Me and Mush

Unfortunately, the cut that Shah got during our last ride turned out to be much deeper and bruised than we thought. So much so that he’s still lame four weeks after the ride.

He’s not hopping lame so he’s not on box rest, he gets turned out in the field during the day and in at night to keep the cut clean and dry. It is healing, but very slowly due to the location on the heel. The skin stretches all the time so it will take time to heal completely. Plus the cut goes into the bulb of the hoof, another place where it takes time for things to heal.

As I was worried that it might be something else wrong with him that we were overlooking because we’re so focused on the cut, I had the vet out to see him last week. Vet confirmed that the lameness was most probably due to the cut and as Shah sustained the cut during an endurance ride, the extra strain you put on the legs while competing might contribute to it taking extra long time to heal. He looked over all legs and could at least confirm that the lameness is definitely in the leg where the cut is. There is a slight thickening on the tendon on that same leg, but as it’s not hot, sore or swollen the vet thought it might be just a small burst blood vessel and shouldn’t be anything to worry about. The cut should heal within the next couple of weeks and hopefully the lameness will go as soon as the cut is completely healed, until then we can’t assess whether the lameness is due to something else so it’s just a case of wait and see.

The good news however was that the vet was happy for me to ride walk Shah for 10 minutes a day to help with the boredom – grumpiness already set in – and condition – he’s now slipping back into bad habits. I should check his trot once a week to see how he’s progressing, and if the cut heals up and he’s still lame then we start to worry as we’ll have to investigate further! But I’m hoping we don’t have to go that far.

So, another setback on our journey. It always seems to be like that, you take five steps forward and four backwards.

I’m really missing riding, and poor Shah is really missing going out for our Downs rides and endurance rides. He was so happy for a couple of weeks after our last ride, still keen to do more although frustrated when he realised that he couldn’t trot. Poor thing is now all grumpy and back to his old self of not wanting to work, amazing how quickly they lose that motivation they get when competing. I’m just hoping that we can get going soon again and get him back to his happy state of mind.

If things get worse we’ll just have to turn him out for a couple of months to rest and get fat – but I will then face a much longer period of rehabilitation to get back to where we were. And I’m not looking forward to that as I know it will be very hard, depressing and frustrating work. So we’re trying to stay positive, stick to our 10min walks, and hope that this will be behind us as soon as the cut has healed properly.

After having to get up at about 4am and leaving the yard at 5.30am it felt like we’d already done half a days work by the time we got to the Berkshire Downs ride, but Shah travels well so it’s never a bother taking him anywhere. Much to my surprise he was awake when I turned up at the stables at 5am, and he happily ate his breakfast too. As I’m quite organised it was just a case of hitching the trailer, pack the saddle and load Shah before setting off.

We arrived in good time at the venue, being able to have a look around and find everything before unloading and getting prepared for the ride. Farrier check all ok, vetting all ok, start heart rate 40, which is very normal for him. So we tacked up and set out on the first loop with company.

As this was a major ride it was quite busy and during the first loop there seemed to be other riders around us nearly all the time. I had arranged to ride with two, more experienced, endurance riders but unfortunately one of them had a horse that was wound up by Shah so after about half way we trotted on in front and started catching up others instead. Shah really seems to like the race-catch up with others game and I was extremely pleased about his speed and pace. We kept up with all the experienced riders, trotting and cantering all the way apart from one downhill where we met a throng of school walkers and had to take it easy anyway.

Finished the first loop on a high. Shah felt great, was still full of life, very keen and had loved every minute of the ride. As his heart rate was 57 straight away I presented quickly and by the time we got to the vets, his heart rate had dropped to 44 so I was very pleased. He trotted up fine but unfortunately had got a cut on his front heel. The head vet took a look and decided it was only a fleshwound and we were okayed to keep going as long as we lashed on some first aid cream onto it.

As I was crewless (note to myself, try not to do anything more than 50k without a crew, it is difficult) it took me a little longer than 30min to get ready in the middle of the ride. I was then curious to see how Shah would react at going out again, this was the first time he had ever done that, and his eyes nearly popped out of his head when I tacked up and he realised he was going to do the whole thing again!!

As predicted, It was VERY difficult to get him out of the venue on his own. I was supposed to ride with some others so that we got a pull out but as they left before me I had to just try it on our own. He napped terribly and I ended up having to get my wip wop out and make lots of noises before he got going. The first 10km after that were painful, he was slow as a donkey. Luckily we then caught up with another rider, and some others caught up with us and we then succeeded in motivating Shah to get going and he got a second wind.

