Everyone dies… but not everyone really lives.
William Wallace
As I pondered an appropriate title for this recap I thought it fitting that, on the road to Vermont, my husband stopped to pick up a Garmin Fenix Smartwatch for me as a birthday gift. Next time I might ask if they have a model named: Garmin Victory Lap, or a Garmin Nailed-it…
The Vermont 100 starting line had an eight month lead up from conception to reality — if you don’t count the nine years it took us to crest the first 100 mile finish line in 2023. This was clearly the biggest overall investment in a goal over my decade engaging in equine endurance events.
As the event drew near, I realized the larger the investment, the more pressure to produce a favorable outcome builds. What is the point of doing this if it isn’t to ride over the finish line? Most of us know on some level this is not the whole truth. Still, it is a struggle for the goal driven to not only believe there is more to life than a favorable outcome, but to live (and ride) in the peace that larger reality brings.
I have been binge listening to Jaime & Donna Winship interviews this year and they have been transformational in my life. The insight and questions have challenged me to up my game when it comes to walking in the truth, and it’s meant being real about what I want to believe, what I know in my head, and what is being lived out in my actions – revealed by my emotional system. I have come to realize, that regardless of what knowledge I have accumulated, my emotional system tells on me, and if I slow down and address it, like it or not, I will find what I really believe, and what I’m actually afraid of.
I thought the Vermont trip was a test of what my horse was made of, what I was capable of, and if we had what it took to take on an unknown 100 mile ride, and succeed by crossing the finish line. I was probably wrong.
As the departure neared it seemed like the resistance grew. Vehicle issues, dog fights, horses escaping in a storm, an entire massive batch of dog food is ruined (this was a huge problem actually!), then bad traffic on our first day of travel leaving us sitting in unseasonably hot temperatures for over an hour— which is not ideal for a horse on her way to a 100 mile event. Each disruption gave me pause and as I wondered “what is this about?” I always heard the nudge: Keep going, do the next step until you don’t have one.
I am grateful for the warm welcome from Matt’s family at our layover in PA. Khaleesi had a lovely shaded back yard with grass where I set up her temporary pen, and we enjoyed family time with eggplant and cheesecake!
The second day of travel brought new territory for both of us as we continued onward and on my birthday we arrived in Vermont— through dark clouds and a rain storm that gave way to a cool evening and stunning colors in the sky. We set up camp alone in the area set aside for smaller trailers, near the start and finish line. This evening I will always remember as a moment of beauty and quiet as we had the entire field to ourselves and the glory of Vermont stretched out on all sides of us.
We had arrived.
We woke up to cool breezes and peeking out the tent we watched the grasses dance in the early light. It was sublime and Matt and I took a moment to take in the glory of the last moments of peace and calm we may have for a while. Check in and Vetting in was not available until Friday afternoon, so we puttered about with details, and found a delightful little market and cafe with home made bagels and much needed ice. Camp began to bustle through the day as 450 runners came and went to register for the foot race that would share the trail with us horse riders. When the time came, we checked in with the ride management, then took horse #109 (that’s Khaleesi) to the pre-ride vet inspection.
This is where things began to get disruptive again. K had a resting heart rate of 36BPM which is excellent, and her hydration and overall condition earned A scores. The head vet saw something slightly off in her trot out and asked us to try again. We did. He still thought something was questionable and asked us to trot a third time and included another vet to watch. Not enough to hinder us, but enough to plant a seed of doubt, they marked her card with a “B” and suggested I stay aware of the potential something might be off.
This is not what you want to hear the day before you embark on a single-day 100 mile endurance race.
I mulled over what it could mean. We visited the ride farrier, Howard, who became a new friend! Marcus had warned that her feet were getting soft from such a wet summer, and I wanted to have her nails clenched in case they were getting loose. Howard chatted with us freely in his Scottish lilt as he checked all four feet and added one nail for good measure in a weak spot. He was a positive and kind guy, and didn’t charge us for the time he spent checking the nails. He wished us the best and promised he’d keep his eye out for us through the day.
Still, I had concerns.
It clouded my evening. I was nervous. Do I go out with concerns? Once again I asked the question: what should I know, what do I do about it? And I sensed the reply so clearly: You do the next thing you know to do, until there is no next thing.
