More Weather

Raining all morning this Saturday. If you expand the image surely you'll notice the yellow right over my farm. Jay Leno might find an appropriate joke for our weather, but humor stretches me right at the moment as the fourth straight day of constant rain washes out yet another week of training.

It is a curious weather pattern. Unknown how many times I've posted similar images in the last few months with the rest of the country seemingly devoid of any precipitation and our area getting just pelted. Between drought and swampland I much prefer the latter, though we'd be quite ok with our more normal happy medium.

The next warm up post is under construction as I consider the effect of warm up on bone structure. My two year old Art is confined to our lower barn the abscess seemingly healed. I'll put a shoe on this afternoon and run him a little on grass. Rain or shine we'll put the oldsters under tack. We've missed only one breeze sequence through a sporadic month of June weather wise.

Farm Photos

Rain, I guess, makes me tired, too much so to do anything today but to post today's photos. And, ooops, I just erased half of them by mistake. The Texas "rain plume" has come right over us and we're under water. The blog makes a good weather memory. I just looked at my April posts and jeez that weather was even worse than I recall.

The late June rains come every year like clockwork, and so this week's deluge was other than a surprise. I planned to train around it, and we'll miss very little. Back to warming up tomorrow

Nice shot of Acesmash:


The vet yesterday cut a channel to drain the abscess. Something new on abscesses--where the vet cut to the live tissue, instead of abscessed fluid bursting out, what was there appeared to be congealed and jelly like. This explains why I've been unable to get a "pop", and also perhaps why abscesses linger over wide areas of the sole. The jelly stuff stays instead of coming out unless you locate it perfectly. The vet dislikes the boot due moisture and bacteria build up, so the young fellow is wrapped and confined, due to mud, below. This set up and separating and providing care takes about 1.5 hours, oh well!
The downstairs barn serves as the horses only shelter at our farm.
And, yes, half the tractor wheel repair is done. The rim is less damaged than expected, and after a little grinding work to smooth the edges we'll be back mowing the high, rain nourished grass. Our little frog buddies are ecstatic with the weather this year!

Warming Up Da Bones

(Left click to enlarge illustration at left.)

When was the last time you heard a trainer talk about bone warm up? More likely you more familiar with the ridiculous scene in the illustration on the left or perhaps such incomprehensible stuff as Richard Mandella icing his horses pre-race in "On The Muscle".

The injury problem generally plagues thoroughbred racing, but catastrophic bone fractures perhaps threaten the existence of the sport as we know it. How many more Ruffians, Go For Wands, Barbaros or Pine Islands can this sport take and still survive?

Among the multiple contributory factors to bone soundness is the warm up process. In this post at the end I'll give a recitation of bone physiology to begin the discussion.

But, first, some real live guinea pig stuff. We breezed Aylward at the farm last night, and in view of these posts, I asked Nob the rider to give me a report. The exercise began with a continuous warm up 3f trot, 3f :18sec/f gallop changing leads, 2f trot to the starting point, 45 sec. walk and then on into the heats which were 3 x 2f at :13-13.5sec/f under 175 lbs rider and tack.

Aylward performed the three 2f breeze heats impressively. Nob described it roughly this way:
"The first heat, the horse was slow to get into it, he took off but he was choppy and inconsistent. Since it was heat #1 I was declining to drive him through it and just let him go. He was out of breath at the end, surprising because it was fairly slow."

"The second heat was the most energetic. The horse started well and smoothly drove through it all the way to the end and was barely out of breath at all at the conclusion. This heat was a lot of fun compared to the first where I thought the horse was struggling."

"Heat #3 was the fastest but I had to drive him to it and he was out of breath at the conclusion to the point of having a palate problem".

Please note the progression through the heats and how the horse fared. The horse struggled and was breathless at the conclusion in Heat #1 which demonstrates all the warm up processes including energy systems and cardiovasuclar efficiency still clicking in instead of already being there.

The horse performed best in Heat #2 which would actually be the third heat if you want to include the warm up as a heat. By the last heat the horse was tiring which speaks to where we are in conditioning.

We saw at the farm last night first hand how much more effective Aylward was in that second heat after having fully warmed up in Heat #1. The dangers to horses from insufficient warm up aside, from the performance aspect horses are physically unable to give their best effort without some preliminary speed work. When you consider this in its enormity, what a shame!

