On Saturday, Natalie and I took Sage and Nova to the Cool City Equathon at the foothills of the Sierra Nevada. Cool city is about 6 miles East of Auburn which is the finish line of the Tevis Cup Endurance race. An Equathon is a new racing format. Many people confuse it with a Ride and Tie. The basic premise of the Equathon is that you ride the horse for some determined distance, and then get off and run the rest of the way. Distances vary. In this case, you ride for 13 miles, and run for 8. There was also a fun ride portion in which the rider just rides the 13 milles and does not participate in the running. I was there to help support Nova in her inaugural endurance ride and so I did not participate in the run. For most of the race, Sage blazed the trail for Nova. We took it really slow and came in dead last but we completed it and Nova received all A's for her vet check score.
We started the weekend on Thursday and headed out to Cool which was about a 3 hour trailer ride from Half Moon Bay. We took Natalies new truck and arrived at Cool in the early afternoon. We stayed at an amazing Air BnB that provided a pasture for the horses and allowed us to bring Photo our dog. The Air BnB was wonderful, clean, and extremely accommodating. (If the link does not work, search on Air BnB, Coloma, Pilot Hill)
We spent the first day looking around the area and enjoying the mountains. The next day, we woke up early to get to the race which was only a couple of miles down the road. We arrived in good time and began the race. Nova did very well although she had a few issues with tossing her head. But overall, for her first ride, she was a champ with no bucking, bolting, or refusing. We had a few issues with boots since we we did not have shoes on the horses. Sage lost both of his back boots, but kept the front ones on. Nova pretty much kept tossing her fronts and eventually finished the race bare foot. I will have to come up with a better plan for back boots for Sage if I am going to take him into the back country.
I really like the Equathon format and look forward to doing one in the future.
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