Endurance

Does anyone ride endurance? This is my 2nd year and I hope to move up to do the tevis in a few years. This was a slow year for us with some injuries that kept us out of the game, but we got in one good ride! We got top 5 on our first ride, a 25. Then I was going to do 50's for the rest of the year, but so far have missed each ride or the ride has been cancelled due to weather! Jsut one of those years I guess!

That's the one thing I'd love to try with my Half Arab gelding.
There's just not any that close to where we live.

I have to travel sever hours or more away for all of ours! Nothing closer than 3 hours for any of our rides, but condtioning rides are a blast!

Out of curiosity, how do you folks train for these races? Do you go on multiple hours of trails every day? How do you manage to get your horses ready for these things?

Lots of trotting! I was training for a 25 and a 50, just didn't make the 50 yet! We usually ride 3-4 times a week. During the week I do a ten mile loop and during the weekends I do a 15 mile loop on one day and then a 10 mile loop on anoutehr day. We do lots of hill work to help build them up also. It is a tremndous amount of fun adn we trot almost all of it, except the very begining and the end! Also a couple times a week inbetween riding or instead of I'll free lounge him in the arena and let him run and play for 20 minutes. You want to give them time off after hard workouts to help them recover. We watch there heart rate and recovery time very closely!

One of the Curly breeders up here used to do endurance but I havent talked to her about me wanting to do it. I think that my Curly/Arab would be great because she has a ground covering trot and a curly shuffle and a really nice easy canter. I want to look more into doing endurance/competitive trail when I graduate high school.

I would absoultly love to try it but living cercumstances at present and in the near future mean I can't do it for a long while yet.

But I envy those out and about doing it now and love to hear about there rides

Haha... harness racing and endurance are literally the only two things that our nearby stable does! :P

So I've seen a lot of endurance training, as well as a lot of harness training. It's a lot of fun, and if I get a job there like I'm hoping, maybe I can work with one or two of the endurance horses and maybe go on an endurance ride. One of the past ones ended up in the center of town (it's a small town so don't worry)!

How big horses do you use for that? Just curious as my horse is on smaller side, so I'm always concerned long distance will kill her.

The horses that I've always seen tended to be on the smaller side. Almost any horse can do basic stuff though, if they have the right training and preperation.

Breeds you mainly see in the states are:

Arabians
TWH
Missouri Fox Trotters
Saddlebreds
Some thoroughbreds

Gaited horses and arabians/arabian crosses seem to be the big ones.

But honestly. Any horse can do it. But not overnight. It does take a lot of training, preperation, and by that, I mean lots and LOTS of trotting to build up endurance!