Now, back to the bones. Here is Steward G. Eidelson M.D.:

"The human skeleton is composed of 206 bones, 33 of which are located in the spine. Bones are long, flat, short or irregularly shaped, and some are thicker than others. Bones are flexible during youth, eventually becoming rigid at maturity. If a bone is broken, collagen which is manufactured by the body, mends the fracture. The new bone is then hardened through a process term calcification.

Bone is a living organ comparable to the heart or kidneys. It contains blood vessels and is nourished through circulation. If any bone or organ system is ignored or misused, it can decay and cause problems. Within bone are two compartments. The outer layer is termed cortical bone and the inner is cancellous bone. Microscopically, cortical bone looks like concentric rings. Cancellous bone resembles latticework and is spongy. A system of blood vessels supplies the bones with needed nutrition.

Bone serves as storehouse of minerals and fats. Approximately a quarter of a bone's weight is fluid. Minerals make up the remaining weight along with the other nutrients.

The semi soft center of the bone contains marrow. marrow is similar to a busy factory manufacturing red blood cells, which are necessary to adequately distribute oxygen throughout the body. In fact, each time the heart beats approximately10% of the blood is pumped into the skeletal system!

Throughout a person's lifetime, bone continuously beaks down and rebuilds itself. Some time after age 50, bone naturally begins to lose strength. This loss may progress due to decreased demands placed on the skeletal system."

Will go on with this, next post.

Training:
Art is still wearing the boot due to the abscess. Vet today, but, he may have been walking normally this morning. I was in a hurry.

Misc. Farm News

Racing horses involves making things happen. Consider the present minor quandary. Nice racing start to our year would be to race the 12 year olds at Anthony Downs (100 mi. west of Wichita) on July 13 and 20 in 4f races to provide a nice easy start to the year and legitimize them for the coming meets given their 4 year absence from racing. Seems easy enough. Just enter 'em.

Firmly clenching my sombrero I remember that I need two timed works and one from the gate with Eureka parimutuel only to July 4. Can we pull this off? Trip this Thurs. for a first of the year 3f. They're indeed ready. Then, back Sunday for the gate work.

But, whoa again big fellow, can we find a rider on a non-racing day, not to mention gate crew and timer from the racing office at 11:00 a.m. Sunday? Possibly, presuming I invest enough money. Money talks at the racetrack.

Anyway, it's a nail biter to get it done, BUT, probably racing at Anthony ended for us when just now I glanced at the totally revamped Eureka weather forecast to see that every day this week promised heavy rain. Ended with coda.

So, we'll keep right on going. Think this is easy--think Scat Daddy, Invasor.

Training:
Why have you got me in this blue boot again on my right front?

That's right folks--the Saturday workout in the Astride paddock where he lost the shoe turned into his fifth abscess of the year. In perspective--the other three horses have for the year a grand total of one.. How he lost that solidly nailed shoe during the w/o remains unsolved, though a fence and then sprang/sprung would be in the running. Shoe below had just been put on Sunday morning. Sunday night, serious limping.
The knife shows the abscess location. He's still limping today. Locating abscesses is easier in dry weather since the sole of the hoof tends in dry weather to crinkle up and create fissures for the abscess to find. In wet weather however the sole expands, and closes the fissures and the abscess has not were to go unless you exactly locate it's source. Vet tomorrow. We'll see.

Farm Report

Monday I'll continue with "warming up". Today, some catch up:

--Invasor retired. What a shame! The annual summer casualty list strikes again. Is fracture of a rear leg sesamoid "just another one of those things". If you're a reader of the blog you know otherwise. Would we expect K. McLaughlin to go in front of the microphone with the explanation "I screwed up". Avoid holding your breath. Miracle it took so long. McLaughlin training, later on the blog.

