which_chick | (no subject)

The horse thing went pretty well and ran only slightly (less than half an hour) late. We went over to Lynn Ann's and rode up the mountain, which, it turns out, is about a 3.7 (as the crow maps out distances on a USGS map with some "not shown on map" trails) mile trip with an elevation change of 1520 feet (round trip -- half of that is down). We trucked it in well under two hours and the horses were sweaty but not beat -- I had a lot of horse left under me at the end of the ride.

Anyway, I got home and marked out the distance on the map (Lynn Ann wanted to know how far it was) and also plotted some other distances for training, which picks up again on Monday (like tomorrow). I'm still waiting on parts for the new saddle, so have been using old saddle with a different pad. That seems to be going okay. I wish the parts would get here, though, because I want to try the new one out.

The route we did (up and down) is 3.7 miles. It's not really going to be enough, on its own, for conditioning. Additional routes include up-n-down-n-up-n-down (over to the bottom of the other side of the mountain and back again) which is 7.2 miles and contains mucho climbing. The mountain is not particularly gentle or small. (East coast mountain, here.) The other side of the mountain is about 1000 ft of altitude, so you're looking at 2000 round trip on that side, which makes for a 7.2 mile ride with 3500 ft of elevation change. That's rather a lot but it's a good way to get a lot of conditioning into your distance. I think we'll save it for after we've done the flatter stuff a time or two. It should be fine if we go slowly.

We can also go up, out the ridge to the south (to the next road off) and then turn around and come back down -- that's 8.4 miles with a big old five mile flat section in the middle. (Flat is relative. It's pretty flat for where we live.)

We can go up, out the ridge to the north (to the next road off) and turn around and come back down. That's almost exactly 2 miles out, a nice measured distance for telling how fast our horses are trotting. The route is 7.7 total and again, mostly flat in the middle. I think that's the one we'll be doing tomorrow and probably for all three goes next week.

The week after is fair, which screws up all schedules but we should pick up after fair week only by then we'll be dragging Phantom along with us. They don't have enough stall space at the fair for Nick to be up there all week so she'll be up just for Wednesday and then not-up for the rest of the week. *sigh* To get her up there all week, I'd have to sign her up for a performance class with Cass and I don't know that I want Cass on Nick. I don't *expect* Nick to be a rip, but she's very quick and Cass is used to tolerant, less reactive, for-kids riding animals. If Nick tried something to see what she could get away with, she'd have Cass in the dirt instantly if not sooner.

Anyway, the different riding routes give us some scenery change and some effort-level-change without having to encounter very much actual vehicle traffic. (This is all state forest. The roads are mostly not-that-driven-on and they "suggest" you have 4WD for the ones that go up/down the mountain.) I'm good with that, really, and am all set for tomorrow's outing.

In other news, I cut up all the cardboard in my cardboard closet so that it takes up way less space than it used to. This probably doesn't *really* count as cleaning, but I'm going to pretend that it does.