Pre-VC100 - in which I try to get my ducks in a row

You always think you've got it together for a 100 - until about two-three weeks before when suddenly everything seems to be falling apart.

I've been scuttling around, trying to get my ducks in a row.

Fergus and I did the Tahoe Rim Ride on 29th August (two weeks ago) - lovely as always - and I came away with a shopping list of things to sort out (and wishing I had an extra month and an extra 50 miler between then and now to get everything squared away).


First of all - the Tahoe Rim ride. It went great and although I worried a little about Fergus' hill fitness (he was a little "bleah" on the steeper climbs), he bounced back in each case once we got to the top and never felt flat the entire ride. Not to mention he managed to finish the ride with a vet card entirely filled with As. I've never done that before - usually there's a B on guts or something. So my take-away is he's ready for VC100.

That said, I don't feel he's as fit as he's been in past years, which means I'm going to need to ride more conservatively than usual. Not a big deal. The goal is finishing – and finishing-looking-as-good-as-we-can – not finishing-as-fast-as-we-can, so this is a good reminder to me (the so-called brains of the operation) and will hopefully reflect in an equally impressive vet card.

Saddle Fit

Or should I say shim fit. My problem is that Fergus doesn't get sore from the saddle... but weeks later tell-tale white patches show up. I narrowed some of it down to pad material - unlike every other horse in the world, sheepskin pads don't seem to agree with him. This finally became blatantly obvious when he wore a fleece-bottomed Skito pad for the first 65 miles of 20 Mule Team 100 back in February and came in to the tack-off vet check with heat bumps the size of peas. I switched to the cotton-bottomed Sensation pad for the last 35 miles and the bumps were gone at the finish. Voila. Problem solved.

Not.

A month or so later we did NV Derby 50 in the same set up and shortly after that new white patches appeared. Apparently the FreeForm panels I was trying out weren't having the desired effect - in fact they seemed to be creating more pressure along the ridge of muscle either side of his spine. Nix them.

On to NASTR 75. By now, I'd started throwing money at the problem. I bought a set of Jen-X inserts - poron on the top to combat concussion and impact, and [other foamy stuff] on the bottom to cushion his soft tissue. Removed the offending FF panels and just used the Sensation pad with the new inserts (which, predictably, arrived the day before the ride, so no opportunity to try them out). They actually felt really good and I was very happy with them - we were, in fact, both so happy that we went much faster than we should have and he came up lame with sore feet. Ruh-Roh. But hey, at least the pad seemed to be working.

On to Tahoe Rim 50 - I was still happy with the pad, but now very unhappy with how much topline muscling he seems to have lost. He still has the difficult-to-fit ridge of muscle (now liberally covered in white hair) either side of the spine, but has lost muscle below it. He also developed a strange hunter's bump on his loin area. Something out of whack causing the hunter's bump and therefore causing loss of muscle? Or uncomfortable saddle fit causes loss of muscle, causing something to go out of whack and the hunter's bump to appear? Chicken and egg?

Tom Mayes is due to take a look at him on Friday, so hopefully he'll discover something obvious that I've overlooked and he'll be miraculously cured.

If that doesn't happen, the more likely scenarios is that I'm going to need to get really creative with shimming this coming weekend and come up with some way to protect his remaining back muscle for VC100.

How his saddle has been fitting most of this year. 

I tried a quick, five-mile experiment at the weekend. I'd concluded that the top edge of the insert was causing the most grief, so broke out the FreeForm Panels again - now also stuffed with revolutionary Jen-X inserts (instead of the felt + carpet underlay that was in there to begin with when I last tried them), took a felt-shim out of the saddle itself (hoping to remove that unyielding pressure point) and took all the shims out of the Sensation pad - so I was effectively just using the FF Panels as my insert and saddle support. In doing so, I was hoping that I could move the top edge of the insert further up, so the flat side of it was laying against the bulgy area. Like this:

 All that actually happened was the hair closer to his spine, higher up than the white hairs ended up getting really mussed and swirled. It didn't look promising. At  least not promising enough that I'm willing to risk it untried at a 100 miler.

What I think I need to do, is something closer to this:

which will entail finding some sort of shimming-insert material that I can stack, shape, and layer, while tapering the edges to fit in his hollows.

