We'll give her a B on gaits

I finished my half marathon.

I wouldn’t have passed the vet check at an endurance ride if I was a horse. Unless the human equivalent of a trot out is a brisk walk. Or maybe a C?

I’m not significantly sore and if I were an endurance horse, my owner would be pleased how I was moving and how I seemed to be recovering the day or 2 after the ride.

My current fitness goals is to be “fit enough” to do what I want on the weekends for adventure. I feel like “fit enough” is to be able to do a slow 10 miles. Or a weekend backpacking trip. Or a kayaking experience in a local lake. Or a water skiing adventure. Or a 50 mile horse ride. You get my point – although I may not be specifically “training” for an event, I should be fit enough to do something fun without injury assuming I’m looking for adventure and fun and not top performance.
Apparently my current regimen allows me to do 8-9 miles at a reasonable pace. So, if I want to do ½ marathons on random weekends for fun, I need to step up my activity intensity level during the week.

I haven’t done any serious running for 2-3 years, so this was really more of a grand experiment – could have finish a 13 miles looking and feeling good at a reasonable pace, by just relying on general being active?

If I did ½ marathons every 4-6 weeks with no other changes to my routine, would I continue to improve? Would my injury and burn out risk decrease?

In short, could I handle ½ marathon fitness like I do my mid-pack endurance horse?
Obviously, we aren’t looking at top performance here, but if the goal is to finish and have fun (like an endurance ride), than what would happen?

I already know horse and human performance differs at the physiological level. Performance enhancing drugs and practices (I’m not talking exercise routines here….) are radically different if you are talking a race horse versus a human athlete.

But I can’t get it out of my head that there’s more similarities than differences.

Arm update: Saw the doc today. He explained that the fracture is in the head of the radius within the joint, and that there’s a bunch of fluid in the joint. That’s why it continues to hurt and I have very limited range of motion. Running the half didn’t worsen it. I’m cleared for riding – mostly because I promised I wouldn’t fall off and I told him I would adjust my right hand position on the rein and go by pain (ie, the lack of it). NSAIDs aren’t going to help at this point, but icing 2x a day is still a good idea. In 2 weeks I’ll know whether I need surgery and/or PT. In the meantime there’s nothing I’m going to do that’s going to significantly alter the outcome (except fall on it again). He feels that it’s going to heal fine. I’m grumpy and in a funk – off to my dressage lesson and to swing a leg over Farley for the first time in 9 weeks.