--and what's this? An inch of rain in the buckets Saturday morning. They forecast .1 inch overnight. This and the pic. that follows is what .1 inch looks like in real time.
Another complete mess. Second time out of last five days.
--Horses enjoying the mud. Nice action shot if you left click to enlarge. The trees are happy!
--and what's this? Let's say that Saturday June 23, RR has had better days.
--The comedy that was yesterday can best be described as it hit me: We took Friday off planning to transition to morning gallop and off to Eureka Sunday. The .1 inch rain forecast came in at over an inch. OK. Time for one of those Bill O'Gorman "minor improvisations". Sunny all day, we'll gallop Sat. night.
--I'm innocently sitting in my office at 4pm without any clue as to what lays ahead.
--Go outside, it's overcast and cool instead of sunny--at the farm, same mud mess as this morning. Unable to gallop without ruining track. Last under tack work was Wed.
--Art taken with buddy to Astride Paddock to work. Ooops! Swelling right hind. Feels like low bow. No. It's a high bow???? High and low? Impossible. First, horse has done nothing in my sight strenuous enough to bow. Second, oh.... it's got to be a "hit" instead of a bow since it swelling seems to go all the way up and down. Then I remember Art jumping the fence a week ago and hitting his hinds on the metal bar as he crossed. I injury checked, no problem, and forgot it till tonight. This explains the workouts of the past week--lameness, looking uncomfortable on his feet, weak, and generally showing less energy. Now we understand, little fellow.
--Decision made to go on. We've been working on it, and it's probably sore only due to swelling. Let Art exercise with another without driving them. It was a nice workout with some spurts. Looked a lot stronger.
--Nice fast riderless workout in the mud with the other two.
the workouts tonight sort of salvaged this comedy.
--big tractor tire flat again. Tire rim at air valve has rusted. Big repair job coming. Two days wasted and $500.00 at least. Got to have the tractor.
--topping things off--now dark and as I'm feeding I see Art give an abscess limp on his front right--same dam foot. Only later discover, he lost the shoe. Whew.

Flies, Fly Wraps, Fly Season

See my last Thursday post for a recent training session rudely interrupted by a brigade of horseflies. It's that time of year. You'll notice in my horse photos, the summer crew cuts. They shake the manes to scare the horse flies, but, since mine are able to protect from horse flies in the run in barn, I prefer to cut the manes to help prevent overheating especially during exercise.

For our pesky friend the common stable fly I use leg fly wraps, 14 day spot on fly repellent and fly masks later in the season. The spot on repellent does very little fly protection, but, I've found that it kills ticks (sorry tick buddies), and presumably other microscopic type of varmints that cause discomfort, and possibly mosquitos (I'm checking that one out now.)

Fly leg wraps prevent excessive stamping, protect cartilage, keep rear shoes from being smashed back from fly kicking, and yes they do keep the flies away. I had used the perfect fly leg wrap in the Royal Ryders from Valley Vet, but, they've been discontinued. This spring I bought one new brand after another, all horrible, stupidly designed products--uncomfortable, ill fitting, made in China. But then a godsend. I found these new and very cheap ($20.00 for 4 legs) Romas from Dover Saddlery. The Velcro is a little too sticky and the fasteners too long which increases time of application, but, they're serviceable, wearable (unlike those other brands), and do the job.



The discontinued Royal Rider wraps from Valley Vet. Light conforming mesh, nice Velcro snaps, perfect size, very comfortable, durable. Nobody was buying them. Huh?
Old wraps, scattered about in the foreground. New Romas on the horses. Left click to enlarge for Art's (foreground) summer haircut.
Art at left sporting new Romas.

Warming Up To "The Problem"

The physiological purposes of the warm up #6: To increase the force of muscle contraction and to prepare tissue, bone, cartilage, connective tissue, ligaments and tendons to WITHSTAND impending force.

In the last post on Jerry Bailey I included Bailey's description of the career ending injury to Holy Bull in the 1995 Donn Handicap--a snapped tendon--suffered after the horse was hustled max speed out of the gate by Mike Smith trying to beat Cigar into the clubhouse turn, and by the end of that turn--SNAP--. Could this have been caused by anything other than
1. failure at an appropriate warm up, AND
2. zero left lead warm up in the warm up process?

Warming up the left lead is one of the finer points. Take note that any horse with a pony will naturally canter on it's right lead instead of the left. Thus, before the gate most of these horses have done zero left leadd work, and in fact they first land on their left lead at the first turn in the race when they burst onto the lead change. The amazing thing concerning the snapped tendon of Holy Bull is that we have so few of them.

Of course soft tissue snapping, muscles cramping or tearing, cartilage fracture rank way below our biggest fear in racing which is the catastrophic bone fracture. Number one in WITHSTANDING impending force is prevention of the fracture, holding the bone together.

A discussion of this will require some bone physiology which I'll get to next post.

