On Sunday I participated in a new type of event. New to me at least. It’s called a Ride N Tie. http://www.octra.on.ca/index.php . I found out about this at the Uxbridge “Everything Equine” show where I was volunteering for Team Unicef’s Tent Pegging demonstration. http://www.maharaj.org/tentpegging.shtml . I figured it would be fun to partner an endurance runner with an endurance horse.
In this event there are two people and one horse. The idea is that you start off together, one running and one riding. The rider goes on ahead for a while then ties the horse and continues on foot. When the 1st runner reaches the horse they mount up and ride past the runner then ties the horse and continues running. The race continues like this, swapping back and forth, until the end of the course.
The event on the weekend was at Coates Creek, near New Lowell. I competed in the 18 mile course. This was made up of three 6 miles loops with a vet check every 6 miles. I do ride but I was there as a runner so we started off together and I met up with my rider about 50 feet from the vet check where we swapped because the person who rides out can’t ride in. The horse got about a 15 minute break while I got a 15 minute head start on the next 6 mile loop. It was a hot day and the trails were flat but quite sandy so it was a fairly challenging 30k compared to road running. Just for the record, I did beat the horse but I think we started out with different objectives because she certainly looked like she could go a lot faster than I 🙂
That sounds like a pretty cool event…