Today's Training

5/7/07: Day 3 (Burch): slight change of plans. As I considered it after yesterday's post, decided I'd like to get some speed instead of weight carrying. So, ditched the Astride and lunge line plans with Art, and put him in the pasture by himself for some riderless work in the same area where he used to run carrying the Astride back and forth. Art remembered the game, and basically conducted a self directed workout. I let him go as he chose, and the result was running back and forth over a 2f course up and down a hill with the depression right in the middle. He'd run down and then up, rest a bit, and turn right around and repeat. This went on 8 or nine times with me standing near the middle some distance away cracking the whip where appropriate. All this resulted in a bucking and sprinting display over several of the heats with the young now right at 15'3" fellow for the first time showing a stride. Instead of bounding and pogoing along as formerly, yesterday he was showing a nice racing stride, which I'm surmising may be the difference between watching a youngster sprinting with open knees as opposed to closed. There were several full speed 1/4 to 1/2f full speed sprints, probably 4 altogether which he did completely on his own without any driving by myself. This was all quite enough for the state of the training, and a real nice totally unexpected workout.

We trotted the older horses 1.5 miles through the mess, squishing along. There was just too much water on the grass to gallop safely, but, we've persevered through the wet weather for 3 days out of 4 now, and, as usual, it was less horrible than anticipated. We made it through, and the horses will be much better for it in the coming workouts than if we had just layed off, even as I wonder as always whether the trouble was worthwhile in terms of really getting us closer to the racetrack. Looks like we're missing the next three days of predicted rain. The stars were out last night, and sun today. And so, the first Eureka trip is again on the horizon, hopefully for next Monday.

Next post I'll get back to warming up and how training produces injuries.