Points Well Taken

 This was posted by a FB friend/fellow aged endurance rider who's got about a decade on me..."Hello, pain, my old friend!" - 

100 Miles to Auburn

2d ·

For one reason or another, I have been in a lot of pain much of this year, back pain, leg pain, pain the source of which I have no idea, and pains that are at this point old friends, but occasionally come and stay a little bit longer than I would like. At first, I thought the source was the weight I gained when I quit dieting to get my weight down for Tevis. Make no mistake. I gained quite a bit of that weight back and enjoyed putting on almost every pound but when I realize that it might be causing the pain I was in, I went back on the diet and I’m now just about back down to my Tevis weight. I’m happy about the weight loss, but the pain hasn’t gone away.

The next stop was my pain doc, who didn’t have anything to offer except stuff I’m not willing to undergo yet, strike two. In August, it had gotten so bad that I began to despair of being able to ride endurance anymore, at least at the 50 mile distance. When I didn’t finish the Detroit Horsepower ride, although the pain wasn’t the primary cause, I did sit down and have a long discussion with the riding buddy to see if he had any idea of things that I might do.

Along with the previously stated suggestions to improve my riding style, he did make one rather surprising suggestion. He told me I needed to ride more, not less. As the pain began to take over my thoughts, I had begun adding “rest days“ into my routine until I was barely riding enough to keep myself in some sort of shape, and the horses were only marginally ready to do 50 mile rides. He thought that was a mistake. He suggested that I ride at least 5 to 6 days a week and attempted to do it for longer and longer periods of time. You should treat it like your job. He said “I know you. When you were a doctor you went to work if you didn’t feel good. You went to work if you were sore from working on the farm the day before. You went to work no matter. Well, I think you need to ride through this, not rest through it. Settle down and go to work.”

So that’s what I’ve been trying to do. Today, for the first time, I think I saw some improvement from it. I took Shiloh out today for a 17 1/2 mile ride out on a trail just 15 minutes from my house. We covered it in two hours and 35 minutes. Shiloh was darn near perfect . He stayed smooth. He stayed round, He pushed with his back end. He covered rough ground like it wasn’t there. In short, he felt like every fantasy I’ve ever had of him. I had worked Max over the same trail yesterday and close to the same distance. But I noticed this morning when I got out of bed hat I wasn’t particularly sore. I had no more pain than usual when I mounted Shiloh and when we finished our workout, I was able to care for him without great difficulty. These may sound like small triumphs but triumphs they are, make no mistake. Maybe the riding buddy’s onto something. He’s going to be insufferable.