Words of the Day: Heat and Humidity

Soldiering on With October Goals

It is the first week of October but you would never guess that with the near 90 degree heat along high heat index. It is keeping riding on the back burner as the weather is just not cooperating. It will puts us on a tighter schedule for our target date of mid December for our first Intro ride, but not an unreasonable target if managed well. There is an Intro ride mid-January so we have backup if conditioning isn’t where I want it to be for our first ride, Beaux’s well being is first and foremost. Intro rides can be over simplified by saying a 7 mile trail ride with an hour lunch break, then a 7 mile trail ride back.

The weather related downtime has given me a great opportunity finalize my volunteering for the upcoming Boggy Creek. I am very excited to be able to check out a ride before I get to actually ride in one. This way I will have an idea of what I am doing, or at least look like I have an idea of what I’m doing. I truly believe the conditioning will be the easy part, it will be the camping and the trot in/out that I worry the most over. I am planning on working with Beaux on the trot outs plus I am planning on taking Beaux camping before the Intro ride. Beaux is a good guy in new places, he loves the adventure plus he ties very well of so this shouldn’t be a traumatic event.

Beaux letting his opinion on bath time known

I am looking forward to a great October with some reasonable goals and targets to work on:

BEAUX

Riding goals are fairly modest, using our Endomondo app, I want to rack up some solid miles to beef up Beaux’s fitness, work on bending/suppling, as well as working on maintaining a massage/bodywork schedule to keep Beaux comfortable. The goals this month will consist of starting off with at least 4 or 5 rides at a walk to ease Beaux back to work before moving up to the Intermediate gait. Beaux is multigaited, switching between the rack and a pure trot, which will come in handy during longer rides. The different gaits work various muscles to help fend off tired/soreness. Besides trails, Beaux will get some arena work in. While arena work isn’t Beaux’s favorite thing, the arena work will be tailored to Beaux’s attention span. This means alternating between gaits, change of directions, large circles, serpentines, and other arena drills to help with fitness, flexibility, and *gasp* obedience. This leads me to wanting to try an online dressage test to see just how far we have come and to see what we need to work on. I’m looking at one of the walk/trot tests just for fun and a professional pair of eyes to evaluate our progress.

ME

My personal goals are to continue my gym/workout schedule so my fitness is as solid as Beaux’s, to volunteer at the Boggy Creek ride, and to get with a mentor to help me with the camping and the other handling for LD rides. I’ve been going to the gym for about 3 mos now, I’ve seen an increase in my range of motion in my shoulders as well as building up my core. I’m pretty happy with the results so far, plus I will be stepping up my yoga for increase in strength and flexibility of my own. I’ve signed up for the Boggy Creek Ride to volunteer. This will help me to be more confident when it is time for our first ride, as I will know what to expect. The more confident I am the better Beaux is. I will also finally step up to get a mentor to help me with this last little bit of polish so that we are prepared for what lies ahead in competition. I’m also planning on a camping trip with Beaux before our first ride to again, have him comfortable with being tied overnight.

So the next few weeks will be busy as we finally can step up our conditioning program now that the weather will be cooling off. We have a few skills that we will be working on so that we can enjoy the next few months as we build up our miles, and maybe even score a ribbon or two at local shows. Now that we are in Ocala with the multitude of showing opportunities, we have plenty of opportunities to go out and have fun. As the meme said, “Showing is just meeting up with your friends to pay to ride in a different arena”.