out the loop together.” With this reasoning I imagine how I will simply
take the lead coming into the fi nish and she’ll realize she should drop back behind the superior horse. Unfortunately, then I imagine her version: “I think I should cross fi rst because my horse has been pulling hers all day. We come into the vet check and my horse is excited because he’s so motivated, so it takes him a lit le longer to come down, but then she drags her feet down the trail waiting for me to show up and drag her horse for her. Obviously, she would still be shuffl ing down loop 3 without me. I should defi nitely fi nish fi rst.” So, when the fi nish line comes in sight, knowing how management dislikes ties, I’ll say something stupid but generous like “You can fi nish fi rst.” In which case they never thank me, they simply look at me as if they’re thinking, “Well duh!” I’m sure some of you are thinking, “Why is this
such a dilemma? Just race in!” T e answer is, “Be- cause!” BECAUSE in the unlikely circumstance that I should round the turn for home competing with a person I don’t like, riding a four-legged rocket that is prepared to race in for the win, I have no doubt that a 70-year-old grandma will have fi nished just ahead of me and be blocking the fi n- ish line with all her grandchildren celebrating her having survived a hip replacement, heart at ack, chemotherapy and menopause. Should I choose to scat er them like quail and cross the line fi rst I will then fi nd it’s my riding partner’s birthday, and the anniversary of the day her favorite horse
died in a truck wreck with her fi ancé, a war hero who urged her to ride “in memory of their love” on this weekend forever. I’ve found that if I race anyone in I will spend
weeks reliving every moment that person waited while my horse fi nished drinking or saved me from missing a turn. I’ll fi nd it hard to make eye contact with them at the ride meeting and wonder if I have earned the dreaded title “jerk.” For all these reasons, I’ll probably say the words that everyone seems to be expecting these days: “Want to tie?” Tying can be a controversial subject. To some
it makes perfect sense. If two riders have paced together all day, waiting for each other at water stops, catching each other’s horses when they get dumped, sharing a sponge when one forgot theirs at camp, it’s been something of a team eff ort and makes perfect sense for them to fi nish as one. To others, especially the old timers, tying is for weenies. It’s the ultimate cop-out and proof that two riders are just industrial-strength trail riders, not endurance racers! I never realized just how seriously the old tim-
ers had taken the racing aspect of the competition to heart until I joked at a campfi re that it seems like every Hollywood version of an endurance race has riders trying to kick each other off their horses, beating each other with crops, running each other into culverts and all sorts of dirty tricks. An old timer on the other side of the fi re smiled nostalgi- cally and sighed, “I miss those days.” I was intrigued. “So, you really tried that hard
to win? How did that work?” I asked. “Well, when the manager fi red the gun (they used to fi re a gun to start us in those days) we took off , and we tried to stay in front. “So, you just ran the whole way?” I asked incredulously. “Well, we tried that for a while but that don’t work real good. So we got to where we’d just run’em from a mile or so out, but then they dropped the pulse from 72 to 64 to fi nish and sometimes it was hard to make that so we started just running them the last 100 yards or so, but then they started that “sound at the trot” for completion thing and that was just one more problem. “T en they started fussing about people get ing
run over when we’d race through camp and they moved the fi nish line out to the middle of nowhere where nobody ever sees you race in anyway. I reckon that’s how we got where we are today, a bunch of tying weenies.” I guess she’s right, but my horse is sound and
the person I paced with all day is still speaking to me. As far as I’m concerned, that makes me a winner.
Angie and her husband Bill defi nitely live their lives on the “lighter side” of the trail in Wildwood, Georgia. Contact Angie at
rides2far@gmail.com to or-
der her book, T e Lighter Side of Endurance.
WWW.TRAILBLAZERMAGAZINE.US • December 2011 | 11
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