Once motivated we continued to fly around in usual trot/canter manner. I could feel he was getting tired towards the end though, and I was also a little concerned about his cut as parts of the route was muddy and you don’t know what they can pick up in puddles and mud. It was great fun, however, to ride with some lovely and hugely experienced endurance riders and horses.

Came back with a quite tired horse who unfortunately vetted out lame on the right front foot, where he had his cut. I suspect the cut had got more bruised and sore during the second loop and it was just hurting a bit towards the end. His heart rate was absolutely fine at 46, so I’m pretty sure he was fit enough for the job. He also drank quite well on the second loop and it felt like he had lots of energy in the tank. Our speed was 12.3k/h, which I was very pleased about.

All in all I was very pleased with him. We did the full 65km, had our ups and downs, worked our way through them, kept up a good speed throughout, he felt fit and forward thinking most of the time and he proved to me that we can now go out and ride our own race, without having to be reliant on company all the time, although it really helps. I was also very pleased about his heart rate readings, and getting the cooling down/keeping warm routine right (lesson learned from last ride).

It was just a bit of bad luck getting a cut I think. The cut is healing well and he wasn’t lame at all the morning after, not even when he came out of the trailer at home to be honest. He wasn’t even a little stiff the morning after!! Wish I could say that…

Need to find another 65k ride now so that he can start getting used to going out on more than one loop. Things can only get better from now!

Courtesy of Eric Jones, the photographer for the day.

Because I was curious I added up all the kilometers we’ve been doing in training so far this year and we’ve passed 600km in total (including one 26km TR and one 32km CR) which is quite astonishing in itself for being us!

So, to keep a record for myself of how we started out this year, here’s our training programme so far:

Week 1 and 2: 4km, 4 times each week – total 16km each week
Week 3: 4km + 4km + 7km + 8km, adding trot – total 23km
Week 4: 4km + 8km + 8km – total 20km
Week 5: 8km + 8km + 8km + 4km + 10km, adding canter – total 38km
Week 6: 8km + 8km + 8km + 4km + 10km – total 38km
Week 7: 10km (hills) + 8km + 8km + 4km + 8km – total 38km
Week 8: 8km + 8km + 8km + 10km + 15km (hills) – total 49km
Week 9: 4km + 8km + 8km + 26km (TR, hills) – total 46km
Week 10: 8km + 10km + 8km + 8km – total 34km
Week 11: 10km + 20km (hills) + 8km – total 38km
Week 12: 8km + 8km – total 16km
Week 13: 4km + 8km + 8km + 30km (hills) – total 50km
Week 14: 8km + 8km + 4km + 8km – total 28km
Week 15: 8km + 10km + 4km + 25km (hills) – total 47km
Week 16: 8km + 4km + 4km + 32km (CR, hills) – total 48km
Week 17: 13km + 8km + 3km + 12km – total 36km
Week 18: 4km + 4km + 15km (gallops, deep sand) – total 23km
Week 19: 4km + 4km + 65km (CR) – total 73km

Well, the last 65km ride is still to come this Saturday. We’re getting all prepared and ready for it and I’m so excited! Full report will come after the ride, it will give me a good indication about whether the above training programme was too little or just right.

Most of my 4km rides consists of a walk up and down our lane, so on tarmac only. Some of my 8km rides is also just on tarmac roads, while some of them are schooling in the sandschool as I’ve calculated that we do about 8km in an hour. All our hill work is over the South Downs, good gradients and good workouts. The rest is hacking out around where we are, a lot of tarmac work and some trotting/canter work across fields when the weather is good.

With the schooling work I started doing canter interval work about half way through the training programme, with short bursts of canter that I’ve gradually built up to now when we do 30-40min canter work, split into several sections with a little walk or trot in between.

I took him to the gallops a week ago to check them out, see if we could do some training on our own, and take a checkpoint on how his training is doing. He behaved, with only two naps, so we ended up doing 4,5 miles of canter work in deep sand, one of the gallop tracks is 1 mile uphill, before he tired and got bored. We came back with a good recovery heart rate so I was pleased and will definitely use the same gallops a few times over the summer for long distance slow canter work.

I also started pole work very early, gradully building up from one/two poles to 6 poles on the trot. We then did raised poles, and finally some trotting jumps. I’m still to start raising the jumps and do them in canter. As he’s an appaullingly bad jumper  I had to start with easy stuff and build up very slowly. He also has a habit of bumping into the poles, he’s not very coordinated, so I also have not wanted to do any pole or jump work before a big ride, just to eliminate some potential risks!

If all goes well on Saturday we will then start our next phase of training and our goal of doing an 80km ride in July. But let’s focus on Saturday first…