempt. 

Tigger and I were riding on the second day.  On the first day there were problems with the course, I don’t remember the details now but Tigger and I headed off with a GPS to measure a piece of the track.  Less than one                        

 kilometre from base was a stream, and it was a very pretty, bubbly stream…

At least you might think so, Tigger?  Not so much!  If you remember back to chapter 36, Tigger had an unfortunate experience with his very first major stream crossing, and since then has always had a tendency to get alarmed at the sound of running water.  Being on your own, going away from base and being able to hear the water long before you could see it, it was never going to be good. We had quite a battle and did not even manage to get within 20m of the water!  To add to that it was a tricky entrance, down a narrow, steepish, muddy step, so it was time to take alternative action – not to mention we were supposed to be measuring the course, not spinning around in little circles!  My boots ended up getting wet, I was NOT HAPPY!  But at least it was a hot day.  

Not long after that we came across two puppies!  Pretty much in the middle of nowhere.  There was a house up on the hill, but it was a long way for such small puppies.  Another pause while I thought about what to do, there was no way I could carry two puppies on Tigger, even one puppy would be a big ask of him on a good day, and today was not a good day!  I decided that it would be best to continue on and hope the puppies got themselves back to where they belonged, as we were right next to the road at this stage it should be easy enough to come back and check later. So Tigger and I cantered to get away from being followed and continued on.  I did hear a puppy crying out shortly after I left and assumed it had got a shock off the fence and would hopefully be running homeward.  I then managed to bully Tigs through the next stream crossing relatively easily – followed by copious praise and lots of “Brave Tigger!”  Not the simple relaxed, course measuring ride I had anticipated!

Of course nearly as soon as I got back to base a rider came in having done that part of the course the correct direction (I had ridden it backwards) carrying a puppy!  “Where is the other one?” “There was only one”, “Um, no there were two”.  So a couple of us found a carto borrow and went back to the place I had last seen the two puppies together.  It was a piece of the course that went around the end of a steep gulley, very deep and filled with gorse for all but the end 20m or so.  I noticed that the fences were not electric, so that had not been what I heard, something else had happened to that puppy after I left.  We searched up and down, calling, no puppy.  Back to the gulley, did that shadow move?  No.  Wait did it?  Yes, I think that’s a black puppy!  But the sides of the gulley were nearly vertical and just sand, we certainly couldn’t do anything about it at this stage.  There was shade and a trickle of water though, puppy would be ok, so back to base. 

I rang my brother in Waitomo, he’s a caver and knows all about abseiling and I thought he might know a suitable person in the area, good idea but nothing easily arranged.  The vets were determined however, and as it was an FEI ride both days as well as CEN there were plenty of vets around, some doing one day and not the other but all had arrived and none had left, we had a surplus of vets.  So off they headed with as much rope as they could gather.  And they returned shortly later with the puppy, one intrepid vet had managed to scramble down, send the puppy up in some sort of sling (I guess) and then manage to get back out himself!  The puppy had been fully examined and proclaimed none the worse for wear, just tired and sore.  The owners were located easily enough – just away for the day – but as one of the junior riders had taken a shine to the puppies we got to keep them on base for the rest of the weekend.  A horse trailer doubling as a kennel!

Tigs did well and ended up qualifying (with many others) for the Best Conditioned.   There had been a bit of drama as I was heading out on one loop though, cantering out as you do and suddenly one rein came off!  I guess it must not have got clipped on properly, luckily I managed to stop him by leaning forward and grabbing the cheek piece and quickly called out to Lisa who happened to be at a nearby truck, right next to the course. Perhaps it was outside assistance but definitely required and for health and safety reasons!

I was riding Tigger that day in a different bit and an actual leather bridle (!) and at the final vetting we managed not to have his halter there – being used to endurance style bridles where the halter is part of the bridle and thus not used to taking one the the strapping area – so had to borrow Daryl’s rainbow one.  Kerry was not impressed, in fact photos were forbidden!  But you see we don’t always do as we’re told!  Tigger’s not looking that chuffed about it either!

So all in all quite a memorable event! 

Next stop the Nationals and another 160 attempt for Tigger.

It is December so this is Kuratau, 100km.   There are always those rides that are on the calendar every year and this one was quickly becoming one of our favourites.  It was a new base this year, now we’re kind of getting used to the fact that there is so much awesome land out there and that the base changes quite often giving us access to yet more great country, but this was the first shift.  The paddock was lumpy to drive over, there were pylons overhead that were doing weird things to electric fences and heart rate monitors, but the course was still great.

So Emma and I head out down the road on our pre-ride wander the evening before, as you do, Tigger was pretty good, only mildly dumb and over-reactive.  And so I got to idly thinking about why it is that they’ll shy violently at one particular patch of grass that, to us, appears identical to every other patch of grass.  You know the one, you’ve been riding through a pine forest all day and they suddenly put in a massive shy at a log!??? WTF!  So I put my hypothesis to Emma, perhaps there’s a mouse in that bit of grass and they can hear it but we can’t?  One of those days, great amusement for some time.  Emma was skeptical about the random presence of mice in the middle of grassy paddocks, however we have since done research and have both observed mice not only in paddocks but also in paddocks in the rain!  Much texting, hypothesis still valid! However about a year ago when I was riding Tigger down the road there was a very clear squeak as we trotted along – he had actually trodden on a mouse!  And he was totally unfazed by it, yes mice are out there, but Tigger doesn’t care about them! Hypothesis disproved.

