The Horse Show Hangover: It’s a Real Thing
“On the downside, your car, your clothing, and quite possibly your dog all carry that same signature scent. Nothing says ‘I just had a great weekend’ like coming home sounding like a chain-smoking rodeo clown.”
The day after a horse show is a special kind of suffering. Your body is so wrecked that even blinking feels like a full-body workout. Your muscles are sore in places you forgot existed, your lungs are coated in a fine layer of dust and regret, and your bones, whether broken, bruised, or merely insulted, are staging a mutiny. Welcome to the infamous horse show hangover, a glorious mixture of pain, exhaustion, and a strange sense of accomplishment.
If you haven’t yet felt the joy of trying to navigate a horse show hangover with a previous injury, congratulations! You either have superb balance or a guardian angel of a horse. For those of us who have hit the dirt hard enough to require x-rays, casts, and surgical interventions, the struggle is real. That lingering injury makes itself known with every step and movement. Pain management is not rest, it’s taking enough ibuprofen and caffeine to get through the work day and then ride your horse for an hour and regret it.
The pain doesn’t stop at the bones. The muscles are screaming, too — especially if you’ve just come out of winter hibernation, where your exercise routine consisted mostly of lifting hay bales and walking to the barn in layers of clothing so thick you resembled a walking sleeping bag. That first horse show back? It’s like being hit by a tractor trailer truck… twice.
Photo by Roam Photos
Dust, gunpowder, and seasonal allergies are a proven winning combination… for a nebulizer treatment. What a wonderful atmosphere, the indoor show arena. A delicate mixture of dust, horse sweat, and, in the case of mounted shooting, a lovely sprinkle of gunpowder. Breathe it in, folks. That congestion you’re experiencing? It’s not a cold. It’s your lungs waving the white flag. By the time you leave, your sinuses have been replaced with concrete, your voice is a solid octave lower, and you’re pretty sure you could cough up a small dust bunny.
On the plus side, that gunpowder aroma makes you smell intimidating. On the downside, your car, your clothing, and quite possibly your dog all carry that same signature scent. Nothing says “I just had a great weekend” like coming home sounding like a chain-smoking rodeo clown.
The start-up of horse shows in the northeastern part of the United States means spring has sprung. However, after the first show, you’re too sore to enjoy it. Nothing is crueler than a gorgeous spring day when you’re too wrecked to take it in. You walk outside, the birds are chirping, the grass is green, and your horse is looking at you expectantly, as if to say, “We riding today?” And you just stand there, shaking your head, clutching your lower back like a 90-year-old retiree, and mumbling something about needing a day to recover.
Photo by Roam Photos
It’s unfair, really. You spend all winter dreaming about warm-weather rides, and then when the time comes, you’re so physically destroyed from your first weekend back in the show arena that you can’t even climb into the saddle without considering life alert. The irony is painful, but not as painful as your legs after dismounting the day before.
It’s a winter fitness surprise that you’re out of shape! Every year, we convince ourselves that winter barn chores count as “staying in shape.” And every year, we are painfully reminded that they do not. You don’t realize just how much muscle tone you’ve lost until you attempt to ride multiple horses in one day and find yourself praying for the sweet release of a hot shower and cold seltzer — or beer if you’re not gluten free like me.
Riding young horses, in particular, has proven to be a SpongeBob riding the worm type of workout. The young, rank horses squirm, wiggle, and find creative new ways to try to unseat you. Staying on one of these equine gymnastics routines requires core strength, leg muscles, and reaction times that, let’s be honest, we simply do not have after a winter of mostly sedentary activity. The result? A level of soreness that makes you question all of your life choices, including why you ever thought owning young horses was a good idea.
Photo by Roam Photos
And yet, we do it again. Despite the pain, the exhaustion, and the general sense of bodily betrayal, we know one thing for sure: we’ll do it over. Every. Single. Time. Because for all the misery of the horse show hangover, nothing compares to the thrill of the ride, the rush of the competition, and the absolute joy of spending a weekend surrounded by horses and like-minded crazy people.
So, we take our drugs (prescribed or OTC, of course), we chug our caffeine, and we start planning for the next one. After all, what’s a little soreness compared to the pure adrenaline of doing everything your trainer coached you not to do? Besides, there’s always next weekend to ride… when we can move again.
