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But it takes more than being a fancy mover to win endurance races, and Sherif also showed me the kind of energy that says "I want to give a little bit extra all the time." He was willing and bold, not afraid to jump a fallen tree or go through mud or water. He was also sensitive, which I like, because I ride with a light rein and I hate having to drive a horse all the time.
But every horse has a hole in him, and I could have driven a truck and trailer through Sherif's. The flip side of his sensitive, willing temperament (and the reason he was virtually green at eight) was his goosey, hyper, unpredictable behavior. He was hard to catch in pasture (still is); he'd jump when you threw a blanket over him; and when you brought the saddle over, he'd arch his neck, snort, and tense every muscle in his body. The worst thing about him, though, was his deeply ingrained habit of what I call "phase shift" shies: He'd disappear from over here and, at the same moment, reappear twenty feet away. Not only was he unpredictable, he was quick. He'd dumped nearly everybody who had ever been on his back, and some of those falls had been incredibly hard.
The first order of business was to get Sherif trained to the aids. Unschooled, he didn't have a clue what leg meant; trained, when he started to shy to the right, I'd be able to close that door with my right leg and right indirect rein. Schooling in the arena and at dressage clinics occupied most of Sherif's training schedule that first year.
Conditioning Sherif was a much more delicate matter. If I handled it wrong, he could hurt himself badly, because he had the conformation and the desire to go fast--and with just a little bit of riding, he would be superficially fit enough to do just that. Soft tissues, such as skeletal muscles and heart, condition within about six months; Sherif's legs would be able to take the long strides, his muscles would propel him, and he's pump enough blood to sustain himself. But this was a horse who had been standing in a paddock for eight years, and he had never had the basic toning up that young horses get when they're running at pasture or getting started under saddle. His soft tissues would be conditioned, but his semi-hard tendons and ligaments (which take up to two years to remodel) and his bones ( which take up to three years to increase in density and strength) wouldn't be.
 The trick was to give Sherif enough work to get him in shape, but no so much that I overstressed him and caused unsoundness. My solution was trail riding, what we call LSD work-Long Slow Distance. I did a lot of this myself, my best friend did some, and once schooling made Sherif more dependable, so did my clients; I produce horseback-riding vacations for a living, and Sherif had to earn his keep. With eighty other horses on the place, he started learning how to travel in company, and he did many thirty, forty, and fifty-mile days in the course of the business.
The next year, 1986, was business as usual, but in 1987 Sherif began his competitive career with a bang, by finishing first in a fifty-mile ride at Cuneo Creek in Humboldt County, California. That July, Sherif and I attempted the Tevis Cup ride for the first time. The Tevis is considered the toughest of any endurance test. Sherif was still a very green horse, but I thought he could handle it because he'd been over the entire hundred miles of the trail twice during the Tevis Trail Training Seminar I produce. But during the race, he fell apart. He was nearly uncontrollable. He kept shaking his head and jerking the reins and shying, jumping clean off the trail eleven times in the first sixty miles. As difficult as he was, though, he was fast, and we were in fourth place at about fort-eight miles out. I was putting a water bottle back in its pouch when it flapped against the side of Sherif's neck and he took off down the trail bucking like a rodeo bronc. I stayed on, but about an eighth of a mile and several years of my life flashed by before I got him stopped.
Twelve miles later, at the sixty-mile vet check, the vets thought Sherif was maybe just a little bit gimpy, and I called it quits. He'd probably stung himself in his bucking spree, because a few hours later he was perfectly sound. But pulling him was the right thing to do: He'd been very hard to rate, and a green horse just shouldn't go as fast as he insisted on going. Four days later I leased him to a client for a week-long riding vacation.
In 1988, Sherif seemed to hit his stride, winning a series of fifty-mile rides. But a hundred-mile race is a very different breed of cat. When we tried Tevis again, Sherif was more manageable than in '87, but he was still shying and fighting me and stumbling and trying to jerk the reins out of my hands. In a hundred-particularly a race as hard as Tevis, where you climb a total of 17,000 feet--a horse just has to go more slowly or there won't be anything left of him long before the race is over. I wasn't surprised when he was a little bit off on the left front and the vets pulled him.
