How do you do it? What do you prioritize? How do you fit a ride, chores, and getting ready for work into your morning?
I leave home by 7:00-7:10. However, I need to start fitting in some early morning rides. I don’t have lights, but I can use a headlamp (have done that before).
How do you get it done? I feel like there’s no way I can fit it all in.
OMG you’re planning to do barn chores and ride all before 7am and in the dark!!! Best of luck!!!
I ride before work but 1) I board so I have to drive 30 minutes each way 2) my work day starts around 10;30-11am. Sounds like your situation is not the same 
but I admire your dedication!!!
Figure out how long you need to get ready for work and aim to be off 15 minutes before that to tack and put away and feed or however how long that takes you. Or ride till that time and hop off and hand Dobbins to someone else and go and get ready for work.
You just have to do the (very scary) time figuring going backwards.
You leave at 7AM.
How long does it take you to shower and get ready to leave? Half an hour?
That would mean you have to be in the house by 6:30.
How long do you want to ride? Half an hour? 15 minutes each for warm up and cool down, 15 minutes for quick grooming tacking, 15 minutes for untacking and putting away.
6:30 minus 1:30 = riding stuff needs to start at 5:00AM.
Is there any reason why you are unable to do these training rides in the evening? Sunset here now is nearly at 8pm.
Anything you can do to prep for the morning the night before, do it. That might be things like:
OR skip the AM shower altogether, give yourself a little bird bath in the sink, wipe on some Deo and GO 
There’s probably more but those are things that have worked for me. Good luck! It’s tough but doable.
Agreed; I have never ridden before work but other workouts; including swimming a half hour from home and I’m not a wake up and drive kind of person. So for those workouts I had to be up by 4:30 and out the door by 5:20.
In the summer it sounds doable for you - although maybe not every day. But now, I think it’s too dark. I agree with Clanter - can they be done in the evening now when you have more light?
I have a similar schedule as I have 2 and have to get one done before work and one after. I turn out in fly sheets or Kool coats to minimize grooming time. Usually only clean my tack on the weekend 
. Schedule looks a bit like this
4-wake up, dogs, coffee, emails, breakfast, etc
5-feed, clean stalls while horses are eating
530-tack up, ride
630-shower myself
7-leave
One of mine eats only a handful so I don’t feel bad about riding right after she’s done. It hasn’t been very warm in the morning yet, so I don’t have to worry about bathing the horse
I do this in the summer to avoid the extreme heat. But I wait until it’s daylight enough outside.
4:45 wake-up and quickly get dressed (have the clothes planned the night before)
5:00-5:25 groom and tack (again, this is summer and my guys go out in fly sheets so they’re generally fairly clean)
5:25-6:10 ride
6:10-6:30 untack/groom/throw grain in stalls
6:30-7:00 shower/get dressed/feed pups (they go out with me to feed and ride so they get some morning exercise)
7:00-7:10 let horses out of stalls back into pasture
Make your lunch the day before. I eat breakfast at my desk at work. Plan your outfits the day before. I also don’t wear makeup or do my hair (just a French braid) which saves time. I do the bulk of my farm chores in the evenings so that I don’t have to wake up any earlier in the mornings. And 24/7 turnout means no stall cleaning or filling water buckets or whatever else. I also can only convince myself to do it 2-3 times a week and “sleep in” until 5:45 on the other days with less morning rush.
I do much of the same type of prep work as the others with the focus being on preparation and efficiency. In the summer I will try to ride before work on certain days. I usually have my clothes for work laid out the nigh before and have any food and drinks, etc prepped and in the car (so I rarely take anything that requires refrigeration). I have the horses’ breakfast prepped and ready to go the night before. My morning routine is wake up at 4 am, feed and take care of dogs (includes medicating as I have geriatrics), then head out to the barn. Bring the horses in for their ‘grain’. While they eat I clean and pick up manure in arena which is also their turnout. I drag the arena while I pick up manure. This typically takes me 15-20 min. By the time I’m done unloading the manure in our dumpster, the horses are done with their grain (ration balancer) and they’re turned out with their hay. I fill up the water troughs while I’m dumping manure into the dumpster. Once I’m done with all of that which includes sweeping and cleaning the barn aisle. I then go inside for a quick cup of coffee. I’m usually on one horse (I can only fit in one) by 5:45 - 6:00 am. I already know exactly what I want to work on and keep the ride to 30 minutes or so which means I’m very specific in the goals and don’t take on anything I think will require more time. Grooming and tacking up is very quick and efficient as is untacking. Once done I turn the ridden beast back out with the others who are still eating hay. I run in and get showered and changed. Come back out to check on everyone before I drive out the driveway by 7-7:10 so that I can get to work by 7:30 and be in surgery by 8:30. My life is all about efficiency 
Thanks for your ideas, everyone!