Horse Weight

Fergus isn't thin. But he's not exactly fat either. I was looking at photos of him tied to the trailer at VC100 in 2012 and he was positively round.

Up until a couple of weeks ago, he'd been living with Roo. About ten days ago Roo chomped him on the girth area and that was the final straw. Not only was Fergus not getting fat from this partnership, he also needed a dose of bubblewrap.

So Roo now has Small Thing as his new room-mate (ST has gained about 50 lbs in a week - this will need to be a temporary situation), and Fergus is living the life of free-feed hay - as much as he can eat. Get fat!

In addition, he's also getting a daily bucket of mush in the morning - three coffee can scoops of Elk Grove pellets, three scoops of LMF Gold, a Vit E/Selenium/Magnesium supplement, and, as of this morning, a loading dose of Cool Calories.  Any more than this and I start to feel like I'm completely overdoing it and will have an out of control monster come ride day. And on a horse as big as Fergus, that picture does not sit comfortably in my head.

(I considered getting a big bag of rice bran, but a) would then have to fret about calcium-phosphate ratios, and b) would stop feeding it after a while, keeping it for "special" - which actually means it goes rancid and is full of wugs and cobwebs... hey, I already have a bag of that!)

Horse Footwear

This is actually an area I feel like I might be winning at (famous last words). After his lameness pull at NASTR 75 in May, he got a couple of months off to heal up and since then has been wearing Renegades in front. I'm pretty happy with them - except for the amount of debris they seem to gather that regularly needs emptying. This weekend I'm scheduled to drill debris-holes in the front of the boots to let this stuff out - allegedly that will help.

I still wince when we trot on pavement (f'instance, on our way back from the powerlines on Andy Wolf, when he's super-motivated to get home) because he lands so hard, so that just reinforces the idea that I can't let him blast along at high speed on hard footing.

The boots worked very nicely for Tahoe Rim - but that is mostly very lovely, duffy footing, so not a huge hardship for him.

His spiffy front Renegade glue-ons with squishy gel soles have arrived and we'll glue them on the Friday before the ride. He'll be in Gloves in the back.

I'm a little anxious about the Ren glue-ons, mostly because I haven't glued them before and the protocol is slightly different than what I'm used to with Gloves. Also the glue surface area is slightly smaller, so I'm worried with my pathetic gluing skills he'll be more prone to losing them. But let's face it, he loses the Gloves just as easily when I mess up* gluing, so it's not like anything is actually that different. This is more pre-ride (and pre-gluing) jitters than based on any real problem.

(* At Tahoe Rim, I finally got back the Size 3 glue-on he lost and someone picked up on the trail at NASTR 75 back in May)

Horse Elytes

Yup, I'm completely out. Remedied this somewhat by purchasing a tub of Enduramax, but still need the ProCMC and some applesauce. Add to the shopping list.

Coggins

Yes, I did get that Coggins last year specifically for VC100... and yes, that does mean that it has now expired. Took Fergus in for a new Coggins on Tuesday - it should be back by early next week. Disappointingly the vet used the white marks on his back as "identifying features". I am mortified.

My Fitness

Because of needing to keep Fergus to "normal horse pace" at Tahoe Rim, I came home sorer than I've been in a very long time - my quads were shot, my calf muscles stiff and unyielding, even my neck-shoulder junction hurt. My friend Sally came to visit the week after the ride and kindly gave me three mornings of deep massage release on my legs (as well as my arm - I've currently got a lovely dose of tendinitis in my left elbow, which means I'm doing everything lopsided, which really isn't helping). She was concerned that this seemed to be more than just post-ride soreness. And to be honest, I've felt sore for months - figured it was just age creeping in.

So maybe not.

It could be that I need to a) visit a masseuse after the ride, or b) learn rolling techniques (perhaps during the ride? doubtful) to keep the muscles loose.

Either way, I need to remember to stretch as much as possible leading up to the ride - and the morning of the ride. Which, of course, isn't happening yet. Must. Try. Harder.