Was I demoralized? Not at all. Anywhere from a third to a half of the horses that start Tevis don't finish. Sherif hadn't done as many hundreds as most horses in the race, and he was just having an uncommonly difficult time figuring it all out. So in January 1989, when I started thinking about Tevis again, I felt that if I could get him calm enough to stay in the race and make it to the finish line, we'd be right up there in the running.
Sherif had enjoyed a two-month layoff at the end of the ranch season, so January and February were devoted to light riding, such as walking down to the beach and through the sand two or three time a week. We usually only went about three miles an hour, and for no more than an hour and a half, but sand has a strenuous conditioning effect. Once a week we went on a longer, faster ride, about fifteen or twenty miles, averaging about seven miles per hour, which meant we were doing some ten-mph trotting, a little eighteen-mph cantering, and a lot of three-mph walking.
In March we added slow walking downhills and fast extended-trot or strong hand-gallop uphill, a conditioning technique that is just the opposite of what we do in a race. Going fast downhill is fairly easy on the cardiovascular system but very stressful on the legs, causing concussion, flexion, and overflexion of the joints. If I ran Sherif downhill during his training, I'd risk his soundness and achieve very little in the way of cardiovascular conditioning. Going fast uphill, on the other hand, stressed the legs very little but was very strenuous cardiovascularly. It was just what I needed during training, but it would take too much out of him during a race.
In April Sherif and I accompanied my eleven-year-old daughter in a fifty. We rode it as an easy, relaxed trail ride. In late May, my dressage instructor, Doug Downing, rode Sherif in another fifty. It was Doug's first endurance ride, and probably one of his first trail rides, but he kept Sherif calm and under control the entire time, and still came in second and won Best Condition.
By June, Sherif was what I would call fit and ready, both physically and mentally, so I backed off on the conditioning. He carried clients on two eight-day vacation rides, and in July guest rode him on the Tevis Trail Training Seminar. Two weeks before Tevis, I rode him on a twenty-mile trek. Then, as a final workout, and with a guest who was an experienced eventer from back East, we put in another very fast twenty miles in lieu of the last fifty-miler I might have ridden to get him peaked. By the time Tevis rolled around on July 22, Sherif was ready! He was of sound mind and very, very fit. We were communicating well, he was listening to me, and--most important of all--he was no longer shying.
I felt he was actually capable of winning this time, but since we'd been pulled twice, my goal was just to complete the ride. I was not going to try to win. I would try to come into the first vet check in about twentieth place, and gradually, as the day wore on, we'd move up. As it turned out, Sherif made my strategy almost impossible to follow.
The race starts in Squaw Valley at 5:00 A.M., and since I was planning a long, slow warm-up, I began tacking up just after 3:00. Things didn't look too good. Sherif had picked up on the excitement, and he was a nervous wreck. We had a hard time even getting on the saddle on, partly because the darned thing was so loaded down with weight and equipment.
You have to carry certain things on the trail, like water and a hoof pick, but the rules state that if you want to place in the top ten on Tevis, or qualify for the Haggin Cup for Best Condition, you must weigh in at 165 pounds. Since my tack and I weigh about 120, I have to add forty-five pounds of dead weight. That's difficult, because dead weight is harder for a horse to carry than live weight. Also, many riders get off and run when they can. When a 160-pound man does that, his horse gets a real break. But I only weigh about 105; when I get off and run, my horse is still carrying sixty pounds.
I believe in using as little tack as possible and keeping it simple. If a horse doesn't need a breastplate, why use it? If he doesn't need a crupper, why complicate matters with a crupper? I ride in a Stubben Siegfried saddle on one of those gel-type E pads on top of a trail pad with pockets. I use a breastplate padded with fake fur, a mohair girth, and a halter bridle with a ring under the chin in case I need to tie up my horse. The bit is a broken pelham with a curb chain and double reins, and I use a running martingale. I always wear a helmet, because Sherif has smacked me a couple of times throwing his head.
To make the weight, I had one of those diver's belts sewn to my string girth, and I stuffed the pockets of my trail pad with lead shot. But weight doesn't have to be useless, so I carry a pommel bag stuffed with leg wraps, a big Buck knife, a hoof pick, nippers and wire cutters for showing emergencies, and a great big flashlight. I also carry electrolytes and on-board heart monitor, and I wear a sports stopwatch with a face that's big enough to read and shows elapsed time. I always carry water, but water doesn't count towards weight, because you're going to be drinking it and splashing it on the horse as you go.