We spent some time looking up references for #109 and I held onto the words from Joshua 1:09 that reminded me to have courage and do not fear because God goes with you. Ok then. We show up to the starting line, and we go. We do the next thing until there isn’t a next thing to do.
The runners leave at 4am, and what an experience that was! They line up and hundreds of headlamps jog under the starting line turning up the dirt lane past our camp site with cheers and cowbells. Khaleesi was beside herself with the experience! A line of cheering mass in the dark with headlamps bouncing to and fro. She had never seen anything like it. I had been warned of this and she was walking on lead with me when they departed and it took a moment to get her settled back down.
The trail opened for horses an hour later, and the eleven, 100-mile equine competitors left camp with my mind on the only problem I thought I was facing: would I end up with a lameness issue today? The trail is monstrously hilly from go. The exit from camp is significantly downhill on a gravel road. I had been walking Khaleesi around camp for 15 minutes, but she was not adequately warmed up for these hills and to make matters more concerning, her adrenaline was way up. Her head was in the air like a llama, and her trot felt like a jackhammer. If I had reason to be concerned she might hurt herself, the tension she was packing along with us trying to race at a high speed in the cool pre-dawn was not helping.
I unloaded all my tools to bring her mind back to the present and not run as if for her very survival with the other horses. I was mostly unsuccessful in getting her to relax into the work and had to negotiate with her the best I could. It is common for her to run faster in the morning and I work with her to find a good speed where she is moving freely and soft through her body. Considering the morning was cooler than it had been and her adrenaline was up- I now also worried about potential tie up. Tie up is somewhat mysterious, but the root is usually associated with a horse over running their ability through adrenaline and going into a metabolic state that can be dangerous. This is not something I have worried about with this horse previously, but something about this morning had her running on more adrenaline than I’ve seen.
It took almost 30 minutes to get a more relaxed mental state. We rode on this way for a few miles, now in last place, but I have been there many times and wasn’t concerned. She had leveled out, was trotting beautifully, strong, and relaxed. We may cross the finish line last, but a finish was my goal. We had launched past the danger zone and were well on our way to the first checkpoint at mile 16. This was not a true vet hold, but a 10 minute pass through where the vet gave a quick look as you departed to make sure all systems appeared to be sound.
It was about mile 13 when the unraveling began.
Flying along with a beautiful balanced trot I was enjoying the early morning and greeting the runners we passed, when things went into slow motion. First I felt my left foot was not catch the stirrup bar. Then I realized I was coming off balance and wasn’t able to recover. I reached around Khaleesi’s neck and when it was clear I was going down, I swung myself around her neck and landed on the ground in front of her. She was aware something went wrong and when I landed at her feet she came to a stop above me. I remember my calves both going into a tension spasm, but otherwise I was perfectly fine and so was she. How embarrassing, I thought, and assured the runners who had witnessed the crash that I was totally fine. Next I saw my left stirrup and it’s leather on the ground and realized I hadn’t simply come unbalanced in a poor riding moment, the stirrup had come off the saddle.
My hope as I stood up, was the leather had simply worked its way off the bar it attaches to. The truth was worse. The metal bar itself had sheared off and there was nothing on the saddle to reattach the left stirrup.
I had not planned for this.
In all the potential things that could go wrong. This was not one of the things I had even considered.
I began walking next to K, carrying the stirrup leather in hand and wondered: is this the end for us? Already only 13 miles in? Can we recover?
Again I heard the reminder: do what comes next, until you cannot make another move. Do the next thing. Keep moving.
Service in this area of Vermont is notoriously horrible, but miraculously both Matt (already waiting at the checkpoint) and I (three miles out) had service. The only thing I could think was to try my alternate saddle. However, there were issues:
- 1) the saddle was in the horse trailer at ride camp. Ride camp (I learned then) was 30-35 minutes away from the check point by vehicle. At least an hour round trip.
- 2) the alternate saddle was the exact make and model, but it was a “regular” width. The saddle that I was using that fits her properly with the ideal pad set up is an “X” or a wide width.
The broken piece of metal would cost us around an hour, and it would mean riding in a saddle that was not the right size. An analogy would be if I had two pairs of identical shoes, the ones that work best for me a size 9, and the other pair a size 8.5. In this example we could say I wear the size 9 with thick socks that help protect my feet from blisters and give the comfort I need to run at my best. If I have to switch to the size 8.5, I will have to use thin socks with less protection and will not be as comfortable running.
