Thursday ride

San Tan Mtn Park
East Fenceline - Saddle wash - San Tan Trail - Moonlight Trail - Grey Fox wash - hill climb - main road
8 miles, 3.1mph average moving

We have our trails back! They cleared the debris out of the washes, pulled the "Area Closed" signs, got ride of the "Service Road" signs, and in general are letting ride wherever the heck we want again! Yay!

We promptly celebrated by riding one of our favorite not-yet-marked trails that parallels the east fenceline of the park, looped back down and took the "Moonlight Trail", aka the one that runs parallel to the big mountains in the middle of the park. Had to "educate" a few bikers that were under the misguided impression that they were on what they thought was a "bike exclusive" trail. Um, no. Try hell no. Multi-use trails. Which means you move for us.

One of our favorite sand washes, a nice little single track where we actually saw a grey fox once, has been reopened! Yay! We took that down, then climbed the big hill. Need to work on the hill trail - people haven't been riding it, and the rocks have been trying to reclaim it! I love my new saddle - my legs didn't swing back and hit Mimi in the stifles for once!

Took the main service road back, but when we reached the trailer, Dad discovered Beamer lost an Easyboot (again), so I hopped back on Mimi and we took off at a fast trot down the service road again. She was so happy - I let her fast trot and canter until we found the boot (about 3/4 of a mile back down the road), then we trotted all the way back to the trailer. I wanted to see how fast it took her to come back down to pulse-down parameters after fast speed work like that.

I'm pleased to say that after trotting and cantering anywhere between 10-12mph for 1 1/2 miles, she came into the parking lot with a pulse of 104, and pulsed down to 60 in less than 4 minutes. Granted, she only had done 6 1/2 miles prior to that, but I think it's a good place to start.

The Woolback worked much better today versus the Supracor. I think the Supracor rubs and grabs too much for her to be comfortable. She wasn't sore at all today with the Woolback, an today was a much tougher ride than Sunday. I do want to get the shaped A/P pad with billet straps, though, because this one was trying to migrate a bit, especially after my fast speed work.