View during the ride.  First boot to get attached.

Second boot.  If I’m pulling one hind, might as well pull the other.

Third boot – front right, the one that gives me perpetual problems.Also the only boot that was fitted snugly.

– This was the one ride last year where I gave myself human electrolyte capsules.  It was the only ride where I did not get a migraine.  Elyte capsules are going to the top of the ‘must-have’ list for rides.  I’m learning.. slowly.

 – For a few reasons, I never turned on GPS tracking to keep an eye on our speed.  I do plan to do that in future and it would have made me feel better about how fast we were actually going.. or not going.

– Confetti did not pee on the trail at all.  As usual.  Actually, she never peed while I was in sight all weekend.  Shy mare indeed.

Additional notes!

Our first P&R was immediately following a trot-by; she still made it down to 60 within a few minutes without any sponging or anything.  I think the vet was concerned that she was just barely down to 60, while I was very happy that she was down at all so soon!
Second P&R I sponged, parked her in the shade, sponged a bit more and let her fall asleep.  I should have been a bit more aggressive with cooling her here.  Even so, down in under 15 minutes.
Coming in to the finish she was down in about 13, and I am totally confident we could have been down sooner – I walked her over to the paddock to pull tack since it was so close, didn’t sponge as aggressively as normal since the gentleman next to me had borrowed the sponge when the pony and I wandered off, and wasn’t stressing about it since I knew time was no longer a problem.
I do think the HRM is a useful tool for me to know how hard to work on cooling her down, and will use it for that in the future.. but I may continue to ignore it during the actual ride.

Gear addition likely: I noted fill in all four legs post-ride.  It’s likely that before October, I’ll buy at least one set of the Equi FlexSleeves, aka Dixie’s diabeetus wraps.

Gear change/addition needed: My replacement-stirrups still left my knees sore.  I’ll be upgrading to the caged stirrups from American Trail Gear very soon.

River crossing, heading out.  Ride photo by Gore & Baylor.

Fireworks has a river crossing.  It tends to cause problems for a few horses a year; I think two horses this year pulled because the riders couldn’t get them across, but I’m not sure on that.  Fetti and I went through on the way out, no problems.  We’ve crossed this dozens of times.

On the way back, I politely nodded and smiled at the volunteers, commented that we’ve done this before, tried to point her nose to the right around a rock.. and of course, for the first time ever, she walked into the rock, tripped, flailed a bit, picked herself back up, and carried on out of the river.  The poor volunteers probably thought I was nuts for ignoring them, but really?  She’s always navigated herself through and done pretty well.  Sadly, the photographer was only here for the ride out.  The volunteers were our only witnesses.

This was the first ride where I can comfortably say we rode our own ride.  A novice tagged along for most of the first two loops, but when she dropped back with another group midway through loop #2 I didn’t feel particularly guilty about leaving her with them (I knew one of the riders and knew the novice had been slowing down a bit).  ‘Fetti and I passed people when I felt we could make time, got passed on sections others wanted to go faster on, played leapfrog with various riders. Novice rider caught back up to us towards the end of the second loop.  She pulsed down first, vetted in first, and headed down the trail first when her out time hit and I hadn’t vetted through – good novice 🙂  Confetti and I were on our own for parts of the final ‘loop’ heading home, catching folks, losing folks, leapfrogging around.  If there weren’t horses immediately in our line of sight, she was actually quite good about settling in alone.  Big progress.  Good mare.

Private property trails.  Some wide like this, some singletrack.

More private property views.  These two photos pretty well sum up the two terrain types.

I scribbled out theoretical times for the 9/8/9 mile sections, with a P&R/possible 15min hold after the first 9, and P&R/30min hold after the 8 mile loop.
Theoretically – start time is 7am.  Arrive at first check at 8:30, out by 8:50.  Arrive at second check by 10:15, out by 11:00am.  Home by 12:30.
Reality – start time is 7am.  (We actually left at 7:05 or so and caught the tail end of the controlled start pretty quickly.  I think that probably worked in our favor, as we missed all the chaos, and all the stress was in my head!)  Arrive at first check at 8:45, out by 8:55 or so (surprise trot-by immediately into a gate & go).  Arrive at second check about 10:30 with an out time of 11:07.  Actually leave vet check at 11:28.  (Vet lines were very long and there will be changes here next year.  We were all reassured that we would not be penalized for being over-time.  I gave myself 20 minutes to get through the vet line & tack up, and ended up using probably 30 in the vet line and 7 to tack up/let Fetti drink/get back on and go.  As a result, we were moving briskly but not terribly worried about making time the last 9 miles.  This is also the section in which I had both boot mishaps.)  Arrive at finish at 1:04, pulsed down by 1:15.

Last year was just a single vet check/30min hold, so by my count that puts us a solid 15 minutes ahead of last year, and we could have easily made up another 15 if we’d been pushing at all on the way home and aggressively cooling at the finish.  I am very pleased with that.