It took three people to help me lift the saddle onto Sherif's back because he was so squirrelly, and we were lucky to get the girth tightened before the saddle went flying. Then we put on neoprene splint boots. Sherif doesn't normally interfere and injure his legs, but he was pulled from Tevis twice for lameness' he may have caused himself. Splint boots are one more thing that can go wrong, but neoprene boots are light and aren't supposed to rub, so I put them on all four legs for protection.
Sherif is used to having things around his legs-- I always haul him in trailer wraps--but as soon as we put the boots on, he started bucking. He got away from us and tore across the porta-corral, nearly creaming the other two horses in there. (As the day wore on, it would turn out that Sherif may just have known something about those splint boots that I didn't.) When I got on, he was an absolute maniac, cantering in place with his neck arched to his chest, sticking his tongue out the side of his mouth, rolling his eyes back in his head, and trembling. He looked like an alien from outer space.
I try to spend at least fifteen minutes trotting before a fifty-mile race, and at least half an hour before a hundred-miler. Even though it was pitch black and there were 188 other horses milling around, we did leg-yields and shoulder-ins and anything I could think of in an effort to get Sherif paying attention and thinking about me. But as we headed for the starting line, he wasn't much better; at any moment, I thought, he might break out in a horrible sweat and tie up. Finish? I didn't even think we were going to start. But he kept moving and sort of "passaged" up the hill in a slow, prancy trot.
At the starting line we had to wait about ten minutes, and there was such a crush of horses that I had to turn him downhill, away from the start, to keep him from rearing, cantering in place, and bumping into the horses next to him. People just love that. You know they're thinking, "Lady, can't you control your horse?"
Facing downhill, Sherif stood stock-still and quivered, which worried me even more: In that lordotic posture, with his rear end up and his head in the air, a horse is really at risk of tying up. I kept doing what I could by working the reins to supple him, but I felt him trembling, and I wondered when I was going to have to say, "Oh well, I guess we're going to scrub." Then the race started.
Sherif took off fast and wanted to go faster, but with a three-thousand foot elevation gain in the first four and a half miles, I knew he would burn himself out if he did. Thanks to the jointed pelham, I had some brakes, but he fought me every step of the way, shaking his head to jerk the reins out of my hands and stumbling to his knees a couple of times when I pulled him to a walk in boulder-strewn footing.
Fifteen miles out, when we went over Cougar Rock, another disaster struck. Sherif took the sheer incline easily, like a cavalletti pole, but his lunge up and over was enough to start the weighted trail pad sliding out from under the saddle. All I could think of was that if the pad pulled free and flapped down around his legs, he would jump off the cliff with me on him. The footing was horrible and he was flying along the trail in an extended trot, but I reached around with my right hand and tried to squinch the pad back under the saddle. That didn't work, so I held all four reins in my left hand, hung onto the weighted pad with right hand, and we went roaring down the trail and slaloming around corners, coming into the first watering place in an incredible fourth or fifth place.
I jumped off Sherif next to the water trough and yelled, "Can somebody please help me--tack adjustment!" Two people ran up, grabbed Sherif's reins, and started stroking and talking to him while I fixed the pad. Sherif took a long drink, urinated, sighed deeply, and right before my eyes turned into a different horse.
We always have a lunch break at this spot on the Tevis Trail Training Seminar, so Sherif had rested here in the past, and he must have associated the place with relaxation. Even though fifteen horses or so passed us while we stood there, his attention stayed on me. He was finally listening. I rode out in about twentieth place on a horse who was for all practical purposes a new guy, and we had a wonderful time, effortlessly passing about fifteen horses in the twelve miles before the vet check at Robinson Flat. Sherif just flowed along in a very strong trot, uphill and downhill, and we arrived in fifth place. I didn't even care that my twentieth-place arrival strategy was out the window, because I was riding a very mellow, very unstressed horse. Thanks to those darned splint boots, though, the mellow didn't last long.
My pit crew and I follow a pretty set procedure at vet checks. We encourage Sherif to drink as much as he can. We put tepid or cool, but not cold, water on the ventral surfaces of the body--the jugular groove, the inside of the legs, the belly, the flanks, and between the hind legs--but not on top, where the major muscle masses can cramp up. We give him electrolytes to increase his water intake, and a bran mash loaded with chopped carrots, apples, and some barley corn. We wrap plastic bags filled with ice cubes on his lower legs, alternating them with liniment and massage to increase circulation, and we do really deep massage on his gaskins and the big muscles on his buttocks.
