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Pace RideSeptember 18, 2006 Yesterday was the Martha's Vineyard Horse Council's annual pace ride. It's one of the most agreeable events on the local equestrian calendar -- no judges, no fancy duds, no trainers going ballistic because some poor kid is posting on the wrong diagonal -- and I'd missed it the last two years (the 2005 edition was cancelled because of persistent bad weather, and in 2004 I was recovering from retina reattachment surgery #2). Still, I dilly-dallied until a couple of friends talked me into it, then one of them wound up backing out. What the hell, I'm glad I went. The weather was nearly perfect: a little on the warm and slightly humid side, but we had a string of idyllic September days in August, so a few August days in September seems a fair trade. A pace ride isn't a race, and you don't get prizes for your horsemanship or how well conditioned your horse is. A day or so before the ride, a pace rider covers the designated route at a brisk but sensible speed, records her time, and doesn't tell anybody. Shortly after 10 yesterday morning, riders started off at four-minute intervals in teams of two or three, each team equipped with a map, a watch, and (in most cases probably, but not in mine) a cell phone. The course followed the fire lanes and multitudinous trails of the state forest for about seven miles, winding up back at the starting point, Misty Meadows farm, off Old County Road. Plenty of islanders my age and not much younger learned to ride at Misty Meadows when it was open to the public for lessons and trail rides. Now it's privately owned and much spiffed up. The owners put the wash stall and other facilities at the pace riders' disposal, but what the horses most appreciated was the lush grass in the backyard staging area. Riders hung out and caught up and held each other's mounts so everyone could get hotdogs, desserts, and various appetizers from the food table. Allie the wonder horse has but one major behavioral fault: she's inclined to throw tantrums when horses disappear into the distance ahead of her, or when she hears horses coming up behind and isn't allowed to turn tail and check them out. My first inkling of this was on our first pace ride, in 2001. A bit over a mile from the finish a team passed ours and Allie jigged, champed, and danced the rest of the way home. Not fun, but my team -- me, my friend Margaret, and a young student from Red Pony Farm -- came closest to the pace time and so went home with blue ribbons and $50 each. The next year, my team -- Margaret, I, and Stephanie, one of our barnmates -- thought we'd fake Allie out by going out first. That's when I learned that Allie didn't like action behind her either. That year she jigged, champed, and danced the entire ride, but the team came in second, which was good for three red ribbons and a $50 bill that we never did figure out how to split three ways. Still, it's the most money I've ever won with a misbehaving horse. In 2003 Margaret and I teamed up with two other friends who preferred a slower pace. We had a good time, Allie behaved herself, but we didn't place. Margaret and I have been grumbling intermittently about this ever since. This year I went out with Brooks, who'd never done a pace ride before. I managed to remember what I'd learned both from Margaret and from my 4-H leaders of long ago ("walk the first and last mile!" -- good practice for any kind of ride), and my finicky watch kept ticking. Result was that we came in first, at four minutes over the pace, which was 1 hour, 58 minutes and some seconds. The blue ribbons came with three $20 bills. We each kept one and gave the third to Ginny, who had trailered us over. I had another barn to look after this weekend, and riding over was pretty much out of the question. We did ride home, however, adding another hour and a half's ride to the two hours of the main event. Brooks's horse was tired and would only trot as required to keep up with Allie Power-Walker. Allie felt like she was ready and able to trot to Gay Head and back. Based on equal parts hearsay and observation, my current theory is that it's best not to give a horse the day off after a strenuous workout but to ride lightly and then give her the next day off. So today we went for a 40-minute walking trail. This was Rhodry's idea of a perfect pace ride: he got to trot along in front, tail waving, watching out for any trouble that I might stumble into, and stopping at will to check out promising smells and interesting junk off in the woods. (Since hunting season is still several weeks off, he didn't emerge with a haunch in his mouth or find anything really stinky to roll in.) Woman, horse, dog; a sunny day in the September woods. Can't do much better than that.
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