You’d think I’d know by now how much endurance can humble you. I knew setting such an ambitious goal as Tevis with so few miles under our belts was a tall order, but we’re pecking away at all the steps it takes to get there. This check in will focus on two main areas, or really one main area: fitness and strength, mental and physical, both for Tarma and myself.

One of the things I managed to fit into the three days between arriving home after a 2400-mile road trip with Tarma and Benny and jetting off to Europe for a month was hauling Tarma down to my trainer’s place. My lovely barn owner would take impeccable care of Tarma while I was gone, and she’d get a month of rest, no bad thing after the challenging trip we’d just completed. After a thorough discussion with my trainer and a few friends, I elected to put Tarma in partial training for the month. It’s a first for me, actually sending a horse off for concentrated training by an actual professional, versus my groping in the dark I feel we’ve been doing. Sarah (our wonderful dressage trainer) is also a body worker so she has alternated ground work, ridden work and massage.

Sarah also sent me detailed reports, giving me a clearer picture of where Tarma is currently, both mentally and physically. We’ve been doing endurance for four years now, so this was a solid chance to check how she’s developing and where our Tevis (and longevity) related holes are. We have a few things to poke around at, most of which we can work on but something that might require actual imaging.  

The saddle fit issue is a bugaboo that chases every horse, and considering I still haven’t found a pad I’m really happy with it’s not a surprise. I do have Leah (of Right Fit Saddle Fitting) coming out in June to check the fit, so I have another month to tinker with pads and hope she hasn’t changed so much that her saddle won’t hold up for her. One consequence of subpar saddle fit (and probably a bunch of other things, including my own riding patterns) is Sarah mentioned it’s preventing Tarma from really tucking her pelvis, rounding her back and bringing her hocks underneath her.

An additional factor to saddle fit is her body score, affecting her back both from needing a better/thicker saddle pad and her own topline. Tarma did come out of the trip a little lean, despite all my pony food hacks to keep her eating well. Most endurance folks want their horses at a 5-6 going into rides, and Tarma was closer to a 4 body score when I dropped her off, though she’s bulked up a bit since. I’ve been futzing with her diet and supplements, but I’ll focus on a bit more protein (probably via additional alfalfa and Haystack Special Blend) and add the oil back into her diet. I think giving her a full body clip and then the dip back into cold weather and my blanketing/not blanketing wasn’t ideal, especially as our road trip and endurance ride ended up not being as hot as I’d feared. If I have to clip her next spring, I’ll just leave her fully blanketed unless it’s really bonkers hot.

The most surprising news to me was Sarah’s discovery of one more possible reason why the right is so damn sticky for Tarma. Her right eye and socket are cocked more to the left, so she uses more of her right eye overall. If your body is cocked more in one direction, even just a tad, it makes the opposite way harder to rely on. This could lead to her being less willing to bend to the right, along with her higher reliance on her right eye. She’s so different when we switch directions, and it’s clear it’s not a me and her thing as she did it for several different riders. To the left she can maintain a slow rhythm, and her stress level stays low. As soon as you switch to the right her head comes up, she wants to rush and she gets really fussy.

Who knows where this is coming from, so we’ll continue with this slow work for now. I’ll reach out to Oakhurst to discuss imaging her neck, back and probably her hocks. Most endurance horses end up with arthritis, and she has been carrying a heavyweight for five years now so it has to be on my radar.  All of her worst injuries and scars are on her right side (her heel bulb, her mysterious rib dip, and several gnarly bites on her hindquarters), so is it just some combination of all them working against each other, just subtly? It could also be some niggling soreness from our shoe disaster at the Nevada Derby, just because she’s not lame doesn’t mean there’s not something lingering that shows up more on the right…but she’s always struggled to the right so that’s a lower probability.

There’s a fine line between “functionally body lame” and “Tevis capable” that I’ll have to determine. Are there more exercises I can do to support her bad side, if it’s not something glaring like an acute injury or arthritis? Is this something worrying enough Tevis should be off the table? Thankfully endurance is mostly a sport of relatively straight lines which fits what most horses do naturally, but Tevis is a beast which requires a certain amount of suppleness to deal with the single tracks. That, and she needs to be able to fully use her rear engine to get us up and down the hills and canyons, which she isn’t fully doing currently. All that said, no horse is physically perfect and if we imaged every Tevis starter and finisher, you’d no doubt find physical issues with every single one (and every single rider!)

The other big discovery was all mental. One of Tarma’s greatest strengths on the endurance trail is her ability to just keep going and get us back to camp. This does mean her mind is usually scanning the trail ahead, looking for the next thing (but not in a spooky way, thankfully). I really do think she knows to look for ribbons! For the strengthening work via dressage we’ve been doing, she wants to check out and not stay with us cause it’s dumb and slow. It’s hard to get real strides made with this, especially if she’s annoyed at the extra contact and input. You have to be thoughtful in order to go slow and be deliberate. I am laughably bad at asking (or gently insisting) that Tarma stay with me and the work, it just doesn’t come naturally to either of us. I can sense her frustration and it’s never my intention to frustrate her, so we just end up grinding without any real forward momentum.

Taking all this feedback leads me to re-evaluating what our summer needs to look like, and possibly our overall timeline. I had originally thought we needed to mostly focus on adding distance, and keeping my own fitness routine consistent and building myself up. Our next ride was going to be a 75-mile weekend at a friend’s ride in Sisters, a 50 miler one day and a second day 25-miler, to see if we could move at speed the second day. I might still keep to this plan, but I’m also thinking of just going out to volunteer instead. That ride is in six weeks and I’d have to get a few things aligned first. I need to either find a farrier to glue on the composites for me or find better boots for her rears than the Scoots; I need to find a thicker pad and fit in a few good conditioning rides in with it; I need to ensure Tarma stays bulked up and supple; and the budget needs to stop crying after all our spring travels.

If all that doesn’t fall into place, I’ll still be concentrating on what our new word of the year apparently needs to be: “Structure”. I’ve found structure for my own fitness, but aside from conditioning rides, I haven’t found one for Tarma yet. I don’t need to be her drill instructor, but we do need to build a sustainable plan that works for her and stick with it. Instead of a vague “Oh, one arena ride a week should be fine”, I need to pencil out what we need to focus on. Lots more ground work aiming at speed control, suppleness and bend, roundness and overall…structure. Instead of dropping dressage lessons as I normally do for the summer, I’ll keep them up.

As Tarma is my only horse and I’m always focused on her comfortable longevity above all else, I’ve always erred on the side of giving her more rest and processing days, which has led to inconsistency in her workouts. I’ll still stay flexible to her moods and needs on any given day, but I think with Tevis on our horizon I’ll need to let the balance shift to shorter workouts more often and see how she responds. As with all things endurance, flexibility is key.