A scene of family happiness at Waredaca. Photo courtesy of GRC Photo.
Waredaca Horse Trials is vamping up the facilities, and taking your rider feedback to heart with lots and lots of new improvements.
Amongst many other things, they are vowing to aerate the cross country courses and warmups to greater extent and include watering portions of the tracks, introducing Jeff Kibbie as the course designer for the upper levels with guidance from non other than David O’Connor, adding new and fresh show jumps for a fun new look, and promoting a new fundraising effort for breast cancer at the Waredaca Three Day in the fall.
Don’t forget to stop by the Waredaca Brewing Company for some delicious beers, non alcoholic drinks and snacks as well. This is what I like to see, events delighting in improvements, and competitors benefitting in a big way! Keep up with all the latest Waredaca news on Facebook here.
U.S. Weekend Preview:
Mystic Valley Hunt Club H.T. [Website]
Virginia CCI, CIC, & H.T. [Website] [Entry Status] [Ride Times]
Flora Lea Spring H.T. [Website] [Entry Status]
Paradise Farm H.T. [Website] [Entry Status]
Willow Draw Charity H.T. [Website] [Entry Status/Ride Times]
The Spring Event at Woodside H.T. [Website] [Entry Status/Ride Times]
Equestrians Institute H.T. [Website] [Entry Status/Ride Times]
May-Daze at the Park H.T. [Website] [Entry Status/Ride Times]
Coconino Spring H.T. [Website] [Entry Status/Ride Times]
News From Around the Globe:
Kentucky Equine Research and EN are teaming up to host the Great KER Fitness Challenge this spring! Download the free KER ClockIt Sport app for your phone and record your rides for a chance to win a $100 gift card to shop.kerx.com, an EcoGold Secure XC Saddle Pad, a lesson with your choice of Bruce Davidson, Liz Halliday-Sharp, or Dom or Jimmie Schramm; and a feature story about you and your horse on EN. Entries close May 31! [Contest Details]
Please, for all that is good and holy in this world, read Lorraine Jackson’s love letter to Lani. Don’t know who Lani is? Oh, maybe just the weirdest racehorse of all time that you somehow missed in the Kentucky Derby and maybe just got a whiff of in the Preakness. In short, “Like so many other misunderstood artists of our time, people fail to grasp your work and are lost in the crazy of it. Like Kanye West trying to tweet the creator of Facebook, on, you know, Twitter: It doesn’t make sense, but we guarantee Mark Zuckerberg heard about it.”. [An Open Love Letter to Lani]
Best of Blogs: Amateurs Like Us: Crooked Comes Easy
Calling all self professed Andrew Nicholson experts: can you cut the mustard with this Horse & Hound quiz? Mr Stickability himself has some interesting factoids, some of which you might not be privy to, even if you’re a bonafide specialist. Remember Spinning Rhombus? What was his weak point? [Andrew Nicholson Pop Quiz]
KER ClockIt™ Session of the Week – Hill Work for Conditioning Your Horse
This week’s KER ClockIt™ Sport session highlights the importance of hill work when conditioning your horse.
The 80-90% range (yellow) is the zone where many human athletes train to improve fitness. In this zone, there begins to be a significant level of anaerobic energy generation and blood lactate starts to accumulate.
Multiple KER treadmill studies have shown that exercising horses on an incline greatly increases work intensity as measured by oxygen consumption, heart rate, and lactate production. These studies have shown that at a canter speed, a 1% increase in grade increases a horse’s heart rate 6 bpm–the same effect on heart rate as increasing speed 35 m/min on a level treadmill. Therefore, equal heart rates can be obtained by cantering horses on a 6% grade at 490 m/min as from galloping on the flat at 700 m/min.
This session was shared as part of the Share Your Sessions Sweepstakes. Share your ClockIt sessions for a chance to win—and you could be featured here! For more information, visit the website.