Training:
Thursday June 21 was "one of those days" in our training. Luckily they happen rarely. A comedy really. First, Nob the rider is AWOL. Fine, we'll have a 6f riderless race in the Astride Paddock. I spend two hours mowing down the grass for the occasion, but when I bring in the first two combatants we are met by an army of horseflies. I'd timed it just wrong, at exactly the moment the horseflies come out, and, I've never seen so many of them--6 or 7 to each of the two horses. Needless to say, chaos. Instead of running and racing, despite much effort all I got were two horses ducking and jiving, brushing against trees to get rid of flies and trying to jump the fence. One of them finally did jump a fence and it took a half hour to get him back on the other side. By this time it was almost dark. Just enough to get to Art and Aylward. I exercised these two in the regular dirt paddock. Aylward the horse likes to pretend when he runs with one other horse that the companion is a mare. And with little Art last night he was particularly pesky, bothering Art with every stride, and so that w/o also turned out to be substandard, though Art did give it a game effort. Back to normal tonight, I'm hoping.
6/19/07 Tues. 10 min. play in the Astride Paddock.
6/20/07 Wed. 5x3f riderless at :16/sec speed. ten min walk under tack.
6/21/07 Thurs. 6 x 3f riderless probably at about :16 speed.

"Against the Odds"

Who is this guy? A more recent photo, end of post. Left click to enlarge.

I just finished "Against the Odds" and recommend it highly. Hope that the author considers my use of his photo's as a promotion of his excellent book.

This is a ghost written autobiography describing the atypical life, the son of a dentist standing 5'5" and his 5'1" wife producing a young son who went on to become one of the great jockeys of our time. The story of Cigar alone makes this book worth reading. We get an inside look as to how the 16 race win streak happened taking us actually aboard the mount, and then the loss with number 17 in the Pacific Classic where our author is unable to quite bring himself to relate that he blew the race by chasing Siphon in suicidal fractions (1:09.2) and then getting predictably passed by a closer in the stretch. The jock and trainer Bill Mott had wanted to avoid Siphon running away as he had in a recent race against Geri when Geri was unable to catch that speed ball. They only remembered after the race that they had Cigar instead of Geri.

But, that error in the Pacific Classic was one of the few by this jock. We saw it on TV time and again, and the rides are described in the 2005 book. The TC races of Hansel, sneaking through in a perfect pace scenario to steal the 1993 KY Derby aboard Sea Hero; the back to back BC Classics in '91 and 92 one running away with Black Tie Affair and then the stealth victory in '92 aboard the 99-1 Arcangues. Here's a typical description that you get, and one that will be relevant to my "warming up" posts:

The 1995 Donn Handicap at Gulfstream: "The race was on from the first jump. I had thrown down the gauntlet. Mike (Smith) was going to have to use Holy Bull awfully hard and ask him to run unmercifully fast if he was to make the lead. We fairly flew into the first turn.
This is a blast! I thought. This is what racing is all about.
I knew Holy Bull was great. He had already proved that to me when he beat me on Concern in the Travers. As Holy Bull exerted pressure with every stride, I was about to find out how good Cigar was.
Just about the time we hit the backside, there was a loud pop amid the pounding of hoofs, Mike cursed. Suddenly, Holy Bull was nowhere to be seen
I knew what had happened.
No time for sympathy or sorrow. Time to change plans. If Holy Bull had broken down under the strain of the pace, what toll might it take on Cigar?
While it was imperative that I slow him down, only so much could be done. I had given him the signal to go,go,go. He had taken it. He wasn't giving it back.
To late to change your mind, jock.
Given the ease with which Cigar was traveling, I started to think, Maybe he can keep this up. To my delight, he did, coasting by five and a half lengths.
But the result was bittersweet at best..." (Note: Holy Bull snapped a tendon.)

It's ghost written, but this sounds like Jerry Bailey. The whole book does. It's an enjoyable exercise for any racing fan, and valuable for trainers, owners and other competitors by giving everything including racing strategies, the whys and wherefores from the great jock's eyes. The story of Bailey's early substance abuse with alcohol (Against the Odds) backgrounds all of this as does his conquest of alcoholism.

I might have preferred a bit more detail here and there, some instructions on riding, how'd Bailey learn it, e.g., how did he get into it, how to control horses, get stride efficiency, speed, etc. Such details are omitted, and the book basically is just a story, quite decently written and very entertaining.

Training: I timed the weather. We'll be doing farm breezes tonight before the rain tomorrow then presumably its on to Eureka Sunday with the oldsters.
Art:
6/18/07 Mon. Off. Rain.
6/19/07 Tues. riderless in Astride Paddock just playing. some short bursts.
6/20/07 Wed. 5x3f riderless at 16sec/f. How do I know it was 16sec pace? Bill O'Gorman judges time by counting strides between furlong markers. Me, after years of timing Tom Ivers type workouts I recognize time. Horse did this on his own and was stronger than last week. Ten Min walk under tack. Jerry Bailey aboard Arcangues below.

