17 Mile Relay Race

Joe4d, so you're saying to take his pulse after trotting a distance and after cantering a distance to see which gait he is more efficient at?
Also, do you guys use watches so that you know your time per mile? Is it worth it for me to do that? Or is it too short of a distance to worry about it..
What is a reasonable time per mile to aim for (for someone at my level)?
Thanks again.

No way of knowing , you say you ride 4 times a week, but how far ? How fast ? How heavy a load ? Just to many variables. You need some kinda speed over measured distance device. Most of us use a hand held or wrist GPS. I am a turtle rider, IE come in back of the pack on endurance, so I tend to average about 6 mph over 25-50 miles. Dawns a front runner, she's probably averaging 9. But that's average, counting stops for water breaks and such.
What Id do to figure out whats what is come up with a way to measure pulse and measure distance/time. Simple math will give you speed. Sooo get out there and walk/trot/canter. Say 10 miles. Stop check your watch and check your rides pulse 5 to 10 minutes after you stop. If he is at 60 bpm, you didnt ride fast enough. Add more cantering less walking next time. As he gets in better shape you shouldnt have any problem cantering the 7 miles, and still pulsing down in around 15 minutes, assuming a reasonable level of fitness and a horse suitable for the task at hand. I mean if he's an over weight shetland and ur pushing 300 lbs, might have some problems.
Granted there are better more accurate ways to go about this, but Im figuring on you not buying anything, as you probably already have a watch with a second hand. You will just need a known mileage course... Also some cell phones have GPS aps you can use. But you'll have to ask someone else.
You just don't wanna over run your horse starting off. So learn to take pulse, can stop any time and go to a slow walk, dismount and mosy for a few minutes within 5-10 minutes pulse should be in the 60's .. All things relative I guess, those of us that train for 50"s 7 is just a warmup. But for walk along trail riders 7 is a couple hour ride. I've done 15 mile loops in under an hour. Granted my horse was pretty much done for the day, but he was none the worse for ware. Took him about 35 minutes to pulse down, so oops. Live and learn, A little to much YAH and not enough whoaaaaaa

So Jack scraped his hock and although it looks superficial he seems to be a little off on it. It happened a couple of weeks ago and I wasn't too worried about it but it hasn't healed at all (it still bleeds randomly)..and he still seems a little off. I scrubbed it pretty good but he wouldn't let me look at it and even while I was scrubbing it I was having to get out of the way when he kicked at me because he's so sensitive about it (he's like the worst patient ever!) Maybe something is stuck in there keeping it from healing? I've still been riding him some and lunging him but I don't want to work him hard over rough ground until he gets checked out. The vet is coming on April 18th to do spring shots so I'll ask him what he thinks then. Until then we're not going to be doing too much for training on the trails. Hopefully he'll be okayed to do the relay, even if we'll have to do it slower than I had originally planned :(

Hey guys! So the relay race was today! And I'm pretty happy with how Jack did :) I feel so blessed to have a horse that tries so hard to do whatever I ask of him!

Our section of the race was between 7 and 8 miles. I haven't gotten the official time yet but it was around an hour and 15 minutes. The trails were rugged with lots of really rocky spots that were difficult to maneuver through at anything more than a walk (lots of big rocks close together that show through because of erosion, I call them ankle breakers.) We did walk through those portions of the trail but we trotted, cantered and galloped in all of the parts of the trail that we could. Jack worked up a pretty decent sweat by the end of it but wasn't breathing too hard.. If the trails weren't so rocky I would've pushed him harder. We had a blast though!

I wasn't prepared for the amount of truly competitive people there. Most of the horseback riders were competitive trail riders. One guy I met up with on the trail was telling me that he has an Arab at home that he's training for 100 mile endurance rides. That guy did all 3 segments of the race himself (rode 7 miles, rand 6 miles and biked 10 miles consecutively). Most of the horses were coated in sweat from the tips of their ears to their ends of their tails. I've never seen a horse's rump covered in sweat. Craziness!
I'm happy with how we did but I'm not sure which place we were in because they only announced top 5. We'll see when they put up the official times. I think we were second to last..haha. Jack is not a speed demon by any means but such a good boy :)

Congrats!!

Sounds like a fun ride!!

You made it to the finish line and that is a very good start to this type of event.