My Life as a Racehorse

Have you ridden horses enough to experience a gallop without falling off? I'm not a very experienced rider, but it's something I am strangely okay at. I have kept my seat more than once on a horse that tried to throw me off to get to the barn quicker. I am pretty fearless. If I weren't severely allergic to the darn things, I would be much sadder than I currently am to be living in the suburbs rather than out in the country where I could have horses. (I have learned a few things since the height of my intense burning love for all things horse related, back around ages 9 to 11, and one of them is that no matter how hard one works, it is never practicable to keep a horse in a suburban backyard.) Due to the allergies, I have resigned myself to the fact that I will not own horses until I have enough money to hire a full-time stable boy to do all the maintenance. This means, I will certainly never own horses.

But I still like to ride them every chance I get. Which amounts to about twice every five years.

But still, I know the difference between a gallop and a canter.

If you have never ridden, I will tell you the difference. Riding a galloping horse feels like you have been put on a four-legged pogo stick with stirrups and told to wait it out while the pogo legs independently make their way to the far end of the field. You can't keep your mouth tightly shut, since your teeth will chatter their way out of your head, and you can't keep it slightly open, since you will invariably bite your tongue. You can ride a galloping horse more smoothly by "posting," which means rising and falling in the saddle in a graceful and rhythmic manner to offset the jolting. But this is sort of like saying that you can win the America's Cup by tacking your sailboat very precisely at all the right moments depending on your reading of the wind. Sure, you might accomplish a good tack or two, assuming you know a few basics about sailing -- but you sure as heck won't win that race without a whole lot more practice than I have riding horses.

Okay, so now that my metaphors are good and mixed up, I'll move on to the canter. If a riding a galloping horse is one long session of vertical jolting, then riding a cantering horse is like sitting on one of those gorgeous, homemade, wooden rocking horses you see at craft fairs. Seriously. The horse's stride lengthens for a canter, and the order of footfalls changes (or something; I don't know; ask a real rider), so that although you are going faster at a canter than at a gallop, you are riding easier. Oh, so much easier. The smoothness of a canter explains once and for all why or how anyone could ever have imagined that a horse on rockers moves in a way that approximates a real one on four legs.

And this extended comparison leads me to the real point of this post, which is: I ran a mile in 8:32 this past Sunday!

How is that related to galloping and cantering, you ask? I will tell you.

I have discovered that for me running at a pace around 6.4-6.7 miles an hour (which equals running a mile in a little over nine minutes) basically feels like galloping. It's hard work, and my feet are moving fast, but it feels like constant jolting. If I up the treadmill speed just a bit, to somewhere between 6.7-7 miles an hour (a pace that leads to sub-9-minute miles), suddenly my stride lengthens. I am actually taking fewer steps. In essence, I feel like I am running slower, even though I am running faster, because I change feet less frequently. Sure, it's harder work. But it feels much more like flying and much less like I'm Pogo Mommy the Sucks-Wind Runner.

And so, in jumping aboard Mrs. G's 5K Ass Project '08, I have decided to embark on a little racehorse fantasy. Only this time, instead of Zyrtec, Albuterol, and riding boots to get me through the horsiness, all I need is my trusty running shoes, treadmill, and sports bra. Because, you see, I have switched it up a bit -- and now, instead of playing the rider, I will be playing the horse. I'm jumping on board her exercise challenge with the goal of working myself up to THREE sub-nine-minute miles in a row. I'll be running a few days a week and swimming a few days a week, with some weights or Pilates thrown in when I feel like it. I can't make myself a rigid schedule of what I'll do when, since I know I won't stick to that, and it will just make me feel like a loser to screw up The Plan. But I will do my very best to exercise four days a week, to alternate swimming with running (must be kind to those fragile racehorse knees, you know), and to work on cantering all the way through the winter. There is something pretty wonderful about running with the wind flying past my ears, so this is me, signing on for the motivation that will help me meet my goals.

Mrs. G wants us to post pictures of our 5K asses, but I'm not quite prepared to do that yet. But I will put up occasional posts about my progress, and start a little widget in the sidebar for keeping tabs and staying accountable. And I'll take some photos and some measurements for my own record keeping, so that I can chime in with some statistics about my decreasing mile times corresponding to my decreasing hip measurements (providence and alignment of planets be willing). If you want to join too, SIGN ON! We could all use a little group support for our exercise goals, right? Jump on over to Derfwad Manor, sign yourself in, and make a plan. C'mon it will be fun. And remember:

See the racehorse. Feel the racehorse. Be the racehorse. If I can do it, you can too.