Once again I owe thanks to people, for various reasons my normal crew was unable to attend and I was
scratching around for crew when my horse physio Jane Abbot came up trumps for me. So on our frst 160km ride I had a
totally novice new crew of one to break in. Fortunately Jane is used to grooming at a prettty high level of eventing
and dressage and was looking froward tot he challenge. Just as well really. Given it is a three and a half hour
journey from home to Euston I travelled Dylan down on the Friday and he had the whole of Saturday to mooch in his
coral and recover. Being a lady of leisure at present this meant I had all day Friday to travel down set up the vet
gate, buy provisions for the Sunday etc. This kind of left me in a quandry on Saturday as to what to do with my time,
in the end I spent a lot of time making use of the Yeomans lorry as a source of shade, enjoying the sun and reading.
Oh and of course looking after Dylans needs.
The usual preride trot up and weigh in on the Saturday broke up my reading. Dylan dully passed the vetting with little change
in his demeanour, then back to his coral while I weighed in and Jane and I checked out the crew points. This is a new experience
for me and the crew points look totally different when viewd from a car or on foot. I did not recognise one or two to start with.
With Jane happy I think about her job tomorrow we popped back to the venue and popped Dylan away for the evening and went of to
our accomodation.
Sunday morning dawned clear, cool and dry, we both hopped in the truck and off to the venue. Dylan had a quick breakfast and
leisure of leisures Jane mucked out his box for me. Better not get used to this. We then groomed Dylan, tacked him up and I hopped
on and warmed him up. At the start the leaders set of at a fair pace, I allowed dylan to trot at his own pace which usually means
a litle exhuberantly but nothing uncontrolled. we were by ourselves till the first crew point were we met Jane and took a slosh
bottle and carried on. As I have never ridden this loop before there was plenty to look at and I was making very sure I did not miss
any of the excelent route markings. By the second crew stop a group of Brits had formed, consisting of Sarah rogerson, Sue cox,
Chris Yeoman anther lady who's name escapes me now and myself. All happily shareing and swooping the lead between us and maintaining
16kph. About 5 k from home Dylan dropped of the pace for a couple of minutes then picked back up of his own acord without being
asked so we all crossed the line at the finsih at the same time.
Unfortunatley Dylan's heart rate did not drop as quickly as I am used to and when we did present his trot up was lacking its usual
sparkle, so I was not suprised to find we were out lame. On further inspection he was missing an are of skin the size of a 2p piece
from the bulb of his left hind heel. so nothing that would not heal given a bit of time and just one of those things.
Below are my heart rate monitor and GPS readings from this ride.
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