Liz Taylor

Enigmatika successfully completes her second endurance ride!

After her success at Ludlow we decided to take SG Enigmatika to Barbury Castle Endurance ride for her second outing to progress through her Novice season, opting to undertake the 32km Novice CR route.
Barbury Castle is a lovely big venue, with plenty of space but also quite open and potentially excitable for a young horse, where the horseboxes are parked on top of the hill the horses can see the start which can wind them up sometimes, so I wasn’t sure quite what Enigmatika would think of this! As predicted she walked out of the box nice and calmly, however she then saw the full and excitable venue and we bounced and jumped our way down to the vetting area.....! Her heartrates reflected her slightly excited thoughts on the venue, and we vetted at a (high) heart rate of 56bpm, she was visibly excitable so I wasn’t worried about this heart rate, as there was an obvious reason for it.
We bounced our way back to the trailer and tacked up and as soon as my bum hit the saddle....she relaxed!
Once again, my ultimate aim with this horse is for her to ‘race’ and do ER’s, hopefully up to 160km and hopefully to an international standard. Therefore my plans with these CR’s is to use them to give her experience, and to teach her how to settle herself into a nice economical, ground covering rhythm. She needs to learn to travel sensibly in all company (however big the pack, however fast or slow) and cope with differing ground conditions.
So, the plan for Barbury was to get around in a time that was suitable for the horse and within the ‘qualifying time’. I didn’t want to go off like a bat out of hell (this is a good fast ride with lots of fantastic cantering tracks so would be all too easy to do!) and then have to slow up / walk in for the final few miles because I had worn her out, as this will teach her nothing, so we had to set a pace that was acceptable for Ennie and try to be as consistent with it as possible.
I started just behind a pack of horses and set Ennie into a good balanced medium speed trot, she happily allowed these horses to go ahead of her and disappear without any fuss, and maintained her rhythm. The route is beautiful, using some lovely parts of the Ridgeway, and also some wonderful long grassy stretches next to gallops...and barely any roadwork. We trotted our way around the route, allowing her to bounce into a good springy, light and balanced canter on the good going, she caught up and passed horses in front of her and just continued to maintain that rhythm. She seemed to find it easy! Before I knew it I was back at the venue with a horse who felt like she could (and wanted to) go around again.
We took her for vetting and she passed with flying colours, bouncing up the trot up and back, and having a final speed of 13kph, which for a novice I am very pleased with.
She gave me an absolutely super ride, and appeared to find it rather easy! We have now booked her into Cranham ride this weekend, which is a bit more of a hilly and technical ride, and we have upped the distance to 40km...so we’ll see how she gets on, I certainly won’t be aiming for the speed we achieved at Barbury, just another sensible and consistent speed, that suits the terrain, for the duration of the ride.
Update on the foals – they are all growing well and enjoying tucking into their mum’s Alfa-A (much to Falaina’s disgust...she doesn’t like sharing!) We have decided to name them EST Minikaa (Karaanza’s filly) and EST Faliesha (Falaina’s filly), they are absolutely beautiful and seem to have grabbed the best bits from both parents, watching them when they are let out in the mornings you would think they are in training for racing not endurance! These ladies will probably be taken to a BEF Futurity Event next year to get them properly evaluated and see what the professionals think of them!

Liz