Bill O'Gorman

I want to post on a couple of books I just read while they're on my mind, and then back to warming up. Click on photos to enlarge.


Paddy O'Gorman
Bill O'GormanThis is the only training book written by the trainer without a ghost writer. O'Gorman details his 30 year stable and his great record for two year old winners some with 11 to 16 wins as two year olds. This is a training book written to join a legacy begun in the 1800s on thoroughbred race training.

Some highlights:
1. "the training plan was formulated on the assumption that the weather remains reasonable...unfortunately that is most unlikely always to be true...which necessitates minor improvisations." Really!
2. O'Gorman trains to sell. Took a little off the bloom off it for me. Economic necessity, he claims.
3. Gorman complains: "The frequent examples of horses that win having reportedly done no work at all are difficult to explain..." Read that one again. Interesting coming from a trainer.
4. Nothing wrong with "trying" the yearlings before Xmas.
5. "The enormous stables that have become the norm merely reflect the current defeatist attitude that this is purely a numbers game and one cannot hope to do other than hemorrhage money. As long as it's someone else's money the prevailing system does have certain attractions for a trainer."
6. "Most trainers should carry a Goverment Health Warning".
7. O'Gorman summarized: "the best protection we can afford our investment is a fairly rigorous training regimen. This need not necessarily be the extreme and precise interval training advocated in some quarters. These systems seem far too complex to implement properly in a working racing stable, and in any event, they may not be necessary for optimum results. What we will attempt to practise may involve an overall workload similar to that practiced in Newmarket beween the wars, although the detail may differ markedly."
8. "Runners should be ridden out for a trot the day after the race..."

O'Gorman details every aspect of his stable and husbandry. He's intelligent and educated, though maybe he hits a few too many verbose dead ends throughout the book for my taste. Anyone familiar with training will recognize most of this, though it's honed to incremental detail and adopted to conditions in a 30-40 horse stable at Newmarket. The substance of the book is comparatively interesting for to read a trainer with similar thoughts to your own provides a lot of confirmation that you'd question from other sources.

As to the training, regrettably O'Gorman omits specific training for his successful runners. I doubt he kept training charts, which is hardly a sin in my book since I also never have documented my training except in this blog. Nevertheless it might have been interesting to read in the details of the training how those 16 win two year olds were produced.

Instead O'Gorman presents his general exercise prescription for various ages and stages of training. O'Gorman is a hard conditioner type. A lot of this is "intervals" generally along the lines of 1 x 6f at 18 sec/f 1 x 6f at 15 sec/f. Breezing takes place every three or four days and certainly once a week but at fairly short distances generally at 12-13 seconds/f. O'Gorman's training method seems support for the general idea of each training session being 2 x something, with fairly frequent fast work, and thus is really quite similar to the sort of thing I've done before directly gluing on Preston Burch. O'Gorman achieved a lot of success by being a fairly hard trainer. The book was support for that.

Is it worth $75.00? That may be a slight stretch. But, RR is other than a collector. I read them and toss them. This one I'm keeping as a reference alongside my Burch and Ivers.

Today's training:
Truck is back and Eureka trip being planned for Sunday. Superb news. Called Fairmount Park--do you allow 6 yr. old maidens? "we have no eligibility rules". Thus I have a stable again. Looks like they'd take 13 year olds. Getting there the 325 miles--we'll see.
Art:
6/17/07 Sun: 4x3f riderless ends in a limp. 10 min walk under tack.
6/18/07 Mon: Off weather.
6/19/07 Tues: 10 gentle back and forth in the Astride paddock, involves a couple of spurts. Too dark for tack work.

Warming Up: We Get To the Problem

Prior posts dealt with five of the six physiological purposes of the warm up for our fictional chestnut in term of injury causation and getting max performance out of the gate. Now however, we finally get to "the" part of warming up that has the most direct concern on the main topic, which is how training causes injuries.

The purpose of the warm up #6: To increase the force of muscle contraction and to prepare tissue, bone, cartilage, and connective tissue, ligaments and tendons to WITHSTAND impending force.

"Withstand" is the operative term here, for failure to withstand, bear, brace, confront. take it, tolerate it, etc., will bring down our horse. What are we talking about directly? Fractures, catastrophic fractures, bowed tendons, pulled suspensories, knee chips, chips in the fetlock, and in a lesser sense pulled muscles, bruised feet, etc. etc.