I walked the three miles into the pit stop and chatted with the vet and land owners while waiting around 30 more minutes for Matt to return with the saddle. We changed the saddle quickly as possible, and trotted down the hill with a green light from the vet to meet everyone at the first vet hold at mile 22.
My first go with the other saddle I had left too much padding and had to stop and get off twice to adjust as the pads, but we moved as fast as we could and arrived at Vet Check 1 to find everyone waiting to help us. The vet was taking the heart rate of the horse as we were pulling off the saddle and her pulse dropped very fast to get our hold clock starting as quickly as possible. She looked great and the vet wondered aloud to us why we had a “B” score for her trot the day before, he thought her trot looked great.
After the 30 minute hold we left with almost zero padding under the saddle, and 22 more miles until the next hold. The “rolling hills” were relentless. I had expected hills, but these were mini-mountains. Thankfully she is aces as trotting down the hills and staying in a relaxed form, but every time I thought we hit some level ground, around a corner was another brutal climb. I could feel the saddle impeding her free moving trot and meant a shorter stride. We were running against the clock, and doing it alone except for the runners which did keep us company. The drawback was they often would walking up the big hills, and when I could inspire K to get some trotting intervals up the hills, and as soon as we came to a walking human she put on the brakes and walked with them instead!
Still, we ran into vet check 2 with a few minutes to spare and met again with the royal treatment. She was pulsed immediately to the parameter of 64 while pulling tack and they started our hold clock immediately. Here we saw Howard again who offered to trot out Khaleesi while a volunteer brought me iced water. He even checked her nails and gave a quick tighten up to be sure. It was wild to watch the whole team working my horse while Matt helped me with my own needs. She passed with all perfect scores and was surprisingly tolerant of all the pampering. They even brought over a pop up tent and fed her apples while continuing to sponge her as we were going into the heat of the day.
This hold was 50 minutes and then we were pushing the clock to do 17 miles with more nasty climbs (one I think was called suicide!) to make it to mile 62. I had my doubts we could sustain this all the way to the finish line, but the reminder came: do the next thing until there isn’t a next thing to do.
The climbing had been grueling and I kept wondering if it would level out. The total elevation we climbed from starting line to Vet Check 1 was 3,200 feet. The 22 miles from Vet Check 1- Vet Check 2 was 3,786 feet. I suppose we got a little relief on the third loop as the 17 miles brought just under 3,000 feet of climbing. The hour we lost in the cool of the morning to get ahead was very costly.
This mid-afternoon is where she generally begins to drag. It’s hot and here the bugs were voracious. When the flies got really bad she would stop and shake her head and refuse to move onward. She kept begging me to stop in a large grass patch and eat.
Unfortunately- we did not have time for that while also racing the clock (she had great gut sounds – this was not an issue). I wanted her to be able to graze and go, but once she started eating it’s all she could think about. I could tell she wasn’t exactly “tired” she was hot, distracted, and irritated.
And in the background, the clock… always ticking away.
It was about three miles more to the next vet check when we passed by the runner aid station they call “Margaritaville,” one other frustration was not knowing where the horse vet checks are and for example Vet check 2 showed up almost 2 miles late according to my GPS which had me concerned. If I had been familiar with the course I might have had more confidence, I might have pushed through here, but I wasn’t even sure in 3 miles the mirage of vet check 3 would actually appear.
After the hills, the heat, the clock, the flies, and the constant nagging to give up and only eat the grass… I faced the gauntlet of Margaritaville. We had just gotten a little steam rolling and then there are people lined up on both sides of the road waiting to crew for their runners, canopy tents set up, and cheers and chaos and actually lots of fun for humans- but it’s a potential death zone for a horse not used to such things. Each one of these aid stations slowed us down as K navigated what to her was totally new and concerning, and truthfully it about took all the hope out of me as we walked through the town with her worrying about the cowbells and the little kids running out in front of us excited to see the horse, waving flags or shaking bells.
It is possible if I had gotten through the Margaritaville gauntlet and ran her up the hill into the checkpoint, we MIGHT have just made it and gotten out for one more loop. It is possible if we had gotten out there we MIGHT have taken the slightly easier next 11 miles and found the day cooling off, and her second wind coming up, and we MIGHT have begun to beat the clock that was breathing down our hind end. I’ll never know.
