WeAreOnTheLoose.com - Full Article
by Jamethiel Morse
November 1 2025
Part One, Endurance: Where are the ribbons? is here.
Life got a bit lifey and delayed the second installment of musing about the future of the sport of endurance. We left off talking about the culture of endurance, and it affects the growth (or decline) of the sport. One of the thornier issues I didn’t touch on is the heated debate over what constitutes “real endurance”. There’s a camp of folks that firmly believes that calling anything under a 50 mile ride endurance is doing a disservice to the true ethos of the sport. Some say only 100 mile rides are true endurance, and anything less is “just” training towards that ultimate goal.
This debate comes up like clockwork, to the detriment of our sport I think. Folks should be welcome to share the trails and this horsemanship journey called endurance with us, no matter if their goal is to rack up 100 milers or if completing one LD takes all their effort and time. Crunching current numbers shows that most folks (especially those that “pay a ride managers bills”) are actually “Limited Distance Riders”, between 25 and 35 miles. I myself view 50s as a comfortable middle: I get more bang for my buck than an LD, both in terms of time on the trail and a challenge completed, but I don’t have to stay awake and functional for a full 24 hours to complete 100 miles. Honestly, I also don’t have to push my mare and myself hard enough during training to be 100 miler fit and ready. The leap from comfortably turtling 50s, as my mare and I do, to completing a 100 miler is just as exponential as getting her to the starting line of our first LD was...
Read the rest here:
https://weareontheloose.com/2025/11/01/endurance-future-part-two/
