My First Endurance Dream

I rode yesterday evening working on hill sets. Gem was pretty blah about the whole thing although she still put in 13 mph uphills and worked up a sweat. All in all though she just felt kind of blah.

There were plenty of reasons: it was 6:30 pm before I tacked up, I pulled her away from her lovely grass hay while Pete stood and pigged out, the sun was setting and it was getting colder by the minute  and she just in general hates the arena and hates repetition. Still, all those reasons didn't stop me from driving home thinking that her saddle wasn't fitting right anymore, the shoes were bothering her, she wasn't fit enough, we were never going to finish 100 miles and on and on and on.

My mind is awful like that.

I went to bed and dreamed my first ever endurance dream.

I was at the 100 and it started at 0700. I was overly confident and figured that I didn't need the full 24 hours allotted and could therefor sleep in a little. At 0900 I finally got around to tacking up and everyone was giving me a hard time about starting 2 hours late which essentially wasted an entire loop. I didn't care. I had been tired and I knew we would still have 22 hours which was all we needed.

Then I woke up so I have no clue if my cocky dream self was able to finish the ride or not. Heck, in real life they wouldn't even let me start 2 hours late!

Anyway...so there is that. This ride is fairly always on my mind in one form or the other. I'm either pretty happy with the way things are going or feeling dread and completely sure that we will get pulled. The one factor that worries me the most is saddle fit. I have no real reason to worry about it. She has never been back sore. No white hairs. She has competed in this saddle for 125 miles with all As. I think it weighs so heavily on my mind of two reasons

1) she has been a saddle fitting nightmare in the past and saddle fit always worries me in general

2) it is something I have no means to change and no real control over at the moment. With all As in the past and no current issues, I have no reason to go off the deep end and start finding a saddle a month out from the ride so this is the saddle we will be riding in. I don't have the money to purchase a back up saddle, so if she gets sore we are screwed. Having no real control over it makes it a point of stress and so my brain is focusing on it.

4 weeks stand between me and this ride and I just hope that my nerves let me survive to the starting line. Once I am on her it will all go away. It will be just getting through from vet check to vet check and seeing what happens. Until then, my brain is in overactive mode worrying needlessly.