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…