Endurance Riding

On Friday, after visiting with family in the bay area, I took my 10-year-old son and his horse, Beauty, to the Cache Creek Ridge Ride, near Williams, CA. Asali and I had the pleasure of sponsoring them on the 25 mile ride on Saturday. Here is Jakob’s story of his first ride, copied word for word (although I fixed a few spelling mistakes):

CACHE CREEK RIDGE RIDE!
by Jakob Gregory

I liked the ride because it was beautiful and they organized the ride well. My favorite part of the ride is the meadow with the grassy field where you could run. My least favorite part is the finish because I wanted to keep riding and when Beauty got worked up.

I want to go to the ride next year because of the beauty. Thank you Alyssa and Jennifer, also volunteers. You never waste a moment in the saddle. Beauty and Asali, you worked hard!!!!!!!!!!

I have to agree with Jakob that the Cache Creek Ridge Ride is well managed – that is the main reason why I will probably make this an annual ride for us. It was hot and sunny and not very shady on the trail and we also encountered many steep, difficult climbs, but we had so much fun riding. This was a challenging trail, especially for a junior rider on his first ride. I could not have been more proud of Jakob or his horse, Beauty, who we adopted from a horse rescue almost 2 years ago.

I have two favorite memories from the weekend. The first was on Friday night, when Jakob and I were getting ready for bed. We were both cozy in our sleeping bags in the back of the horse trailer. We left the door to the trailer open so we could see the stars above us. Jakob spent some time reading aloud to me, using his head lamp for light. Jakob was reading from his book, Diary of a Wimpy Kid. I enjoyed hearing his voice and I eventually fell asleep to the silly story.

My second favorite memory occurred on Saturday, when we were towards the end of the competition. We were on a wide dirt trail, side by side. The horses were feeling good and we began trotting, and then cantering. Jakob and I held hands and continued down the trail, side by side. We were all alone, in open country, being carried through the sun on the backs of our horses. I heard Jakob laughing and I remember wanting to freeze that moment in time.

I am going to end this blog post with a quick account of an incident that happened when the ride was all over – after we had presented our horses for P & R (pulse and respirations) and received our completion time. Jakob and I were walking the horses back to our camp when something went awry with the hose on the water truck. Both horses spooked and galloped off. In the process, my arm got tangled up in Beauty’s reins, Asali knocked me over, lunging me forward and to the ground, right in Beauty’s path. I was dragged a couple feet and then trampled by Beauty. I came out of this potentially dangerous accident relatively unharmed. While I have several bumps and bruises, a swollen knee, a mild black eye, and overall soreness, I could have ended up with a massive head injury. I heard Beauty’s hooves hit my helmet several times and I know the only reason I was talking and walking after the incident was because of my helmet – it saved my life! I am sharing this story to stress to my readers how important wearing a helmet is. Accidents happen, even with those horses who rarely spook, who have lots of training, and who are older in age. It does not matter how experienced of a horsewoman or horseman you are, an accident can happen anytime, anywhere and it can happen so fast, you aren’t able to get out of the way or stop yourself from falling off. So – wear your fricken’ helmet!

On that note, I can say I am glad I got “trampled” and “dragged” checked off my list all at once. My chances of those things happening again are pretty slim so I can deem myself “been there, done that.” After the eye injury I suffered following my first 25 and now this accident following Jakob’s first 25, I am really hoping our subsequent rides are uneventful. Otherwise, people are going to start wondering why we continue in this crazy sport they call endurance.

A few of our pre-ride photos from Friday afternoon:

And finally (drum roll please), a short video of our ride on Saturday:

Tags: limited distance

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