Discover the Countryside: Train for the terrain

Discover the Countryside: Train for the terrain

We talk to endurance riders about the benefits of hillwork and how they consciously – or subconsciously – train for the more undulating rides.

Georgina Vaughan

Living in the Black Mountains in Wales, the one thing I have guaranteed in my training are hills and lots of them. The benefits of walk work up hills is underestimated because not only does it enable you to work on straightness and balance, but it also helps develop core strength and stamina while reducing repetitive strain type injuries. Hills enable you to increase the intensity of work without increasing the speed. We have to remember our horses only have so many miles in their legs so work needs to be quality over quantity. Adding in a variety of surfaces, whether it be road, stony tracks, boulders, grass, fern, sand etc, you can help develop their proprioception. No ride is on a perfect surface – they are varied – so it’s important to train our horses on a variety of surfaces to condition them for the job ahead.

Walking up hills is valuable whether it’s in young horses just starting their ridden careers or advanced horses about to tackle a 160km.

Georgina Vaughan

Julie Brown, Endurance GB Derbyshire Group Chair

Derbyshire is a county of stunning scenery and is blessed with a wide variety of terrain including hills – lots – from gently rolling to steep and craggy. As a result, most Derbyshire endurance horses are in constant ‘hill work training’ without us even thinking about it.

For me, living in a hilly area, I don't consciously train for hills. I just hack out and ride a 25km Endurance GB local group ride about once a month. However, what I do actively train for is increasing lengths of trotting on the flat. I’m a Novice on a Novice and my horse Dylan is a 14.1hh Welsh who is very sure-footed and nimble. I don’t feel the need to upgrade either of us as I only compete lightly, having completed 370 competitive kilometres, on rides between 22km and 40km, in the last seven years, but over 2000km on local group rides.

I hack out about two or three times a week for one to two hours on routes which include a couple of steepish inclines/declines, stony tracks, uneven bridle paths and lots of country lanes. The elevation changes about 150m from lowest point to highest. There’s lots of walking, a moderate bit of trotting but the terrain offers very little canter opportunities. For a change of scenery, I go to a multi-user, all-weather trail which has been developed from the old train tracks that connected five coal pits, as the terrain here is mostly flat. About two weeks before a competitive ride I change to going out about three times a week to this trail where I can trot for about one hour uninterrupted. This regime of hacking up hills, using the flat trails and local group rides works for me and Dylan.

All Derbyshire local group rides could be classed as ‘fittening’ and have distance options so riders can choose which suits their own fitness level best. In acknowledgment that some are far more challenging than others, we have a special annual award that Derbyshire riders can aim for, the Derbyshire 3 Challenge. One of the bridleways we use on the Barbrook Ride has a name that is quite impressive and descriptive too - The Devil’s Elbow. You certainly get a real sense of achievement when you get to the top of that and if you can do it without huffing and puffing then it confirms your training has paid off!

At the top of the hill on the Highways Over Hope.

IndiePics

Emma Harris

I’m very lucky to live just outside the Lake District where we have the gorgeous fells, the beautiful lakes and, of course, the glorious rain! We have plenty of hills to train up and steadier hill work has been the basis of much of our training which includes quite a lot of gates (hill farming), so the horses soon learn how to do them, even the awkward ones and will (mostly) let me mount from odd places if I do have to get off.

Although a lot of the steeper climbs and tracks are slower, steadier work, we do have some fabulous hills for faster hill work. There is one I used to hate running up for cross-country at school, but is great for some uphill canter work as I can go up and down easily several times before continuing onto a circular route. This is particularly helpful if we are fittening for eventing as well so we can work on some faster pace work.

If we really want to focus on sustained canter work, we’d tend to have to trailer to the beach and factor this into our training as our nearest public gallops are about a 90 minute/2 hour drive so it’s not something I can incorporate into regular work. The hillier rides on the calendar are our bread and butter but we love a flatter ride to mix it up.

Emma Harris's Jack on Corpse Road Loweswater

Emma Harris

Emma Harris's Jack on Corpse Road Loweswater

Julie Jones, Mid and North Wales Group

I live in a very hilly area of farmland and tracks in mid-Wales. There are a gazillion gates (I have a 32k loop but there are 50 gates) so I do a fair bit of roadwork. It gets the fizz out before getting off-road and as the surface is smooth, it helps to get fit without the worry about anything twisting. An average ride (about 10k) will have approximately a 300m ascent/descent - one shortish decent pull (canter track) and the rest long up and downhill stretches. The only flat bit of my rides is my arena which we go in once or twice a week for 20 mins after a shorter ride.

I’m not a believer in going over farmland when it’s deep – I wouldn’t like it, even if it’s a bridleway (I have one through my land) – so during winter it’s road, tracks and forestry –we are close to Hafren Forest and there’s a 24k undulating loop that is excellent training. In summer we go for longer rides over hilly farmland and we tackle the gates. Raf also lives out on a steepish hill in winter.

I use an Enduro Equine heart-rate monitor and even though we only ride about four times a week for an hour to an hour and a half (with one longer ride if we can), his heart rates never go too high and come down pretty quickly. I do lots of walk and trot with some canter depending on the surface I’m on, but I do try and vary it as much as I can.

Julie Jones and Raf

David Saunders