This weekend as we finished 4th at the Cinders Ride, he also won the coveted Best Condition award with straight A’s across the board and a very low pulse of 44 at the finish. For those of you who’ve been following Sandman’s development (you should click on this video) from a shy young racehorse who would spook at his own shadow (but could go very fast counter clockwise on a soft track for a short distance) to a now more mature and much braver endurance horse who can pound along now on rough mountain trails for miles and miles while encountering a LOT of different scary stuff, this is a big win for us. I decided to do a night ride because I wanted to grow our skill set and place another layer of much needed trust on the base that we are now building and so, we went into this with the minimal expectation that we would go pretty slow and just focus on night ride training and an honorable completion and that would be the “win” for us.
Well as so often happens, you ride the horse you have on the day you do the ride, and on this past Saturday, I had a “race horse” to ride, albeit a more well-mannered racehorse, but still a fire breathing dragon on this day, which meant he came out of the gate with his prancy little jiggy I’m amped up attitude to contend with. In order to let off some of that steam, we decided “let’s let em go” and with that we took off and we did that first loop riding with Leonard and Ailleen pretty darn fast. I remember at one point, Sandman was leading with his 12mph power trot and we were just eating up the trail while dodging tree limbs, everything we were passing was rushing by in one long blur. We switched it up during that first loop a lot and the horses seamlessly traded leading and following and as a team we came into the halfway point Vet check in 4th, 5th and 6th position and Rocky, Little Dude, and Sandman all pulsed down immediately. After our 45 minute hold for food and water we went back out at 7:18 pm knowing full well that we were “chasing daylight” with sunset at 7:26 and “real” nighttime, just minutes away, we took off in an effort to cover as much ground as we could as darkness settled in and when I say darkness I mean it dropped like a curtain of “jet black ink” and I literally could not even see my hand in front of me, it was that kind of darkness, 🙂 fun huh? For some perspective, please click on the video in this post, at first you can’t see anything, but it’s just 27 seconds of two hours for us, and you’ll hear my voice as get a feel for the conditions on the trail we were riding.
The next couple of hours were a combination of trotting when we could see trail which was basically black cinders and lighter vegetation as the border of the trail and then when we couldn’t see any differentiation at all we walked while dodging roots, dips, holes, and rocks as best we could. I did not use my handlamp at all as Sandman could maneuver and see better without the lights as they threw deceiving shadows on the trail while I did kick on my green glow bars on his breast collar as the only light I used, and Aileen and Leonard did the same but had red glow bars.
Most of the ride was fun and incident free, but truth be told, we did have some drama along the way. At one point, Sandman and I were leading as we trotted (dummy me) into a super dark dense group of trees that were straddling the trail and immediately upon entering Sandman tripped on a root and we went down hard on both front knees to the point where my left leg and toe were dragging dirt and I was pitched over his neck. For a split second, I thought about sliding out of the saddle to the left, as I was concerned he was going to roll (as he might not be able to get up with the weight of me over his neck) but miraculously he somehow with a big grunt, got both front legs under him which threw me back in the saddle and picked himself (and me) up whereupon we stopped to take a deep breath. This all happened as it often does in a nano second, and Leonard and Aileen who were a few feet back couldn’t see any of this but they did hear a big thud and then an “oh shit” by me, and a bit of a ruckus as Sandman scrambled to get back up while I yelled back to them “look out for that root”. This was one of those real “oh crap that was close moments”, so we all stopped for a second to collect ourselves and let Sandman shake it off, Leonard turned on his headlamp and ran it up and down us to see if there were any injuries to either of us and to make sure Sandman had his boots on and after a brief inspection, we all took a deep breath and then we trotted on down the trail. Little Dude took a stumble with Ailleen as well at one point, before our spill, but in both of these cases, the horses shook it off as endurance horses do and we continued but with a little more caution.
A little later, we came up on another rider, Debra whose horse had taken a spill as well. When we were coming up on her, she’d put the lights on her horses feet at ground level vs up higher up on the breast collar and for this reason, it looked off in the distance like she was a bicycle with lights that were going around and around like spokes on a wheel, suffice it to say, our horses were freaked out as they and we were wondering what the heck this was on the trail up ahead. We we were incredulously wondering out loud and talking, what the heck, could this be a bike way way out here in the middle of nowhere, but we knew, stranger things have happened, so we yelled ahead “if your a bike, can you stop for a second so we can pass you”, but we were too far away and couldn’t hear a response, so against our horses best wishes, we urged them to move forward toward this scary thing which they did albeit cautiously and in lockstep as a 3000 lb. three horse stuck right together jumble of pure anxiety, we rode up on Debra who once our horses recognized these oddly moving lights as another horse, breathed a communal herd sigh of relief and walked on past her. We offered to help, but being the experienced endurance rider she is, she didn’t want to hold us up and told us to go on ahead and she was going to walk on in and she’d be fine.
Riding with Aileen and Leonard on Rocky and Little Dude was simply said, just a lot of fun, and the comradery and story telling and hemming and hawing as we checked our coordinates in the dark and checked one another as well for boots and gear and yimmer yammered over how fast to go and whether to turn here or there and kick on our lights or not, was a lot of great banter and another great team effort as we seamlessly and without contention give and took as a team, waided thru this jet black ink of a night like I’ve never ridden thru before and even though that last part of the ride, was a bit sketchy, and we had a few close calls, we all and our horses finished in great shape, it was another amazing ride and great learning experience, with great friends and our amazing brave horses.
I want to thank Debi Sanger for putting on a great ride and to Lauren Reap for putting together this really great set of intricate but super well marked trails and for her diligence in flagging all the turns and then recording all of these many coordinates in our GPS software which helped us in a big way as we sometimes questioned one another in the dark. I also want to thank our Vets Laura Blanton and Debra Frieberg and the Vet scribes and students who were tirelessly available at all hours of the day and night (as riders were coming and going) and helpful always and who all as a group were volunteering with a smile at every turn. And as always our camping buddies, Mary Jane Fridley and Ashley Wingert who always make camping fun 🙂
This was a really great ride and another notch up on the experience post for Sandman and I and a real confidence builder for us both. Lori and I are so proud of this boy who has become a trusted friend and partner in our ride adventures and member of our family at Promise Ranch . As always, enjoy the ride 🙂, this was a good one.