I'm putting in a new arena and the space I am putting it in only allows room for about 155 x 95. Is this going to be big enough for running barrels and poles?
If you put your barrels 20' off the fence then you will have 55' between barrel 1 & 2. It's 90' on a standard pattern. Poles are 21' apart and if you put them 21' off the back fence, then you will have 66' left.
I don't know if I am any help because I just have plowed dirt and no arena. We keep the poles set up on one side but I don't know the distance. I saw a video a couple of weeks ago and the person had their poles set to the inside of the first barrel and their horse approached the barrel thru the poles and never made a bobble. I don't think it would be a bad thing to set them up that way and it would accommodate your narrow setup.
Posted 2014-05-16 12:52 AM Subject: RE: 155x95 arena
Adjust all your barrel distances to the NFR barrel pattern. ...
To have room for arena entry and timers ... start your pattern with the 3rd barrel 20/30 ft off the rear fence and then place barrels 1 and 2 accordingly.
150x250 arena is the size of choice for the full WPRA or AQHA barrel pattern and you can setup poles between 1st and 3rd barrels to the back fence without any interference ... since no one is running from the 3rd barrel back to the 1st barrel ... lol ...
With all the snow country barrelracers they should be able to tell you the setups used in some of those tiny indoor arenas they run in ... there are more small barrel and rodeo arena's out there than big ones ... so don't fret and just use your setup to teach the pattern to get your horse seasoned ...
I have seen some nice setups outdoors that look like baseball diamond infields .... to cut down on maintaining an entire arena ... just work the ground in the barrel pattern you have room for with a pole setup along an edge or small piece of ground towards the backside ... and mow the grass outside the barrel and pole patterns ... looks pretty sharp too ... !!
155x95 arena