I’m pretty good at meal prepping ahead of time, but @splitrockfarmnc I like the idea of water or juice by the bed first thing. Good idea. I already go to bed early because I get up at 4:30 now and will just need to reorganize my morning routine to make it work.
I like various posters’ suggestion to use a fly sheet (or such) to minimize grooming. Great idea and I don’t know why I didn’t think of that myself (but that’s why I came here ). I also just need to bite the bullet and clip the beast to eliminate a bunch of grooming hassle. I didn’t clip this winter, but it’s time to do it now. @No1, I think, despite how much it will kill me, I will have to clean my tack on the weekends, as you do. I clean my tack after every ride, but it takes a lot of time that I won’t have. I almost cringe at the thought…lol.
@sportyspicepony It’s ambitious, I know. If I can commit to 2x per week like @B-burg_Dressage mentions, I’ll be doing well. Evenings are much more practical, as @clanter and @S1969 say, but my horse started showing symptoms of seasonal headshaking last year and she’s much better in the mornings than the evenings. We’re working through it and I’m in the process of tailoring her management (a long and not-so-fun process as any of you experienced in this know), but to keep her in any kind of regular work right now, mornings are going to be the time to do it. Last year her symptoms appeared in April and subsided by the end of June and disappeared by mid-July. They gradually reappeared this winter starting the week of Christmas (strong correlation with solstice last summer and this past winter, huh?) and are coming on strong now. So that’s why morning work is preferred over evening work these days. With any luck, she’ll follow last year’s pattern and be okay my mid-summer. But last year, I was a newbie to headshaking and didn’t ride much at all in the spring because of it, and it was really hard to bring her into work in the middle of the summer heat (she’s a big air fern). She’s a better horse for being worked, and I enjoy goals (however small), so I have to find a way to make it happen within our limitations. Early mornings are part of the equation, it seems. I didn’t want to get into all that with my original post, but I figured someone would suggest riding in the evening eventually, and understandably so.
Thanks again, everyone!
ETA: Thanks, @exvet. I think bumping up the wakeup on my morning ride days to 4:00 would probably be helpful.
This is a really good suggestion! Having somewhere to be after a ride kinda sucks because you can’t always spend that extra time that you want to fix something or whatever. For me lately I’ve had to come to terms that it’s not the best time to really work on anything significant, but I’ll use one of the ride tracking apps to count how long I’ve been walking, trotting etc. to keep track of where I am thus far in my ride.
And skipping extra steps that you’d normally do to be responsible, like hoof oil after the ride or washing off your bit or w/e really does end up saving you time.
That makes sense. I have fewer reservations with the schedule – it’s just time, you can do it, as long as you are organized – but the darkness. If the headlamp has worked before, it should be ok. I would be worried that the lack of light would make the horse spooky, but if they’ve done it before it might not be an issue.
Also remember that if you’re riding in the dark at home, no one needs to know you didn’t groom anywhere but where the tack goes.
You can also change some of your morning barn chores to evening chores if it helps. In the morning, all I do is feed and turn out. I do the stalls, water, etc., when I bring them back in in the evening.
That’s what I expected before I tried it. However, the several times I’ve ridden her in the dark previously, it wasn’t an issue (I suppose I’m the one that can’t see in the dark, not her). That doesn’t mean it won’t be an issue now, of course. Fingers crossed!
Last week hubby wanted me to buy a solar potlight on line for the arena over $200.00. 300 amp or whatever it is called.
I put the same specifications in Ebay and bought 6 with shipping came to just over $40.00. They arrived yesterday.
This is almost verbatim of what I wanted to say as well. I’m a big prepper (of sorts).
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