Endurance 101

I've participated in the sport of endurance since 1999, riding a variety of horses. 

These days I field a lot of questions (from real life encounters as well as this blog) about the sport:  what is endurance, and what does it take to participate in a distance ride.

I have a lot of easy, quick, short answers:

• You get up at 4am and ride your horse 25, 50, 75, or 100 miles in a single day.
• You throw as much junk as possible on a filthy horse and trot until you can't.
• It's like the Iditarod with horses, but warmer (usually).

...you get the idea. 

Recently I realized that what the sport needs is a longer answer to the questions that people ask about it...and that's was the impulse behind writing Endurance 101.  I am currently writing a book proposal for the concept, but in the meantime, I wanted to make the Endurance 101 essays easier for readers to find, so I created this page of links. 

• Endurance 101 - an introduction to a crazy sport
• Endurance 101 - watch a real endurance ride in just 20 minutes
• Endurance 101 - choosing a horse (or mule, or donkey, or zebra or unicorn...)
• Endurance 101 - horse tack--what you need and what you don't need
• Endurance 101 - rider clothing, what to wear, what to wear
• Endurance 101 - basic training (or: how long is long, how slow is slow?)
• Endurance 101 - skills you want your horse to have
• Endurance 101 - skills for the rider
• Endurance 101 - countdown to your first ride
• Endurance 101 - ride day and how it rolls
• Endurance 101 - what the vets are looking at in a vet check
• Endurance 101 - teaching the trot-out
• Endurance 101 - the "Ridgeway Trot" (Cardiac Recovery Index, or CRI)
• Endurance 101 - getting pulled from competition
• Endurance 101 - junior riders
• Endurance 101 - the physical and mental effects of fatigue (DIMR)
• Endurance 101 - the usefulness of crew, and how to treat them well
• Endurance 101 - navigating an endurance trail
• Endurance 101 - post-ride and recovery
• Endurance 101 - food for the rider (good--and bad--choices)
• Endurance 101 - The Bad Idea Fairy

Reader comments and questions are always welcome.  If there is a topic you'd like to see covered in an Endurance 101 post, please leave a note in the comment box!