2024 Biltmore Challenge 25 LD: A lesson in enduring - Lea Koechle

WannabeMuleSkinner.com - Full Story

May 12 2024
by Lea Koechle

A lesson in enduring...

Every rider has a story where they first encounter what it means to be a true endurance rider. As a Limited Distance rider, I’m sure I’ll have bigger stories than this one when I move up in distance. But, at this point in my story, this ride had me the most fire spitting mad and the closest I’ve been to wanting to quit and instead having to dig down and cling to the word “Endure.”

Biltmore is an absolutely gorgeous estate nestled in the mountains of North Carolina. I’m not going to go into the history of the property as I don’t know it and on this particular occasion I was not there to learn it. I do plan on going back, sans horse agenda, to truly appreciate the history and architecture of the estate. For this trip however, I wanted to ride the grounds and appreciate the beauty.

For two years I had been hounding my trailer buddy and ride mate to go to Biltmore. Since she will be taking a sabbatical from riding to focus on personal health and it’s my birthday, we finally decided to do it as a last “hurrah” since we won’t know when, if ever, we’ll be racing together again...

Read more here:
https://wannabemuleskinner.com/biltmore-challenge-25-ld/

Treasure of the Sierra Madre: River’s 5th 50-mile completion (Road to Tevis 112)

JessicaEBlack.org - Full Story

by Jessica Black

April 27, 2024

This last weekend River and I completed the first day of the new Treasure of the Sierra Madre endurance ride. It was a beautiful ride with some fun technical trails. We rode with Heidi Helly and her horse OP for the second time, which was, again, a learning experience for both River and me!

River’s state leading up to the Treasure of the Sierra Madre

Just two weeks earlier, River had completed back-to-back 50s at the 2024 Cuyama Oaks xpride, held not 20 miles west of the Treasure of the Sierra Madre. Two weeks before that, she had completed 50 miles in the desert at the Western Mojave xpride. She came out of Western Mojave with a stone bruise in the toe of her left front hoof. During the final loop of the second day at Cuyama Oaks, River became intermittently lame. She would start favoring the left fore, and I would hop off, clean out all the debris, and she’d be fine, right up until her hoof got full of sand and rocks. I’d have to get off and clean her hoof out again. I ended up walking much of the final loop.

I thought that it was the same stone bruise, not fully healed. When my farrier came out, he found a different issue. The stone bruise was 100% healed, but she had a corn in the left (outside) buttress of the same foot. A corn in horses is a bruise or hematoma between the hard and soft tissues of the bar, nothing like corns in human feet! River’s was “dry” (not suppurating) and not readily apparent. My farrier found it with hoof testers, but I couldn’t see anything...

Read more here:
https://jessicaeblack.org/treasure-of-the-sierra-madre/