With our endurance season ending a bit earlier than expected, my focus is shifting towards winter work. I was able to fit in a quick overnight trip with a friend from the Dry Side, and it helped me realize that my desire for more adventures might also be shifting from endurance, at least for a little while.  I find myself already in that end of season contemplative zone. I always feel this way as we slip into late fall and early winter, reflecting on how the season went, identifying what I still have to futz with, and what I’m going to put time into over the slower, darker winter months. This year I find myself even more at a cross roads than usual. There’s two distinct paths forward for the next two years, two main goals I’m not sure I can reconcile, both in terms of time management and Tarma’s personality.

One path is the one we’ve been on, working our way towards our endurance goals, both shorter and longer term. We’ve reached our 250 official endurance miles, and the lure of that final event calls me: 100 miles in one day. There’s a rough route I’ve sketched out, which includes finding a tough mountain 50, a Pioneer ride and more heat training. I’ve realized this year I’ve settled into Tarma’s comfort zone of choosing rides that are mostly flatish roads or wide tracks, where she can cruise at her fast 10mph trot without much input from me. Almost all the 100 milers offered in our region (and surrounding ones) involve making time over usually rocky single tracks with plenty of elevation, so I’m really going to have to expand that skill set for both of us to tackle 100 miles in the time limit offered. Most of the work of forging us into a 100 miler team is, as per usual, on myself. I’m functionally 50 miler fit myself…but I’m not yet where I’m able to do the extra work of being a good partner to her for 100 miles, either in terms of my base fitness and managing my food/energy intake to keep me trucking along for close to 24 hours with enough wits about me to do an emergency tack repair at 1am or jog through the darkness and figure out where the hell we’re going if the ding dong app stops working, or any other number of mishaps that inevitably happen after dark when you’re still out there trucking along and the volunteers and vets back at camp are waiting for you to finish safely.

Two other side trail calls to me just as much. Kade’s in 8th grade now, and we’ve got him signed up as a groom with the local OHSET team. He can’t be a student athlete until next year, but he has joined the team as a groom and will watch practices and attend meets this year. I’m hoping to expose him more to other equestrian events and firmly embed him among the local horse crazy kids, not just ride camps. We only get to ride camps a few times a summer, but he can be with the locals every week or more often. However, while Tarma has grown and matured in leaps and bounds over the four years we’ve had her and she’s shown herself capable of so much more than I ever thought possible for her (Kade riding her bareback in a halter on the beach this summer astounded me!) I’m not entirely sure we can get her to accept what any good OHSET horse must: Noise, crowds, tight arenas, kids everywhere all the time, fairground stalls, flags, quick tack changes…the list of things we’d have to work with her on is long, and pretty much entirely opposite everything I’ve already asked her to learn and be comfortable with. In the much quieter and fully supportive environment of the ETS events we’ve gone to, I have seen Tarma access a different side of herself for Kade. She’s calmer, more self-contained, careful and a hell of a lot less dramatic about things. It’s beautiful to watch them work through puzzles together, though I’m not sure I want to ask Tarma to make that a season long, regular thing for herself. Of course this might all be moot, once Kade gets a taste of OHSET he might not choose to join once he does hit high school, but that’s what this year is for, exploring without any showing stress involved.

Leasing a horse is of course an option if he actually joins the team, but running Kade around to practices and events will naturally cut into conditioning time for Tarma, and life enters that juggling phase all endurance/equestrian parents eventually find themselves in. Prepping for a 100 miler is a different level of commitment, one I’m not sure I’d have time for with Kade’s horsemanship and band and everything else that comes with a high schooler taking center stage. Even less so if we manage some sort of hybrid, where Kade enters Tarma for the in-hand events (which they are fully capable of now), and a leased horse for the ridden events. I do like the idea of a well-rounded, going horse, but this work of OHSET and endurance seems pretty at odds with each other, at least for who I know Tarma to be. My tentative plan for this last year of middle school is to expose Kade to other horses as much as possible (he’s starting to work with one of my farrier’s horses and having fun, but that horse isn’t an OHSET option for various reasons), take Tarma along to a few OHSET practices (she can be exposed to their work as long as Kade isn’t coached at all), and put together a one endurance ride plan for next summer that includes a multi-day option and the toughest elevation I can find.

Another wrinkle to this is the Ultralight Horse Packing clinic I just attended, put on by some friends and one of our trainers. The idea of being able to pack into the backcountry with only the one horse and be able to enjoy farther spaces outside of horse camps has it’s hooks in me, and that again requires a different aspect of training (and gear!) We’d have to do a bit more group riding work, Tarma’s okay in a group at the walk, which packing is pretty much all walking, but we’ve done very few group rides this year overall. Asking her to accept large packs is doable, but does require concentrated training as she’s more sensitive to things like that. I’d also have to dive into finding what hoof protection would work best for her, the Scoots are definitely out (along with Flex boots, Cavallos and Renegades), and it’d be nice not to have to fuss with boots if we’re out away from the trailer for several days. My first thought was to clean up the collection of composite shoes I have and just pop those on for a trip, if we’re mainly walking I think I get them to stay on! Gathering the specialized gear is also another consideration, I have a few things that will work but no packs and will need a few other things as well.

To support anything we choose to work on, there are also some basic training holes I’ve let slide as we mainly ride endurance alone and they haven’t kept us from completing. I’ve been noticing lately that Tarma (and myself, of course) struggle with transitions. We can cruise all day down a trail with only minor discussions, but our obstacle and arena work have reveled it’s quite difficult for Tarma to switch between things, whether it be gaits, directions, or obstacles. One reason we struggle is she has a hard time staying fully present, and I have a hard time asking her to stay with me softly, rather than yanking her back abruptly. We pick up a gait or finish an obstacle and she’s already set to do that for a while…but that’s not the way to go through this stuff. Endurance surely won’t teach either of us to stay balanced and present and most of all flexible within the moment, so over the winter especially we’ll work on obstacles…and find some cows! Cows are, I’m hoping, interesting and dynamic enough to keep Tarma focused, rather than glance at them and on to the next thing.