At Robinson Flat, we wrapped the ice on Sherif's legs and he was OK while he was standing still--but as soon as he took a step, he kicked the bags off. I figured they'd been on for long enough, so I put some liniment on one of his hind legs, and he started kicking out behind like a lippizaner. Then I realized that the back splint boots had rubbed him raw; when the liniment ran into the abrasion, it must have burned like fire. I sponged him off as quickly as I could and massaged his tendons instead. More ice, this time for about eight minutes, and his pulse race plummeted. But just as the vet started checking Sherif's pulse, he stomped. He stomped again and the vet said, "I think he's starting to colic."
I though we were going to be pulled. I tried to explain that I was sure Sherif was stomping because of the liniment. The vet told me to take him over to the grass to see if he'd lie down and roll. Sherif started eating ravenously instead. The vet watched him for a good five minutes. When all of his other signs were all right (pulse 48, respiration 20, capillary refill immediate, skin response immediate, gut sounds adequate, and so on) and he only stomped once or twice more, the vet let us go.
I rode out tied for second place with Ralph Wadsworth of Salt Lake City. Our horses were well matched, and since both of them went through the vet check looking good, we move right along in a long extended trot until we got to a steep mile-long downhill, with solid boulder-rock gravel and very bad footing. We got off and ran the steep miles up (with forty-seven switchbacks) leading to Devil's thumb. The ESPN film crew in their helicopter scared the heck out of me as we traversed the awful washout with its eighteen-inch wide rock trail and three-hundred foot drop on the left, but Sherif didn't even notice the whirly bird of the suspension bridge.
Ralph finally fell back, and about ten mile before Michigan Bluff I caught up with Julie Buxton, the first place rider, on her six-year-old half arab gelding, Ben Ami. Suddenly, Sherif and I were tied for first place. We were not only going to finish, we were going to finish very well indeed. I was high as a kite, and extremely optimistic.
From Michigan Bluff, where Sherif ate ravenously and accepted the ice boots, Julie and I left side by side. We headed down into Volcano Canyon, then back up towards Forest Hill. The trail is very narrow at that point; Julie went first, at a slower pace than I normally do, walking at about three miles an hour an slow-trotting at only about six miles an hour. When we crossed the river at the bottom and started up the other side, I pushed the pace a bit; there was no need to dawdle unnecessarily and let somebody catch us when we were standing in such a good position. We trotted strongly into Forest Hill together and vetted out virtually simultaneously.
The next stretch of trail, between Forest Hill and Francisco's, is long, hot, and boring, with about a million switchbacks. The footing was good, but it was still daylight and more than a hundred degrees in the canyons, so we led the horses on the steep downs and tailed the ups. We got into the stop-and-go vet check at Francisco's at 6:38-and thanks, again, to those splint boots, I blew it.
 We have two kinds of vet checks in endurance: the mandatory hold and the stop-and-go, or "vet gate." Every horse in the race, from the fittest tot he flabbiest, spends a designated, predetermined length of time at a mandatory hold. At an hour hold, for example, you ride in, the clock starts, and at thirty minutes you report to the vet. You don't ride out again until the hour has elapsed, no matter how good your horse looks...and if the vet thinks he's a tad dehydrated or his capillary-refill time isn't quite fast enough or his pulse is still a little high, you may be there longer. At a stop-and-go, you ride in, bring your horse to the vet when you think he's ready, and ride out when he's declared fit, although the vet may still put a hold on you if he feels your horse has a problem.
The mandatory hold tends to weed out marginal horses that are starting to get into trouble but that might not show their discomfort while they're in the competitive mode. Give them half an hour to stand around, and they begin to feel that ouchy tendon or that crampy rear end. Horses have even been known to vet through, then be brought back to the vet by their riders because they showed signs of discomfort just as their hour was up. This system handicaps fitter horses with fast recovery times, because they end up losing time: With nothing to do but stand or walk around, they get a little chilled and lose their edge.