So on to the ride – we had a plan, we were going to aim for 17km/hr.  Mark also had a plan, to win the ride – we didn’t actually discuss this with him, but it became pretty clear as the day progressed.  For some reason known only to Tigger he had developed a dislike to the part of the course approaching the finish and so every loop for the last few hundred metres would shy at every clump of grass after being pretty good for everything else, he really is a bit special!  It was a lovely day, Emma and I were out there doing lots of cantering on the beautiful, golf course-like grassy paddocks that are such a part of Kuratau, sometimes catching up with Mark but mostly just doing our own thing, chatting away and waving to a buyer from Australia as he stalked us when we were next to the road.  We stuck religiously to our plan, 17km/h would win us the ride or it wouldn’t, that was not important.  Mark won and we did our speed and everyone was happy.

So now we were training for the North Island Champs.  Because Tigger had been at Armstrong’s place for nearly a year it was decided to leave him there for the rest of the season.  This meant I was in the weird situation of just turning up to ride.  Very convenient at times but in general I do prefer to do more myself, there was absolutely nothing wrong in any way, just different and not what I was used to.  Kerry was still doing some of the training and so there seemed little point in recording only some of his work so I have no training data for that period, my data obsession was suffering!

Waikato was running the NIs this season, and we were lucky enough to have the Kuratau course.  This meant I was in charge of the results and vet-gate, but of course now we had Mary running things in the caravan, so it would be a lot easier.  This was her first championship level ride though, so her first 160 – there’s nothing to really prepare you for the first vet-gate of a 160, the biggest ride of the competition and it’s always the first event, so if anything is going to go wrong or isn’t quite set up right this is when you’ll find out.  Add to that the fact that the toughest vet-gate of the weekend is the first one of the 160 – With a 1 am start it’s the middle of the night still (emotionally, actually about 3:30 am) and all the horses have often done the first loop in the dark together, so they arrive together and they’re all trying to get into the vet ring as quickly as possible.  It’s important and you have horses coming in only seconds apart. Is the printer working?  Is it turned on? Do we have back-up bits of paper in case it doesn’t work? Are we ready???

As always the plan for the first loop – survive.  This was Tigger’s first 160, so not planning to go too fast, but first loops are tricky and to keep him calm and happy we ended up getting dragged along a bit, 17km/h, hmmm. 

Second loop it was still dark so as usual the same track as the first loop – we stop at the last trough, 3km from base, there are a group of horses so I take Tigger around to the other side where there’s room, and a Tigger moment occurs.  Yes, it IS preferable to shy away and bang into the trough than to step in the puddle next to the trough – sigh.  Hopefully he’s ok.  He trots up sound, Lisa finds a small scratch on one hind leg.  Third and fourth loops appear to go ok, but at the end of the fourth he’s lame behind.  60km after the trough collision and it’s now a bit sore.

Emma and Shimar went on to have a fantastic ride, coming second.  To this day people still talk about their presentation to win the Best Conditioned… lovely dressage in the vet ring followed by a high speed exit.  

Of course, while Lace was getting injured, having sex holidays and babies there were still endurance rides going on. And I still wanted to be riding them.  But unlike when George had got injured I sort of had another suitable horse already – Tigger.  But other members of the team had been doing pretty much all the work.  Lisa initially and lately Kerry.  And Lisa had just returned from the UK and was expecting to be back on Tigs.  She had worked previously for one of the top UK endurance riders and had been head hunted to return for six months to help at the World Champs.  Yep, the ACE team had a world class crew member!

So I felt awful, I wanted to take Tigger back and ride him myself after others had done all the work.  And on top of that neither of them had other horses lined up.  Kerry being Kerry didn’t leave me to stew over it for long, she had been happy to give Tigger to Lisa to ride anyway, so she didn’t care, and after discussing it with me undertook to talk to Lisa herself.  Happily Lisa managed to pick up rides on some of Mark’s horses for the rest of the season so that was good.  Lisa did ride Tigs at his next start as planned though, a new course at Orakei Korako.

At this stage Tigger had reached the point where he was good on ride day, often still a complete twit the day before (although generally not to the point of causing a scene anymore) but he could still be a liability in his pen.  Only Tigger could show that amount of talent at cantering and bucking in a small, electrified pen!  Due to this he would end up doing many more than his qualified kilometres at any ride, and this ride was no exception.  However that may have been one of his last bad-yard rides as I don’t remember another performance quite like it, and certainly by the next season I remember him being good and us all being very pleased and relieved!

There were problems with the farm water supply and so the course was re-routed through the stream loop more than originally planned so the ride would be able to continue.  Luckily Tigger had his friend Shimar there and so managed to cope.

Then came my chance to take over the ride on Tigs, I had ridden him in his very first two endurance rides (Dec 2010, Jan 2011) but since then had done only one 80km ride which was now over a year ago.  And I have to say my first ride on him this time was absolutely horrible!  Just Kerry and I going along the road together and I had nearly zero control, brakes non-existent, pulling, shying, head up, mouth open – ARGH!  Now you must realise this was totally just a me-him thing… Kerry and Lisa had not been having these problems.  But he is a very different horse to ride from Lace and I just couldn’t get him right that day.  Luckily it was never that bad again.  Now I warn people having their first ride on Tigger, “It will improve from here on as you get used to each other”, remembering that horrible day.

My first endurance ride on Tigs was coming up fast, 100km at Kuratau and Kerry had planned for him to go a bit faster.  And after that was the NI Champs which was to be his first 160, also at Kuratau.  Hopefully I’d have a bit more control by then!