105 miles – the number of miles in LD completions Sully & I have so far this season in 4 rides. Just wow – considering I was stuck at 80 miles to my record for so long, this year has been amazing. Not only have we continued to grow and figure each other out, he really has shown the heart he has for the trail and the fitness he carries from 7yrs on the track. We have one more ride planned/registered for this year, another LD, but he has proven that he is ready to step up to 50s once I get my own self ready for them!

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Before I get into our ride story, here are some other updates…
Sully & Prophecy have settled in together, now they just kind of occupy the same space of a pasture it seems – not overly attached to one another, and Prophecy has handled things well enough when I take Sully away (calls some, but doesn’t get frantic).
We enjoyed another trip to the Liberty Mills Corn Maze this year – attempted the mystery maze but gave up and just finished the main one and another smaller one before dark.
Skyler has been continuing with her riding lessons – getting bolder, learning to post in a saddle and with the bareback pad, and even getting to ride a different horse.
Asher and Skyler are in recreation leagues of SOCA this year and their teams are doing great.
The “home barn” has hit several snags between fencing company no show and finding a shelter that can be gotten onto our property with winding drives. Slowly but surely, it will happen…

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The Blackwater Swamp Stomp ride was first held back in March 2017 – I took Prophecy for the intro then…that didn’t go well for him mentally, possibly physically knowing what I know now. I barely got to ride any of the trail then, but is well known as being fairly flat with some gravel road. I didn’t really have much of a plan this time other than knowing flat means Sully can really move with his trot, but I knew Amy was taking Frills out with a junior and thought we might hang with them as the horses have done mountain rides together for conditioning. Turns out the junior managed to pull a muscle and was not riding anymore and instead was crewing for Amy. So, after the ride meeting we decided to head out with the front runners together (to get out of the mid-pack bottleneck expected). Little did we expect to actually be heading out as #1 & 2 together and staying that way! Frills and Sully had a little spat preride (squeal, ear pin, paw air strike) but from then on were pretty much fine. We did have a few trail boo-boos, and a horse and rider pair that neither of ours particularly liked that we asked to split away from at a water tank (Sully seemed to get protective of Frills and did not want other geldings nearby which exacerbated some of that trios issues, so best to just split away). Despite having to backtrack for a missed turn, a dumped rider during that turn back, and letting the 3rd horse/rider pair get ahead of us for a good bit, we came in as #1 & 2 to the hold after almost an 18 mile loop of pretty solid trotting. Amy and Frills had an out time about 2min ahead of us, but I was much further from the start line letting him rest back at the pen and probably started a solid 5min after her on the second loop and never caught them like we thought I would. Sully was still moving at 8-9 mph on his own, but not with as much gusto sans buddy. The second loop of 11.5 miles was also more in the woods, had knee knocking & weaving trees to contend with, and still sandy, so that pace was just fine for us. We eventually hooked up with another pair we had ridden with some in the first loop and but as the trail got back out onto open road Sully picked up his big trot and passed them by. We were caught by a different trio who asked to pass (and did, but we stayed close behind them) and we all got into the finish line about the same time – Sully pulsed in before them for a 2nd place finish. Crazy!

A few things I did differently this time for Sully:
– He had a trace clip.
Result: I think it helped. It was way hotter on Saturday’s arrival than I expected, and humid on the ride Sunday despite the weather forecast for cooler temps.
– I normally do electrolytes in his mash only. This time I also made sure to syringe dose him before each loop in addition (split the dose between them to avoid overdosing). He was less than thrilled with the taste despite rinsing his mouth out.
Result: He drank about at his normal time after 12miles. So no big change noted on the first loop. But, the second loop he drank every opportunity he could…
– I added a small dose of CMPK syringed at the hold before the second loop. Again, he was not a fan of the taste …
Result: Not sure how to assess this one yet.
Overall, he pulsed down pretty easily despite a much faster moving pace than previous rides. I had great help from Amy’s crew of Madison, Sarah, & Ricky with sponging too 🙂

My big takeaways from this ride…
1. Get a red ribbon for Sully’s tail… We unfortunately learned he will kick a horse too close for his comfort. Sadly he nailed the rider’s leg too with that one – very unexpected from him.
2. Try different buffers than KP for his elytes.
3. I need to eat and drink better… total flop on his BC presentation. My nutrition struggles and the human “bonk” has yet to pull us from a ride, but I’m worried that last loop of a 50 would be too much based on how I felt when we do go to bump up… I lacked the energy to do him justice in the BC presentation and therefore he lacked the energy or willingness to trot along with me and I called it ‘done’ – meaning we took 0s on that portion of the scoring where as at IMJ he was right there with me as sheer adrenaline kept me moving lol. (I shouldn’t have been so stubborn and let someone else present him!)
4. Flatter rides = Sully really experimenting with his head lowering vs. riding like he still has a check-rein from the races. It actually got to a point I had to ask him to stop putting his head so low to make sure he didn’t trip at times!
5. Still loving the Blue Pegasos shoes, but we have a had a few bobbles of lost shoes – where he literally pulls them straight off – no hoof damage, just no shoe/nails suddenly. He lost a hind right before our last conditioning ride and Felesha was able to come put one of his extras on (previously used but not good enough for another full cycle use) and then got to ride with us at Graves. He lost a front during the Blackwater ride randomly, and while he could have gone bare in that terrain, I opted to put a boot on to be safe for the 2nd loop. We’ll go back to bare after Fort Valley and using his Scoots as needed for winter training time and see how it all shakes out next spring.

Onward to Fort Valley!