The "impending force" being talked about is both the force generated by moving 1000 lbs of horse at 40 mph, and also the 10,000 lbs./square inch of force generated with each stride on and through the cannon bones at speed. Unknown where Tom Ivers came up with the 10,000 lbs/sq. inch. Guess it's been measured previously; the point is, there's a lot of force coming down on the legs of the horse at speed.

The point of #6 above first presumes the horse has received sufficient training that an appropriate warm up "can" pull things together before the start of the race. And, inherent in #6 is that the horse at rest or the horse warmed up inappropriately will be unable to "withstand" and be injured. Hence, there are somethings which we may call warming up which in terms of #6 are anything but.

Since I'm here talking about the heart of the matter in terms of injuries, next posts I'll seguay at bit into the physiology of all this as there are some basics necessary for discussion.

Catching Up On Our Training:
The older horses had another perfect workout Sunday. We still have a couple of weeks to go before we max out what we can accomplish at the farm. The truck radiator is being installed as I type, and presumably it'll be off to Eureka soon.
6/17/07 Sun.: 4x3f riderless gallop at decent pace. Art looked was playing with usual enthusiasm but look uncomfortable on his feet. Sure enough, at the end of the 4th heat a couple of lame steps. RR Rule: always abort at any sign of injury. Thus, heat #5 immediately cancelled. Remnant of the abscess here. We'll see next session. The horse also walked under tack for ten minutes before the heats.
6/18/07 Mon.: Off due to weather. What's nice about Burch training--your one off day is just a rest for the next speed work. Perfect amount of rain just enough to keep things green. We should be ok for tonight.

Farm Photos

last few days. left click to enlarge.
hello doll! i'm rodney.
part of a straightaway of our track


under construction
more track
the number one horse assistant , on summer vaction.
cat committee! look at this high grass! our lawn mower is in the shop again.
weather last night driving home to train. hmmm.

Warming Up Specifics Continued

Physiological analysis warming up our mythical chestnut continues. So far this warm up has produced an adequate heart rate but left capillary dilation and hence O2 delivery at less than optimal. Muscle temperature from rest has increased adequately but we've failed to do enough to raise temps in ligament, tendon and bone. We've engaged energy producing systems at the cellular level somewhat but less than optimally.

One more word about energy utilization in the race horse. The unknown wild card here is the spleen and it's dumping of extra red blood cells (up to 50% more) into the circulatory system shortly after the onset of speed. Unknown if this has ever been studied, but, we may imagine over the eons that a horse running away from a lion might have more biological urgency to quickly engage both anaerobic and aerobic metabolism than your average human setting out on their 10k run. Without knowing, I suspect this to be so, and thus very possibly engagement of energy paths might be less important in the equine warm up than we might otherwise suppose. Needed to get that in there, although, as the reader will see, it's irrelevant to the main point.

And so, moving on:

4. Engagement of endocrine system, adrenalin. Doubt it's a problem--and probably salvages those times somewhat that we see a horse walked to the gate.

5. Speed up and increase in efficiency of nerve impulse, nervous system engagement. On this one I am without knowledge of physiology text or memory of it. BUT i have plenty of observation to be able to take the following to the bank: nerves never fire efficiently or completely on the first heat. With horses as with humans it takes two or three sprints to get going max coordination. This factor alone points to the total stupidity of what most North American racehorses do pre-race and pre-breeze. Picture any NA horse race the first 3-400 yards out of the gate and see if the horses are really running freely and easily. Instead out of the gate you see whole fields struggling to get into their racing stride at what cost to valuable energy reserves?

6. Increased force off muscle contractions, bones, cartilage, tendons, ligaments--tissues tightening to withstand impending force. THIS IS THE BIG ONE, and I'll cover it next post.

Training:
Had to be one of the nicest days of year yesterday. Wednesday Midway Ford called and said the truck radiator had arrived. Delivered the truck and two hours later they called: whoops, it's the wrong radiator. To my surprise today, Sunday, they call, and the new one at double the cost--$500--has arrived. It'll be $800 before they're done and thus $1400.00 spent on cooling system repair. Still beats truck payments, and we'll soon be back in business.
Art's training:
6/14/07 Thurs. 5x3f slow riderless.
6/15/07 Fri. 5x3f snappy. 7 min walk under tack.
6/16/07 Sat. Off.
Sunday--over the next four days we'll seguey into trot under tack. report on this day tomorrow.

