Day 6
We were up and out early of HS15 on day 6. Two fabulous little black ponies, almost like Welsh Section As, for those of you that have known me a long time they reminded me of Sausage (for those of you that haven’t this was a very strangely named naughty little pony that I used to ride when I was 12, never thought I would ride anything like that again!!!!!). They were incredibly quick and had great stamina. The leg was really mountainous though so even with these two it wasn’t the fastest.
What we noticed on day 6 was that the pain stated to dull. We had been told by previous competitors that you will go through a pain barrier and that from about day 4 the pain would start to lessen. For me this didn’t happen until day 6 but it is true that your body starts to either numb the pain or get so used to it so that you just stop noticing it as much. We also started to notice at this point that every time you got on a new horse something different would hurt, right knee one leg, left ankle the next, right shoulder the next. I think we had started to shift our weight and riding style to compensate for the pain so each leg meant that something different would hurt. It became a bit of joke with me and Jeanette as to what started to hurt next.
HS16 was busy, there were quite a lot of riders there when we arrived. There weren’t many horses to choose from and when I picked mine I was told that I could have him because he was buddies with Jeanette’s pick and therefore I would be able to leave the station… So we left the station and everything was fine he was a little knappy but nothing difficult. At about the 1km mark we were cantering along next to each other and suddenly he took a left turn to head back to the station! So we did a 360 and caught Jeanette up. As we continued on the leg this little 360 antic happened several times up until about the 7/8km point, with both of us laughing hard every time as it just came out of nowhere, she’d just carry on and I’d do a little circle and rejoin her and we carry on straight again until the next time he decided he wanted to go and rejoin his herd.
This leg had no fresh water but had a well. We could see the well from about 5km out and as we approached we could see another rider, as we watched this rider dismounted so we couldn’t make out if if was from the derby or not. As we got there we realised that it was another competitor, her horse didn’t want a drink so she had dismounted and removed it’s bit, although this had also meant it’s bridle, (an interesting idea!) so now it was eating grass and as you can imagine not so keen on being re-bridled. Whilst this would have been a good tactic in most endurance races, this was a semi-wild pony… We knew that if we left she would have no chance getting the bridle back on as her horse would want to come with us, so we waited, and waited, and about 15/20 mins later she finally succeeded, and off we went again. I would point out that the reason that neither Jeanette or I dismounted to help was because neither of our horses had been particularly easy to mount so we didn’t want the risk of not being able to get back on.
We ploughed on through HS17 to HS18 as fast as we could as we wanted to complete another 4 stations by the end of the day. We had two big, chunky horses, not like anything we had seen to this point or saw for the rest of the race. The leg was quite hilly and whilst they were pretty fit they weren’t that fast, but we made it, and when we reached HS18 we were told that the riding time had been extended to 9pm so we did a quick change, literally just refilling water and off we went again.
We both had pretty fine, race horse types for this leg so flew along to start with. We were following a river but knew there were a couple of bridges and a river crossing on the leg. One of the guys at HS18 that was taking a carry forward suggested that we took the direct route and cross the river early so that we got to the end quicker. Given all the rain that we had had at the beginning of the race and reports of previously flooded stations we decided that that wasn’t a very good idea. What we found out later was that two other people had attempted this and it didn’t go so well for them, horses swimming, getting swept down stream etc… To GoPro footage doesn’t quite do it justice! When we got to the river crossing we had people waiting telling us exactly where to go and where the shallowest points were. It was still deep enough to fill your boots… We were really glad that this had been our last leg of the day and not our first as the puddle in your boots was pretty unpleasant. And on we went again.
Although we had been given an extended time of 9pm the sun set at about 8:30 and by 8:45 you were riding by the light of an almost new moon and the ground was rocky. Luckily the run into the HS19 was flat so we had seen the station about 7/8km out before it had got dark so we just headed for the lights. As it started to get dark a lone rider appeared out of nowhere and then disappeared again which was a little disconcerting. About 5 mins later two other riders appeared. It turned out these were the owners of the horses that we were riding. They had clearly decided that we were going too slowly and that they wanted to get their horses home. So in the pitch black we were basically herded at speed into the station, never mind our need to reduce our horses’ heart rates before we got there! Jeanette’s horse had tired by this point so one of the riders actually took the tie line and dragged her along… We all had a bit of a laugh when we got into the station, our vet was very understanding and realised that we had had no choice in our final 20 mins riding speed. The heart rates weren’t too high and were going down sufficiently so we were signed in and the herders left with their horses!
Day 7
HS19 was busy, we had managed to catch up with people that we hadn’t seen since the start line. This was the first time that getting to the end actually started to feel achievable. There were only 3 days left and whilst we ideally still wanted to complete 4 legs on days 7 and 8 we felt like we were getting horses that we could do that on and with the extended riding time it actually started to sink in that we might actually finish the race. There was a real change in mindset at this point, and it actually started to become enjoyable, well not all of it as you will see from the below…
We got out early, riding now starting at 6am rather than 6:30am, and got going not far behind Joel and Nicolette that we hadn’t seen since start camp. It was during this leg that we realised that actually we just weren’t riding our horses hard enough. We kept up with them for about half the leg but in the end they ended up out of sight. By this point in the race however, although the pain had reduced, we just weren’t physically able to keep up with them, although I’m sure our horses could have…
HS20 was crazy! There were loads of competitors not too far ahead of us, their horses were being tacked up as we arrived and they all seemed loopy, people were switching out their horses, being bolted with, falling off before they had even left and all sorts! Jeanette and I decided that we’d just let everyone get out of the way, have some food and then sort ourselves out once most of the pack had cleared out. At this point we were starting to realise that we preferred riding at the back of the pack, not having to wait for vets, herders etc at every station, as we were having to do now that we had caught up with everyone else. We’d also got into a bit of a rhythm with our riding so riding with other people, the way they rode, didn’t always suit us. Once everyone had cleared out we asked the herders to pick us two horses. Both stood to be tacked up and didn’t have any issues with the saddles and saddle bags. So off we went, I had a tall grey that was the closest to a horse that I had ridden. He was lovely, had a really long gait (in comparison to what I had ridden so far) and a really comfortable fast trot. This was the first horses in days that I could trot on with ease! This was a nice flat leg and he was my favourite horse to this point so it was great.
At HS21 we met up with Charmaine. She had got lost and ended up going over a mountain so even though she had left HS20 about 30 mins before us she ended up coming into HS21 just after us. The 3 of us then decided to ride on together. This leg was a nightmare! In the middle there was a bog which the track took you straight through! We couldn’t believe that the track was taking us through this so spent ages trying to work out if there was a way round. All our horses were small and quite fine and at one point Jeanette’s horse sunk up to it’s rump in the mud, but it sorted itself out without being at all bothered by the situation! Horses are picked from the areas that we were riding through so they are used to the terrain and that really showed on this leg. By the time we had got through this however they were pretty tired so the final 15km were pretty slow.
One more leg to complete to round off the day. We had 3 super speedy horses and off we went. Unfortunately control was a little bit of a problem for all 3 of us and navigating therefore became challenging. We went the wrong way within the first 5km and had to make a bit of a detour. Once we had found our way back to the track we were caught up by Saif and Manuel. It turns out that they had had some difficulties in the bog as well and we had ended up overtaking them. We hadn’t seen them though which shows how big an area we were covering… The 5 of us rode on to HS23 in good time. This was a pretty easy leg and we all had good horses so we made it just before dark.
So 2 days to go and we had 6 legs left. The plan was to complete 4 the next day and then only have 2 to complete on the final day meaning we should be finished by lunchtime. It all seemed possible now…
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