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Aug. 1st, 2007 07:20 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
which_chickWhen you do the Tevis Cup (hundred mile endurance race out west), there is an obstacle called Cougar Rock. It's kind of a steep, rocky scramble-over thing and they take pictures there. The pictures are shot to make it look like you're doing something superhuman and above/beyond riding your horse a hundred miles in twenty-four hours (or less -- slowest win was 16:23, fastest ever was 10:46). You can see a sample Cougar Rock picture here and there are buckets more (same scenery, different horses/riders) inside the site.
Thing is, there's also a youtube video of the thing, located here, and while some folks have horses that are not terribly pressed about the rock scrambling thing, most of them manage it without killing themselves. I'm looking at it going My horse could do that. Also, I feel a lot better about my equitation now. Yes, I suck, but so do a lot of other people.
Hell, no. It's way out west. I am not hauling my horse way out west. I don't have a truck that would go that far anyway. Besides, if I had any desire at all to ride my horse an insane distance in heat with challenging mountains and whatnot, I could do that just fine in Virginia (which is a hell of a lot closer) at the Old Dominion. It's only a three-hour drive to Fort Valley. The crowds are smaller at the OD because instead of a hundred and eighty people in the hundred, they have like thirty. Also, I wouldn't have to take a week off of work to make it to the ride.
However, we are not going a hundred miles. That's for crazy people. (Of course, when I say that, what I really mean is I wonder what that'd be like? Could I try that some day? Maybe a fifty. A fifty wouldn't be so bad.) I am not riding any hundred miles. I am riding thirty miles. Thirty miles is a sane and reasonable distance to ride a horse. And I'm doing it in the fall in the mountains of Pennsylvania instead of in the middle of the summer in Virginia.
Thing is, there's also a youtube video of the thing, located here, and while some folks have horses that are not terribly pressed about the rock scrambling thing, most of them manage it without killing themselves. I'm looking at it going My horse could do that. Also, I feel a lot better about my equitation now. Yes, I suck, but so do a lot of other people.
Hell, no. It's way out west. I am not hauling my horse way out west. I don't have a truck that would go that far anyway. Besides, if I had any desire at all to ride my horse an insane distance in heat with challenging mountains and whatnot, I could do that just fine in Virginia (which is a hell of a lot closer) at the Old Dominion. It's only a three-hour drive to Fort Valley. The crowds are smaller at the OD because instead of a hundred and eighty people in the hundred, they have like thirty. Also, I wouldn't have to take a week off of work to make it to the ride.
However, we are not going a hundred miles. That's for crazy people. (Of course, when I say that, what I really mean is I wonder what that'd be like? Could I try that some day? Maybe a fifty. A fifty wouldn't be so bad.) I am not riding any hundred miles. I am riding thirty miles. Thirty miles is a sane and reasonable distance to ride a horse. And I'm doing it in the fall in the mountains of Pennsylvania instead of in the middle of the summer in Virginia.