More Warming Up Specifics

Moving right along, our mythical chestnut has done an above average American track warm up and we're considering whether the warm up was sufficient for max performance and injury prevention:

3. Engagement of energy pathways--ATP, glycogen, O2 uptake by cell mitochondria, increasing rate of metabolism and efficiency. I'd have to take out my physiology book to recall the exact biology in these processes. Just a brief synopsis from memory: motion is produced by muscle contraction. Muscle contraction happens when individual muscle cells shorten the overall muscle tissue by moving against each other. The muscle cells have little "prongs" which rub against each other and catch with the neighboring cell. When the individual cells contract the prongs catch with the prongs off another cell and so on, cell on cell, shortening the entire muscle.

The above process takes energy: the conversion of fuel to heat.

The initial fuel used by muscle cells for about 15 seconds is called ATP which is produced within the nucleus of the cell by various nutritional elements involving conversion of choline, carnetine and a few other catalysts. After the ATP stores run out the muscle cell commences to fuel itself by anaerobic (non-O2) processes involving glycolosis--the burning of sugar that 1. has been stored in the cell, or 2. is extracted from the blood stream. There is enough glycogen available to allow anaerobic metabolism to last 1-1.5 minutes depending on the state of conditioning.

As available glycogen is quickly depleted each cell attempts to convert to aerobic metabolism which is the utilization or burning of O2. Aerobic metabolism tends to kick in 1-1.5 minutes after the start of activity.

Of course any activity from rest begins to engage the metabolic processes. The more intense the activity the greater the speed at which the mitochondria in the cells respond.

For purposes of warm up--and here I start to get into speculation from memory--and we're talking about the sort of slow easy warm up being experienced by our chestnut--this sort of activity probably leaves cell ATP in place and can be largely supported merely by the burning off cell glycogen.

Without a doubt our chestnut's warm up is sufficient to alert the anaerobic mechanisms and get them started. And to a degree I'd suppose O2 metabolism is also placed on alert.

My guess, however, is that "cantering" or "trotting" is woefully inefficient to have the energy processes fully ready for the charge out of the gate. As you may imagine "metabolism" through it's various channels is other than instantaneous. It takes at least seconds for any of these processes to kick in. Most races due to distance and time spent in running are 75-100% anaerobic with O2 mechanisms starting to kick in probably at 45 seconds into the race.

All the energy systems have been somewhat alerted by the chestnut's warm up. That these mechanisms are at peak efficiency and ready to fully work from the gate would require a far more event specific warm up than our chestnut will get. My guess is that cell metabolism begins to reach peak efficiency--given this sort of warm up--about 45 seconds to 1 minute into the race. Essentially, with the North American warm up the horse leaves the gate running on adrenalin with its metabolic processes only fully engaged fairly far into the race.

How many horses hit the wall of fuel insufficiency because their metabolism engages late or has yet to engage at all (O2) due to insufficient warm up. Another principle of physiology is that the better trained the horse the less of the various fuels are absolutely necessary. The better trained horses will last longer with this warm up, but every horse will perform less efficiently for most of the race simply due to insufficiency in the warm up process. It is when I consider this stuff specifically that I really get p_ss_d off watching these idiots in pre-race warm ups. And, please trust me on this one, I'm just starting to get p_ss_d. You'll see far more significant reasons for extreme anger in the coming posts.

Training:
We've had a nice week training wise. Had to trot Sunday and Monday due to weather but have been galloping since. Farm breezes scheduled for tomorrow, Sunday. I'm encouraged by this and highly frustrated. This is what we should have been doing in February. Luckily none of my boys except the two year old have missed a day of training as it's been available, and so we have a high rate of "acquisition" from each training session and moving forward. Racing is linear--it never stops and continues right along. And, so will we, and see what develops down the road. Realistically we're about 30 days away from adequate racing performance for the oldsters.
Amart:
Wed. 6/13/07 4x3f slow gallop riderless. 7 min walk under tack.
Thurs. 6/14/07 5x3f slow gallop riderless, looking weak. tack day off.
Fri. 6/15/07 5x3f gallop, mostly snappy riderless. much stronger today, looking better. he sped things up on his own. 8 min. walk under tack

Warming Up: Specifics

First warming up post, April 24. Wow! Time is flying. Of course the Triple Crown rightly diverted the blog as did my readings on Whittingham and Woody Stephens, and with our futility in trying to get to the track and the weather also needing some space.