The stop-and-go, on the other hand, gives fit horses the advantage, particularly when their riders play it smart and slow down in the last quarter-mile into the vet check, undo the girth a few holes, and get off and run. The horses relax, start taking deep breaths, calm down, and do a lot of recovering before they arrive. The trick to the stop-and-go--and this is where you can really get dinged--is calculating your preparation for the vet: You want to go to him as soon as your horse is ready, but no sooner. If you go before your horses meets the criteria, you incur a fifteen-minute penalty--which is exactly what I did.
As soon as we came in, Ben Ami and Sherif went to the water, which was in the shade, and drank really well. Sherif's pulse and respiration dropped like bullets, and I decided I didn't need him to take off his splint boots to help him cool out. I had been doing it all day long, but it was a real pain the neck because I had to tape them together with electrician's tape so they wouldn't fall off on the trail, then cut them off, then retape them.
Sherif looked so good that I let the boots be, and Julie and I went over to the vet together. The vet was in the sunshine, and as soon as he started the pulse check, Sherif started to pant. His respiration's went up, and the vet told me to take a hike--a fifteen-minute hike!
I went right back to the shade, took off the splint boots, and felt Sherif's legs; they were so hot I could barely touch them. I splashed water on them and waited for them to cool down as I watched Julie disappear into the sunset, sixteen mile from the finish line, with a fifteen-minute lead on me.
Just as I was putting the splint boots back on, Steve Shaw and Ty Wadsworth, the third- and forth-place riders, came in. That was very bad, because they are both very competitive riders on wonderful horses, and they rode in very smart; Steve's nine-year-old half-arab gelding, Renegade, was ready to go as soon as he took a drink , and soon caught up with me.
Four miles later, Sherif and Renegade had erased the fifteen minutes I had lost to Ben Ami, catching up to Julie at the river crossing. The three of us rode together from that point to the last stop-and-go at Highway 49. We were getting along famously, waiting for one another and pointing out bad footing; Steve, while sticking right with us, was being a gentleman and a smart competitor by staying behind most of the time. None of us wanted to push the pace. I had the feeling that Ben Ami was going just about as fast as he should go, but Renegade looked great, and I though he could give us a run for the money any time he wanted to. As you'll see, I was right--and it almost cost us the race.
I was the first one out of the last vet check, and I took off up the hill, hooting and hollering and galloping. Sherif knew he was in the lead six miles from the finish line, and I knew I had a lot of horse left. As soon as I was out of sight, I quit grandstanding for the crowd, picking up an extended trot along the slalomy, curvy, narrow trail through the brush. Sherif could keep up that pace for six miles, no problem, and as night fell I was sure we were beyond anybody's reach.
The trail gets very narrow about three and a half miles from the finish, with a sharp drop of hundreds of feet on one side. We were trotting along in the dark when I heard somebody (it turned out to be Steve Shaw) cantering up behind me--I was amazed that anybody had the guts to canter on that trail. When we got out onto No Hands Bridge, more than three hundred feet above the American River, we started racing neck-and-neck and screaming for all we were worth!
Our crews were blocking traffic, honking horns, yelling, and flashing lights, while we just poured it on, going faster and faster. But about two thirds of the way across, I came to my senses and realized that I didn't want to go that fast after ninety-seven miles. I sat up, seesawed the reins, and (with Sherif fighting me every stride) came back down to a trot and waved "No go" to my crew as I watched Steve's back disappear in the dark.
In a way, it was a high point for me. I figured I had lost the race, but I had done the right thing for my horse. And we were still going to finish second, which was better than what I had set out to do. Sherif wasn't thrilled, and he still felt fit and strong. A mile and a half farther on, I saw a big black shape in the trail. At first I though it was a bear, but then I realized it was Steve standing next to his horse. I pulled Sherif up to ask if he needed help, and Steve said something like "We're finished." His horse had run out of gas--but I was so punchy after almost ninety-nine miles that I thought somebody had move the finish line; I started looking around for the cameras. Steve said, "Lari, you've won! Go on. Get out of here!"
I trotted for another half-mile; then, still trying to save my horse, I walked Sherif the last mile up the hill to the finish. Every step of the way, though, I listened for Renegade's hoofbeats and wondered if I was making a mistake by playing it safe again.
There have been plenty of other times in my life when I've done what I thought was right and either nobody noticed or the whole thing blew up in my face. But I was still walking alone when I saw the finish line, and after twelve hours and forty-eight minutes on the trail, Sherif and I galloped in alone--sixteen minutes ahead of Steve and Julie, who came in together. |
