Work is starting to wind down - the end is finally in sight. Like this weekend in sight. Wednesday was my day off, I had nothing planned (except for a 90 minute massage in the afternoon), and I have been getting 8ish hours of sleep most nights, so everything aligned to allow me to hop on Phantom in the morning.
It was a terribly not exciting ride. Not a bad thing when she hasn't been ridden in 7 weeks! Especially when there was another horse in the arena who was on her second ride of rehab and kept throwing in some extravagant airs above the ground. Just made me really appreciate my happy to walk on a loose rein horse.
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| My favourite sight. |
Since Phantom has known respiratory issues and a history of tying up in the winter months, I always start her back really slowly. I generally use some type of interval training program like I've done in the past when doing suspensory rehab on my old gelding. We're starting pretty well at the beginning - 1 minute of trotting, 2 minutes of walking, repeated 5 times. My Garmin running watch is great for this stuff.
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| Interval training makes for a very satisfying symmetrical graph. |
She didn't feel as stiff as I thought she might. And after the initial trot, there was definitely some extra pep in her step. She was looking for an excuse to get silly but was a very good girl and kept herself contained.
I felt only mildly loose and floppy. I can't tell if I'm sore in the evening due to riding or because of the whole body massage I had after I rode. Since I hurt everywhere, I'm thinking it's because of the massage.
The weather changes for the worst this weekend so I might have to bundle myself up to get back in the saddle next week.
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