Figuring out how hard an endurance ride really is

The Lost Padres ride in California has a lot of rolling hills among oak trees

I get a lot of people asking me “how hard is _______ ride?”  Sometime I answer pretty vaguely with something like “it’s as hard as you make it”.  Meaning that some rides can seem harder depending upon how you ride them….and they can also seem much easier as well…depending upon how you ride them.  There are so many things to consider.  If you as a rider are having a bad day such as feeling ill or experiencing some kind of physical pain or discomfort than almost any ride will seem like a bear to get through.  If on the other hand you are feeling great and so is your horse even the most difficult rides will seem like a breeze.

If you are going to be going to a ride that you haven’t done before there are a couple of ways to find out how difficult or challenging the ride is.  The first way is to ask your friends that have done it.  There are lots of lists and forums online where you can ask these kinds of questions.  The other way is to look up the previous years ride results from the ride.  This is also a way to look at the list of riders who have done it so that you can contact them individually to see what they thought of the ride.

I find the previous years results extremely useful.  I like to look at the winning times as well as the slowest times.  In addition to that I like to look at how many riders started, how many finished, how many did not finish and the reasons for the pulls.  If a ride has a very high percentage of pulls I will ask friends that attended why that was.  Could it have been poor trail markings (people got lost, etc.), the footing was exceptionally difficult (super deep sand, or very rocky, etc.) or maybe the vets were extremely critical.  By combining the information I took from previous years’ results along with individual reports from riders that attended I can usually put together a pretty good picture and decide if that particular ride is one that I want to attend, and also how to prepare for it.

Questions that are good to ask:  What is the camp like?  Are the vet checks in or out of camp?  How many vet checks are there, at what intervals and how much hold time?  Was there enough water on the trail?  How were the trail markings?  Are there a lot of gates?  What was the footing, trail and scenery like?  What meals are provided and what were the awards like?  Vetting and vetcheck setup?  Some items outweigh others in terms of importance.  It’s nice to know ahead of time on a multiday for example, if I am going to need to bring enough food for lunches and dinners.  I usually bring a couple of hundred gallons of horse water so water in camp is usually not an issue for me but for others it might be.

Most of the rides that I attend require weed free certified hay and have for years.  This isn’t a problem for me since all of my hay is certified weed free and I carry a current certificate with me.  The hay itself has a striped string in the center so that also shows any inspectors that it is free of noxious weeds, though they are free to cut it open and inspect it if they’d like.  The last time I entered California (last week for the Mojave ride) my hay was checked.   For those that have a hard time finding certified weed free hay this is another question you can ask.  Lots of the XP rides for example, have Crockett’s certified weed free hay available for purchase.  Usually you just have to let us know in advance how many bales you’ll need.

Let’s figure out one ride as an example.  I’ll do Lost Padres, since it’s a ride I’ve been getting a lot of questions about recently.  The ride is a Sunrise Ranch ride.  First, check out the website:  http://www.sunriseranchrides.com to get the basic information on the ride.  Now go to the AERC ride calendar and look up the results from last year:  http://www.doublejoy.com/erol/Calendar/RideDetails.asp?rideID=4664 Looks like on day one there were 68 starters with 62 finishers.  Of the pulls, five were lame with one rider option.  That is in the average range for number of pulls so nothing really stands out there.   I get more curious anytime the pull rate is higher than 10 or 15%.

Looking at the ride times I see that the winner finished with a 5:18 ride time.  Most 50′s are won in around five hours so this tells me that it isn’t an extremely difficult ride.  If the winning time is 4 hours for example, I would know that the ride was super easy and if it were 6 or more hours I know it will be on the more difficult side.  Now I look at the last place finishers.  They took 9:59.  Once you add in the hour hold time that this ride has you know that the last finishers came in with about an hour to spare.  This also tells me that it’s not an incredibly difficult ride even for the slower riders.  If that were the case they would be finishing closer to the cutoff time.  If more than half of the ride were to take nine, ten, or more hours of ride time then I would also know that the ride was going to be an extremely difficult one.

The next thing I will often do especially when checking out a ride that is out of my region or that I’ve never done before is to check out the weather conditions.  I usually use wunderground.com because they are good at providing historical data.

From Wunderground I type in “Santa Margarita, CA” which is where the ride is.  Then I scroll down and on the left I see the spot for History and Almanac data.  I change the date to last years ride date and come up with this:  http://www.wunderground.com/history/airport/KSMX/2009/4/25/DailyHistory.html?req_city=NA&req_state=NA&req_statename=NA Now I can look up the low and high temps for the day as well as see how much wind and precipitation there was.  Click on the thumbnails to see more detail.

You often can’t get a full picture from analyzing just one year of ride results and weather conditions.  It’s a good idea to check two or more years of results and weather in addition to asking other riders what they think.  Be sure to get input from more than one rider.  Often different people come away from rides with completely different opinions and experiences.  You definitely should keep an open mind when doing this so that you aren’t swayed by somebody that is overly negative or overly positive.

Often doing this kind of homework ahead of time will help me decide which horse to take to a ride and also help me pre-determine how I plan to ride.  It will also help me figure out in advance what I need to pack and the kind of food (for me) that I need to bring.  How many waterproof horse blankets I’ll need and so many other little things.

My trailer stays pretty well equipped so I am usually good to go no matter what but sometimes what I learn from checking into a ride in more detail can help me at least arrive even more prepared.