As a young girl, Audra Homicz would rise before dawn to feed her horse. Shivering in the dark, she would stand by him as he finished eating his breakfast. Then she would ride him all day in the Santa Cruz Mountains.
As a teenager, she read about champion endurance rider Becky Hart and her horse Rio in Horse Illustrated and dreamed about her own future in endurance. In 1991, when Audra was 23, she joined the American Endurance Ride Conference (AERC), although she didn’t have the means to actually get involved.
But she had a great horse, a 17-year-old Arabian/Saddlebred mare. “I could ride her all day and never tire her out,” says Audra, who called the AERC office several times to get her questions answered. “I was afraid she was too old for endurance,” says Audra, “but they told me there were plenty of older horses in the sport. It gives me chills to think what she could have done.”
Audra thought that 50 miles seemed an awfully long way to ride. “I don’t think there was even such a thing as a limited distance ride (25 or 30 miles) back then,” she says. “I looked into competitive trail riding, but I didn’t like all the strictures.” Audra’s situation finally took its toll. There was no money for a trailer and her husband wasn’t supportive, so she put her dreams of endurance riding on the back burner.



Twists & Turns
Meanwhile Audra’s life took some twists and turns. She was diagnosed with fibromyalgia, a debilitating chronic disorder characterized by widespread musculoskeletal pain, fatigue and multiple localized areas of tenderness, particularly in the neck, spine, shoulders and hips. Then she and her husband divorced. A few years later she met and married Solomon Homicz, who loves horses and liked the idea of Audra riding endurance. Audra, who is now 39, rejoined AERC in 2005. Her mare had died, but her dream had not.
As luck would have it she saw an ad in a local paper about an endurance clinic at veteran endurance rider Clarissa Hale’s ranch in Cottonwood. After the clinic, Clarissa called Audra to see if she could answer any questions and then offered to let her ride her horse Mister. Audra jumped at the chance. “My timetable was based on my kids, who are 5 and 6 now. I wanted to get going so I would be endurance riding by the time my kids are able to join me.”
Despite the pain and fatigue from the fibromyalgia, Audra began doing conditioning rides with Clarissa. She rode the 2005 Lake Sonoma 50-mile ride and the Oroville 50-mile ride on Mister. With Clarissa’s coaching she completed, but not without a huge effort. “It really got hard for me after about 36 miles,” says Audra. She was also battling esophagus cancer at the time, which made her nauseous. The cancer has since been resolved, but the fibromyalgia is a constant in her life. Audra rider-optioned out of the 2006 Oroville 50 -- again riding Mister -- because of health complications.
Audra says of her two 50-mile completions: “I made it, but it wasn’t on my own horse. That’s important to me.” At the time she had a Morgan/Arabian stallion that she knew she wouldn’t be able to handle at an endurance ride. “Chief was nasty as a stallion, and I had seen all the close contact at the rides. With my physical problems I knew it would just be too much to handle him. We finally gelded him and gave him a year after that to adjust. Then Clarissa suggested I send him to April Cyrek in Garberville. It only took April a week or so to get the nasty out of him. Because she does so much of her training on the trails, he was ready to do a 25-mile ride after 60 days.”
Audra and her husband Solomon loaded Chief into their trailer in June 2007 and headed to the Cooley Ranch ride in the Napa Valley where she finished 9th in the 25-miler. “Chief was a little bit wild at the beginning, but I managed to control him and even got him to side pass,” says Audra. “The buttons were all there.”

Onward & Upward
In July, Audra and Solomon took off again for the Redwoods I Ride in Orick. Audra came in 7th in the 30-miler and then showed for best condition. She took tenth place in that competition. “We went home and made a few adjustments,” says Solomon, who crews for Audra. Two weeks later, Audra rode in the Redwoods II 30-miler. She came in sixth and won best condition, a supreme achievement for her and Chief. “It was a shock and a surprise,” says Audra. “I felt really grateful to Clarissa and April and to Solomon for all their help. I couldn’t have done it on my own. And I never forget that my parents and grandparents kept a pony and two horses around just for me when I was a kid, even when it was financially difficult.”
No one was happier for Audra than her mentor, Clarissa Hale. “Audra did the smart thing starting with the limited distance rides on Chief,” says Clarissa. “I’m sure we’d all be amazed if we knew half the stories of effort and endurance in the 25/30-mile rides.”
In September, Audra and Chief completed the 50-mile ride at Cuneo Creek, coming in 13th. “I knew ahead of time that I’d be able to complete this ride in under seven hours,” she says. “That’s my gauge for doing more than a limited distance ride. I can get horrible muscle cramps, especially when Chief spooks,” she says. “When I try to hold on, the cramping gets pretty bad in my thighs and hips. I can also get pretty stiff, and my right arm will go numb if the pain in my shoulder gets too bad. I’ve tried getting off and running, but I still have to deal with the cramping.” Because Audra also has difficulty manipulating tack and gear, she carries a miniature sponge instead of a regular size one for cooling off her horse.
For the most part Audra plans to do limited distance rides. “Six hours is about all I can manage my symptoms without medication, which I don’t take while on rides,” she says. “I just grit my teeth and go on. The rides are worth every ache and pain.” Audra’s goal is to appear in the rankings for AERC’s Limited Distance National Mileage program which requires a rider to have at least 200 miles in the same year to be listed. “I don’t know if I’d be in the sport without the 25- and 30-milers,” she says.
Author Diane Butler lives in Millville. She is an endurance rider with just over 1000 AERC miles. She rides two homebred Arabians, Oskar and Sparkle, in the Whiskeytown National Recreation Area and Lassen National Park near her home.