My Fuel Intake

Did spectacularly badly at this at NASTR (but it was hot <whine>), slightly better at High Desert with Roo, and moderately at Tahoe Rim - and that was due to Renee feeding me sandwiches. In the meantime, I've acquired some Tailwind Endurance Fuel:

It goes like this. You add the powder to your water bottles - in a concentration that mirrors your water intake. So if you want to consume 200 calories in the next section but will likely only drink one water bottle, then the whole packet goes in that one water bottle*. If, however, you will drink three water bottles, then you divide it among the three water bottles.

(* I'm a little worried that an entire packet in a single bottle of water will make my eyes water from the concentration of it...)

The idea is that you don't even have to eat real food (a definite plus for me when I get pathetic) - you ought to be able to subsist entirely on this stuff.

The downside of this is, of course, I haven't tried this product. I have no idea if I'll even like it. I don't usually love flavoured drinks - water is my favorite drink - so I'm unsure how it'll work out. I'm supposed to try these three packets before the ride, so I can pick which I like best. The bottom, white packet is unflavoured... but surely I'll notice a funny taste? surely? The Raspberry Blitz flavour has the added bonus of caffeine, so wondering if that's something I ought to try at night? The lemony one seems like it'll be the least offensive...?

But you need to try them, Lucy!

And you need to formulate a dumbed-down plan as to how you're going to get this in your water bottle when you get stupid.

Clothing

I broke down and rinsed my half-chaps that were totally caked in dried sweat and grunge:

Now they are clean. And now they are just as stiff and unyielding - only without the grunge caked on. I think I need to find some suede suppler... Or whatever it's called.

Occasionally, when Fergus trots big (as he is prone to do at rides where he can move out), my riding tights not only rotate around my legs, they also begin to creep up my legs until my ankles are exposed at the front - and then the half-chaps rub against the bare skin. Squeak. I need to remember to wear longer socks. Hasn't happened yet, however. Remembering to even bring long socks, that is.

A new helmet is needed. I read somewhere you're supposed to replace them every 3-5 years (assuming, of course, you don't fall off and whack your head). Since I know exactly when I last purchased my helmet (shortly after I fell off and whacked my head hard enough to give myself concussion, despite wearing a brand new helmet, and thus needed to replace said brand-new helmet), I was able to look back at when that Washoe Valley ride was... uh... that would be 2007... about 8 years ago. So yes, a new helmet is needed.

In the meantime, Tipperary opted to very-slightly-redesign their helmets so the "medium" is now just narrow enough for me to wonder if it'll give me a headache, while the "large" is just a bit too big. <sigh>.

My Ariats were coming apart during our trip to UT in July - to the point where I was having to hope that they'd still be together at the end of each hike. So ShoeFix (shoe menders in Auburn) to the rescue and $15 later they are good as new. Ish. Good enough. No longer falling apart. Footwear - check.

So in summation, the ducks are not in a row at all and I've got ten days to make it so:

Pre-Tevis "I haven't done enough" Jitters

Since I had the audacity to leave the state for a week (we went to Utah, ostensibly to pick up our new small dog puppy, but really just to spend a week going "oooooh" in Moab)(this will be the subject of a post hopefully this week before I forget it all), thereby missing two weekends of potential riding, I'm now suffering from the obligatory "I haven't done enough" and therefore Fergus can't possibly finish Tevis without becoming exhausted.

The fact that Fergus did 32 miles the previous week and will do CA Loop this weekend is neither here nor there. He needs more hill work. I need more time on him. We will never finish. Etc. Etc. I'm going to have to carefully balance this type of panic attack with putting some saddle time on him without overdoing it. We're out of town the weekend before Tevis, so that'll ensure that I can't ride him that last weekend - instead I'll just fret about not having ridden him.

Unfortunately, this last week we were gone it would appear that the other piglet horses ate most of the hay. I put everyone in together to make it easier for neighbours (aka "Feeding Angels") Bil and Wendi to feed, and Roo and, particularly, Fergus were noticeably ribby when we got home.

Small Thing, Hopi, and Uno, not so much.

So now the Worker Bees are getting fed five times their usual ration (much to their contentment).

Ducks in a Row

To try and quell the panic slightly, I started putting the ducks in a row.

