Ganormous interests collage

This one was vaguely interesting, even if it took me a bit to get a set of pictures that actually were identifiable matches for my various interests. And I still had to wind up deleting several, mostly because the pictures made no sense. Here's what I finally came up with!

( My Interests Collage! )

Create your own! Originally Written By ga_woo, Hosted and ReWritten by darkman424

Horse questions

This is for all you horse geeks on my Friends list--a couple of questions that have popped into my brain as I'm trying to work my way through editing the second draft of Lament of the Dove. Scenario, short form: three characters fleeing at top speed on horseback, two horses to carry them. They're trying to move as quickly as possible and cover as much distance as they possibly can without killing or maiming the horses, and changing mounts is not an option. So I'm assuming that their speed is going to be constrained by the stamina of said mounts.

My questions are these:

1) If I assume that my characters set out quite early in the morning (before dawn), and I assume that the horses are in decent shape, how long would it be reasonable for them to keep up a hard ride? This is only a passingly mentioned detail that is easily altered without impacting the scene in which it appears, so I have no concerns about making it shorter if I need to.

2) Again assuming that the horses are in decent shape, and that since my characters are on the lam and need to be able to scamper off again at the first sign of danger, I'm assuming that they really ought to leave the gear on the mounts. Difficult to flee quickly if you have to slap a saddle and all its accoutrements back into place, after all. But what might my characters do in the meantime in order to give the horses as much of a rest as they can? Should they take off any non-vital gear, or just leave it all? I also remember from a "A Horse Is Not a Motorcycle" panel that after hard exercise, you would want to walk a horse around a bit to keep muscles from locking up and stuff--correct? How long should I make the characters rest those horses if they want a prayer of returning to the same hard pace of riding once they get going again?

This is also background detail and won't hugely impact the scene in question, which is primarily between two of the characters while the third is handling the horses. But I want to get the horse handling bits right. Thanks in advance for any recommendations, all!