Instead, when I saw a house that offered horse water and carrots, I stopped and got off my horse. This act was basically where the white flag came out and went up the flagpole, because I think I knew getting off and taking time here would mean surrender to the clock. I had not taken the time to electrolyte during the 17 miles and I wondered if that was working against us. I allowed someone to offer K a carrot, and I took a glass of cold water (my hydration pack wasn’t empty but it was warm). After a few minutes I got back on Khaleesi and I insisted we keep moving, but I didn’t push. We got into the hold about 4 minutes after the pulse time had passed and were considered “OT” or Over Time, and no longer in the race.
After pulling her tack, the remaining vet checked her and with a heart rate of 48 and all A scores, we loaded up on a trailer to base camp. She was healthy and her gait remained solid through the 62 miles without a hitch. All the things I had prepared for and been concerned about did not pose a problem. The extra calcium plan for the heat and humidity was in place, no metabolic issues came. Her shoes held up great. No issues with her gait. Looking back I did a pretty good job getting this non-arabian ready for a challenging 100 mile ride. Regardless of that, equipment failure still turned into a failure to complete.
It was disappointing, but I think I had a pretty good outlook. In retrospect, the day before when we heard a vet tell us we might have a problem, I asked: please let me start this race, and please, I want to see some of the trail… we’ve come so far. And as if a response to that request, we saw over half of the trail. We got three full hard loops in and saw 62 miles of the Vermont 100.
I thought the test was going to be about getting across the finish line, but in looking back, I think it was a test to reveal what is under my own skin when the cost is high and the outcome is loss. The only way to see what is there is when things get real. The investment has to be real, and the loss has to be equally real.
The night before the ride, as I stressed over the potential lameness, I looked squarely at the fear that if I did not finish this ride I might feel like I was a wasted investment. I felt if I could not pull off a finish that I was unworthy. That I had less value. I was worried I might carry the label: Failure. I think that “B” grade helped prepare me, because I sat with my devoted husband and in tears I admitted that I felt I will have let him and everyone down if I can’t get this done.
And we both knew that was not true. The pressure was internally generated, and completely unnecessary.
He assured me that regardless of the outcome, he was here… WITH me. And I kept hearing a reminder over the months and in that moment that also God was with me. Regardless the outcome. As I navigated between the lies and the truth, like a sharp double edged sword separating bone from marrow, tendons and joints, I think the lie was cut away and the truth remained.
The truth transforms us. The truth sets us free. The truth allows us to respond to what comes and be disappointed without being devastated.
No matter what came in the test of the event, I had reached for something beyond what my comfort zone could claim. I had dreamed big and made plans. I walked out those plans day after day, and not only did the preparations, but wrote about them and shared them transparently with others. I took the risk because my real identity was not tied to the outcome and I knew I would still be “me” if I shared a victory or a defeat with the stakeholders.
In the end, only a few days of hindsight, and hours of being able to process, I can see that I carry a failure to complete on my public record, but I am not a failure. My identity is a bold, adventurous daughter of a creator king. That Father created a beautiful world for me to explore. I love a challenge. I want to live fully the life I have been given, and I’m willing to take a risk that things may not go as planned, and then pivot and roll with the next steps. I want to be fearless and free in the truth, and to walk in grace and love as I run and fall, as I encourage others, and help pick them up along the way.
I have heard it said that it is only in being willing to die that we may fully live. As Dr. Luke wrote centuries ago: Those who seek to preserve their lives will lose it, but whoever is willing to lose their life will find it.
In a way, the trailer ride home from mile 62 was like a death. The death of a hoped for outcome. But I have experienced that to move from empire building to living in the kingdom, death is only a door to resurrection. Like the Phoenix (Fenix!), there is a level up that only death of the old can bring forth. I do believe that this story is a good one, and the little voice that came as I looked at my broken saddle from the ground at mile 13 (“Don’t be afraid, this is a gift!”) is somehow right… Even this is a gift, bigger and better than I can see at the moment.
Possibly the most interesting question that still lingers, floating up in the aftermath of the great adventure, the one I am not certain how to answer honestly… remains…
If I knew then how this would play out… would I still have gone?
Hope Horsemanship 