Riding and running to win

Ride&Tie Championship, By Andy Wilcox, Journal Sports Editor, (andyw@goldcountrymedia.com)Colfax?s Jim Howard teamed with Dennis Rinde to place second overall Saturday at the 32 nd annual Ride & Tie Championship in the Euer Valley north of Truckee.Howard, who holds five previous world titles in the sport, and Rinde finished a mere 17 seconds behind the winners Con and Todd Wadsworth of Utah. The Wadsworth brothers picked up their fifth world championship.Finishing third overall were Tom Johnson of Loomis and racing partner Jeremy Reynolds. Howard?s wife, Elaine Ruprecht, and her brother-in-law, Tom Gey of Newport Beach, placed second in the co-ed division and eighth overall.Johnson? wife, Marcia Smith, and partner Shellie Hatfield were 11th overall. Auburn?s Hal Hall was 22nd with Jim Brown, and Melissa Ribley of Grass Valley finished 26th with Kerie Mathews.Placing 28th out of the 35 teams were Ruprecht?s father, Ted Ruprecht of Trinidad, and her sister and Gey?s wife, Carol Ruprecht of Newport Beach.Ted Ruprecht, 74, a former economics professor at Humboldt State University, is a 20-time winner of the world championship. His wife, Joan, has 21.The event was held at Euer Valley for the second year in a row, but past championships have been held in Utah, Idaho and Oregon. It used to award cash prizes 20 years ago, when it was sponsored by Levi Strauss and featured as many as 150 teams. Now it is strictly amateur, typically awarding horse blankets to winners.Race newcomer Doyle Eggers said the sport is fun and a ?neat family of people, double fun. It?s about finishing and still being vertical.?Ride & Tie involves a team of two people and a horse covering a very long course, in this case about 35 miles of mountainous terrain, as quickly as possible. The human racers take turns riding the horse and running, switching back and forth roughly every mile. That is the most natural distance for an endurance-friendly Arabian horse to sprint.?Horses are designed by nature to flee dangerous predators, but only need to flee for a short distance, a mile or so, and then return to grazing,? said Carol Ruprecht, who rode her horse, Findefar, to a third-place finish in the 100-mile Western States Trail Ride in July. ?This is exactly the rhythm of Ride & Tie.?At 7,000 feet elevation, a good horse allows less elite runners like Elaine Ruprecht, who has never run any more than 50 kilometers in a race, and Gey, who runs no more than half-marathons, to be competitive with a team featuring ultra-runners like Howard, who won the Western States 100-Mile Endurance Run in 1981 and 1983.?Even elite runners cannot match the speed and stamina of a well-conditioned horse,? Carol Ruprecht said. ?With the horse aiding both runners, by providing a rest between runs, and by reducing the average minutes per mile, runners feel like superheros able to tackle unbelievable distances at altitude.?Horses overtake runners on the course?s narrow trails, and Carol Ruprecht said it gave her an excuse to take breather at the high altitude on Saturday. She recalled one runner asking another during one of many endless climbs, ?Doesn?t this hill ever end?? and another replying ?Yes, I hear it ends at God.?The course starts at Euer Valley Ranch and is comprised of three loops, and the horses go through a veterinary check during each circuit. A horse can?t be checked until the team?s trailing runner arrives at the check. Any signs of lameness are checked out, as well as gut sounds to be sure there is the healthy gurgling of hay fiber being fermented in its stomach. Horses typically eat hay 20 hours a day, but they can go 35 miles without eating.Gey said the winner typically finishes in around four hours, although the Wadsworths came in well under that. He and Elaine Ruprecht, who did their eighth straight ride and tie together, usually finish in about five hours.?But most people are out there running and riding for six or seven hours, and that?s a long time to be running and riding,? he said. ?When you?re on the horse you?re not really resting even though you?re not working aerobically. If you?re trotting you want to be ?posting,? trying to move with the horse by using your leg muscles and stirrups to go up and down with the motion of the horse.?What you what want to avoid is interfering with the horse. You want to be at one with the horse so he?s free to run unimpeded. A lot of people pay a lot of money to take riding lessons for that.?Gey said that while making sure the horse is securely tied up keeps the trailing runner from wasting time looking for a strayed animal, runners also don?t want to spend too much time tying it up. Hurrying and runner fatigue both can lead to loose ties and horses breaking free.?Most people will pre-ride the trail and pick out a few ties at cricital spots, then figure out how long it will take to cover that distance,? he said.Elaine Ruprecht, who works at Echo Valley Feed Store in Auburn, and Gey, a realty specialist with the Bureau of Land Management, who nearly won their second straight coed crown this year. She said their success has been built on good communication out on the course.?Like when Tom and I pass each other on the horse, we tell each other approximately how far we?ll be tying up ahead. He may say a half-mile but if it comes to a steep hill he?ll better tie sooner so we can share the hill (on foot),? she said. ?Last year nobody expected us to win. We beat a really good team. We?ve never been out of the top 10. Every year we do a little better.?For more information on Ride & Tie, see www.rideandtie.org or call (650) 949-2321.