What does our organization look like? How many rides are completed? Where is our organization growing and contracting? It's all in our AERC records and you can see quite a bit of them online.

Our organization is mostly a volunteer one with some professionals in the office. It's young members and mature members. It's members who do two rides a year and others who do 50. It's riders who are qualifying for international competition and others who only want to ride to see the scenery. It's very diverse with different goals for many of us. It's growing in LD and multiday rides and shrinking in 100 mile rides.

Our membership age distribution shows that we start young and continue to ride into our eighth decade.

There are very few riders in the 5 and below age group. Young membership peaks in the 13-16 age range. They go to college, start families/careers and drop out of endurance, then return in their 30s to give us a membership that is concentrated in the 35-60 age range. There are still a number of members and riders in the AERC in their 80s showing perhaps that riding keeps us physically active and alive longer.

Seventy percent of our membership is women. Only 6.3% of our membership is comprised of juniors with 78% of them female.

Twenty-two percent of our members are in the featherweight division, 29% are lightweight, 29% middleweight, and 20% are heavyweight. About 50% percent of our members are part of a family grouping.

The statistics on the number of rides done by members shows that many compete only a few times a year. Of our roughly 6000 members, about 15% do only one ride a year with about a third of the membership entering three or fewer rides per season. On the other hand there are riders who do 45 rides a year.

The completion rates are highest for limited distance at 87%. Slightly lower are 50 mile rides at 86%, 75 mile rides at 78%, with 100 mile rides at a 58%-62% completion rate, depending on the year. One hundred mile rides are significantly harder on our horses and the completion rate reflects this. The drop isn't as much for 75 miles so it looks like that last 25 miles makes a big difference.

In the past year there were 3230 equines used in endurance and limited distance. There were 2245 that had endurance miles and 1415 that had LD miles with about 430 equines that did both endurance and limited distance.

For more information on ride/rider statistics, the following online link at www.doublejoy.com/erol/aerc/AnnualStatistics.asp shows details by year, by region, and distance, plus completion rates, and growth.

As you can see, we have a diverse membership with different goals -- limited distance, international/FEI, top 10, endurance, and "just want to ride and smell the flowers" are just a few. It's a sport we can all enjoy our whole life -- whether riding, crewing, volunteering, or just reading Endurance News.