Prineville Endurance Ride

Pictured is Brian on Diego, Me on Kelsey, our friend Marc on his horse Copper who was doing his first endurance race and Jillian on her Kiger "DeeDee" who also was doing her first endurance ride.

We completed our second endurance race and had a terrific time again. We came in 25th and 27th place out of 81 riders with very high vet scores. This course was a little more demanding on the horses because you had to go up and over Still Hill which is pretty steep but never the less, the horses took it in stride. The ride itself had some of the most beautiful views once to got to the top of the ridge. The weather was great and so were the people who helped with the ride. Since we had never done the ride before we didn't exactly know where the vet check was at the 15 mile mark and figured we had a couple more miles to go so we ran (not trotted) the horses across and up a rolling hill only to find out that the vet check was about 200 ft away on the bottom of the hill. We were so upset because we should have been walking for a 1/4 mile to get the horses P/R down before coming into the vet check. So we jumped off the horses and loosened the cinches and walk the 200 ft to the vet check just cussing ourselves out. The P/R person asked if we were ready to check our heart rates as soon as we walked in. Brian figured that we might as well find out how high they were so that we could figure out how long we should wait before we came back to check if the heart rate was down to 60. So the P/R checked Kelsey first only to find out that she was already at 60 and to vet out. I couldn't believe it. Diego (due to him being a much bigger horse) was at 64 and we only had to wait 2 minutes before he vetted out. Brian and I were in shock. We thought that we had just blown it. So we waited until our hold time was over and continued on.

At about the 17 mile mark (I'm guessing) there was a sign saying there was a photographer ahead. So Brian started fixing his hat and straightening his shirt so that he would have a great picture taken. Upon arriving to where the photographer was, Diego obviously did not read the sign because it spooked him to see a man stand up from behind the sage. So Brian thought that his picture was going to come out bad. The photographer told him not to worry and to come back around so Diego could try it again. I couldn't help but stop and laugh.

After the vet check we headed out for the last stretch of the race with our horses still having plenty of pep. We set a consistent pace and kept it there until we passed the finish line. We only had to wait about a minute for our P/R to be at 60 and vet out.

After the ride we went back to camp to find out that Marc on Copper and Jillian on Dee Dee completed their first endurance ride too and did good. They both said that they would be back to do another. We had a great time in ride camp sharing all of our horse stories. So we are looking forward to camping with them again along with Debbie (thank you Debbie for the Helmet) and Della who also did really good on the ride.