• Made an appointment for Fergus to have his feet glued by the excellent EasyCare Crew the Wednesday before the ride. Unfortunately, I've no idea what size glue-ons to get him, since his feet were such odd sizes in May for NASTR 75. Will hopefully work on this (and what sparsies he needs that I'll carry on the saddle) this coming weekend so I can get them ordered in a timely fashion to avoid back-of-mind-fretting.
• Called Skito to figure out where the new saddle pad foams had gotten to. Turns out they'd delivered them about 30 minutes before I called, so Cinderella Roo now has new pad fixings to protect his poor bald-spotted back. And Fergus will have a spare pad if he needs it.
• Started thinking about what tights to wear - keeping in mind my legs were rubbed to crap at 20MT 100 from my tights being too baggy. This might have been from trying to keep Fergus to an artificially slow pace to match our riding partner's slow-but-steady get-the-job-done tempo. This is, admittedly, less likely to happen at Tevis, but all the same it was an alarming thing to have happen. I have two pairs of identical green tights. I wore one pair at Tevis and I wore one pair at 20 MT. Must try them on back-to-back and make sure they really are identical. 
• Figured out a cunning bra + sports bra arrangement to wear that will negate the need for a modest cami top (which makes my tummy hot) under my sunshirt. I will try it this weekend and see if it works or if wearing a double bra makes me chafe and feel like I can't breathe. 

Other things that need doing:

• Figure out a driver for the rig from (ideally) Robie to Foresthill, then (icing on the cake) from Foresthill to Auburn Fairgrounds (and once there, set up a horse area by unhinging the Spring Tie, throwing down some shavings, hanging a hay bag, and filling a bucket).
  
  pft says he will do the Robie-FH section if absolutely necessary, but it makes him so anxious and uptight that I hate to do it to him. And it means he has to be up at Robie all day Friday, which he may not want to be, so I'd love to find a way around this.
  
  Ash is happy to drive it from FH to Auburn, but she's also on a time-crunch to get to Lower Quarry to volunteer there, so it would be better if she didn't have to go via Auburn Fairgrounds.
  
  I'm thinking hard about who would be willing to do this, but everyone I think of has other jobs that will require them to be other places during the necessary hours. If anyone reading this would be interested in the task, please let me know and I would be grovellingly grateful. My rig is a 3-H gooseneck with small front housie, and an automatic extended cab chevy. If you can pull a gooseneck, it's pretty much a no-brainer.
• Order glue-on shells, adhere, and sikaflex.
• Check for sparesie boots and make sure I have what I need.
• Check the horse feed situation and make sure I have what I need (how can Tevis only be five weeks away???)
• Figure out some sunglasses. My prescription ones aren't close to my current prescription and are so scratched they are worthless anyway. Either I get a pair of normal ones and go with fuzzy vision, or buy a pair of clip-on ones to go on my glasses. Or I go without (which I do most of the time when riding anyway) and just wear my glasses at night when my vision really deteriorates to the point that I can't recognise if that's one glow-stick or three.
• Make sure I have enough people elytes (many of my capsules have been carried around in a ziploc on the saddle for two years... and are now elyte powder with empty capsules mixed in. Make sure there are really enough for what I need to consume).
• Stop chewing the skin on the ends of my fingers so that they are raw. This doesn't help anything.

Sockses Report

About 45 minutes after completing the 50 at Red Rock on Saturday, Roo and I were both in the middle of our suppers when I remembered that I'd forgotten to "wrap his legs" - i.e. put on his new sockses (they arrived on Thursday).

So I popped back to trailer, whipped out* the ziploc bag containing the Special Plastic Bag (comes with) and the Sockses and put them on. 

* (from the very small storage space required to store them)

The good thing about the Special Plastic Bag is that when you take off the Gloves-that-went-through-the-cow-swamp, you cover the mucky hooves completely so you don't get goop all over yourself and the new sockses. ...well, OK, I did get some on me, but the sockses stayed clean.

The back sockses are easiest to put on - mostly because the back leg measurements are larger, yet the hooves are smaller. I ended up sort of wadding them up and sliding them over the bag-encased-hoof, then yanking up the wad to the top of his leg and smoothing it down. The front legs were only slightly harder, with the smaller leg-tube/bigger hoof combination (the biggest problem was having to avert my eyes from the offensive not-terribly-attractive "green" colour*).

