Today was a good training day

 I got up earlier than usual and after feeding the horses I went for a run. I start official half marathon training in about 2 weeks but my first run is 3 miles on a Tuesday and 4 miles on the following Saturday. I need to be able to run that 3 miles easily enough so it doesn't kill me. As of right now I think I could do it IF I HAD TOO but since I don't have to... I ran 2.35 miles today, stopped after .5 for a little stretching and walked about 100 feet uphill at about 1.25, have to save my Achilles tendons.

 My manure cart broke down a couple days ago and with Christmas I wasn't able to get to an open store. Finally got some washers and cotter pins today but it was already dark by then so I was only able to clean stalls again. Tomorrow there is going to be a lot of outside cleaning to do and I'm not looking forward to it. But that too can be a good workout.

 Today I went with A to Olympia to look at a saddle which she ended up buying. An older Circle Y with rounded skirts in very good condition. She's never owned a western saddle before so she didn't know a lot about them but she knows a lot about english and dressage saddles. Before we left here we tried 3 of our saddles on Patti and Sunshower so A could see the differences between them.
 The saddle on the left is Patti's Circle Y, the center saddle is Sunshowers FQH and the one on the right is  Joeys Semi QH Fabtron.

  The first, Joeys Semi QH tree, didn't fit either of the mares. C's Circle Y fit Patti OK and it is Patti's saddle, but the Saddle King FQH I have for Sunshower fit Patti better than her own and her saddle fit my made better than mine. 

A and I will be racing in a Ride & Tie in March and A thinks Sunshower will be a good mount for it, nice and short so she will be easy to get on from the ground. I'll have to start taking her jogging with me so she can get into shape. The T&R website says they have trainings scheduled in different places so your horse can learn to stand tied when other horses are running past them and other things we will need to know but the people in this area actually live a long ways away from us. I guess A and I will have to do our own training with her out at Banner Forest, maybe recruit other riders to help us out, maybe ride past while shes tied up. But in real training they would have an experienced horse stand near her so she could learn to stand calmly. We'll just have more to work on than some other people I guess.
 Tomorrow Lan wants me to go to an 8:30 spin class and A and I have already talked about doing a Zumba class. I'll go to the spin class and see if I feel like going back later for Zumba.