* (the "green" colour would be fine if Roo wore earth tones. However, he does not.)

Funder-pic from the finish

I deliberately didn't walk him that evening (he was on his Spring Tie, however). The temperatures weren't freezing but it was chilly. Around 4:30 a.m. he woke me up banging around, so I got up and gave him a mush and checked his legs. Looking good. 

The following morning one of the front sockses had slipped down slightly (an inch or so) so I adjusted it, but the others were all where they were supposed to be. He had some light filling in the back legs and even lighter filling in the fronts. We walked around camp a couple of times before being put in the trailer and taken home. 

On the way home I had to stop at Starbucks to try and get rid of a nasty headache. And I had to stop to get NV-cheap diesel. And I had to stop at Cabela's to buy things because the last time I was there was a long time ago. And I had to stop at the Ag Station to fill out the quickie paperwork (more about that later). And I had to stop at the top of the canyon to make myself a sandwich because I was falling asleep.

So in all, it took me about five hours to get him home. 

He hopped off the trailer looking good, with almost no filling. Took out the Special Plastic Bag and removed them from his legs while he grazed in the orchard (had to get pft to hold him still because he kept wandering off) - legs look good and weren't warm the way they sometimes feel after being unwrapped.

My conclusion:

• Super easy to use - take five mins to put all four on, and five minutes to take them all off again
• Appreciate that you can check their legs while the sockses are on by feeling through the sock (or you can peel it up/down to inspect the leg)
• Don't overheat the legs
• When you take them off, you just stuff them back in the ziploc bag - no rewinding necessary

I'm not convinced they'd work so well with a horse that fills a lot after a ride. Be interesting to try them on Uno who is more prone to filling, but as far as offering light support, as well as massaging my guilty conscience, they did the job perfectly.

Monday morning, Roo's legs didn't look like they'd done anything. 

I'm a bit pathetically hobbly, though.

* * *

The Ag Station experience was interesting. I quizzed a bunch of people extensively beforehand about what was required, and was reassured it was all OK (despite dithering on my part). And sure enough, I pulled up to the Ag Station 'gate' and the lady said:

"D'you have livestock?".

"One California horse," I said.

"OK, she said, I just need a health certificate or a Coggins, and fill out this information [hands me a slip of paper on which to write my truck-n-trailer licence plate numbers, my name, address, and a contact telephone number] and take it into the office."

The man in the office was nice as can be - transcribed my information into his big book (presumably this is so when there's a major outbreak of horse-leg-falling-off they'll be able to contact me to tell me about it), stamped my Coggins with his dated Ag Station stamp, handed me back my slip of paper "for next time" and off we went again. 

It was the "health certificate OR Coggins" that was the important part. Up until then, I'd decided that my days of popping over to NV to ride for the day were over. 

Good to know.

Cripes (in which I gag over hay prices)

For the last few months we've been buying hay from the local feed store in Garden Valley. I say "we" - actually pft has been doing it. It's just a couple of miles down the road, so he can easily nip out, fill up the hay trailer and be back home before he even notices he left.

Unfortunately, the last batch of orchard grass/alfalfa (usually a 90/10 mix) had gone bananas and the ratios were flipped. Of course, the pones thought this was most wondrous and proceeded to gobble the sweeties hay down in large quantities, adding to their already whale-like proportions.

But with Fergus being prepped for 20 Mule Team 100, eating calcium-laced alfalfa wasn't going to fly. An excellent way to develop an unhealthy dose of thumps half-way through the ride when his body tries to resupply and wonders how to do so (apparently the body gets stupid about such things if you provide large amounts of calcium from an outside source and forgets how to make its own).

So on Saturday off we went to Auburn with the truck. We weighed the empty truck, we had them half fill it with fine orchard grass (and it better be fine at $22.99 a 115 lb bale) for the working good pones (Fergus and Jackit), reweighed truck, and then had them finish the load off with "diet hay" (meadow grass at $16.99 a 115 lb bale) for the fatties. With 28 bales on the truck, this is probably the most expensive load of hay I've ever bought.

Yikes.