But, now it's back to warming up, and how training and racing cause injuries. I'd finished some posts on racing surface and shoeing and was just getting into the "warm up", posing the question: Does the manner of warming up have any effect on performance and injury prevention? You'd think so, but, to analyze, quantify, and apply on the race track? Is there any method of observation that would tell us that our horse is warmed up to the point of maximum performance and injury prevention?

Nothing like a photo from Churchill of ponies warming up to get us in the mood. Focus on the chestnut in the picture, and let's take him through his warm up start to finish: 4f canter, walk, 2f canter a little faster, 6-8 min. line up and walk to gate, load and out he comes--an above average warm up for an American Track. Take a look at this with the physiological factors listed in my June 5 post in mind:

First factor: "Increase in heart rate and efficiency, speeding up O2 delivery, changing blood viscosity, engagement of NO2 mechanisms to achieve capillary dilation."

Hmmm.

Let's concede, this warm up raises heart rate. Does it raise it enough for maximum performance? I never thought so until the first time I visited myself the starting gate and loaded my own horse at Eureka Downs. Being there right at the scene you immediately notice a surprising amount of activity in the loading process and a level of excitement from horses and handlers that you'd never pick up with binoculars. Horses being spinned, veering, strutting, eyeballs popping, etc., I'd say that the increase in heart rate is the least of our problems here. Tom Ivers noted the equine heart spins up pretty fast!

Without getting into details I'll volunteer that "blood viscosity" and "NO2 production" deal more with human distance events or workouts over time such as weight lifting. But, we want capillary dilation, especially that that might come from multiple heats with some speed. Get very little of that here.

"Increase in temperature"--this refers to all tissue, muscles, ligaments and bones, both to fire up the energy producing process and to increase plasticity so that at point of maximum stress the cells hold together instead of burst. Depends on the weather. 10 minutes of our warm up on a hot day will do it in terms of muscles. Question whether it does much for the bones though.
Colder it gets the more activity is necessary. Horses get hot quickly. It will do, but doubt it's optimal.

Since this is getting long, I'll continue next post.

Today's training: Catching up, as of Tuesday we were able to commence actual galloping. Amart and his latest abscess first allowed us to work Wednesday. A week of strengthening so far has gone like this:
Wed. 6/13/07 4x3f slow riderless gallop. 7 min. walk under tack.
Thurs. 6/14/07 5x3f slow riderless gallop. This is his tack off day. Horse looks weak and runs weak, as we'd expect with the amount of layoff. Still looks slightly ouchy on the abscess, but ok.

Eureka Post Mortem

My "rain bucket" showing the four inches that fell on us Thursday and Sunday. After nice weather in May we've been through another "spell". Almost posted yesterday's weather map ridiculously showing (again) a giant patch of green and yellow over Missouri and clear in rest of the USA, but, enough weather maps on the blog. I prefer wet to dry as drought for me has a continuing depressing quality. You work around the weather, regardless.

Then there is the matter of the Eureka trip last Thursday where we traveled the 175 miles to the track radiator overheating all the way only to find the track closed and the trackman ludicrously grading the track in 40 mph winds for three hours. I sat there watching him work his tractor, and estimated half his surface was blown away during that "re-grading". One of several reasons I pulled my papers is the depressing realization, when I looked at it, that Eureka is without any surface this year.

How did I take that useless, expensive trip? With my usual equanimity honed by years of similar. Heck, this was minor stuff. In 2000 Aylward won 3 out of4 and a second. I brought him back from a broken nose at the Woodlands, and after Woodlands hauled him the 350 miles to Remington (same truck) for one final breeze before a race the next week. One of the better jocks that had agreed to ride him and I failed to make connections till 9:45 a.m. with a 10:00 a.m. track closing. As the jock walked in, over the loudspeaker "track closed in 5 min.". We threw on the tack and got to the track exactly as the track personell were leaving. Missed the breeze. I avoided going to the racing office to whine. I've learned over the years amid the chaos of racing there's a lot of agendas that have nothing to do with a small stable preparing to race. Just put him in the truck and hauled him the 350 miles back. No breeze, no race, and done for the year with a horse that might have made the stable but for the track closing 10 minutes early.

Then, there is the Woodlands where year after year you get up at 5:00 a.m., round em up, drive the 20 miles, enter the track and there's that strange quiet of something being up--track closed today for this reason or that. No one cares except me and so we go on.

In the present situation, as soon as my new radiator comes in for the truck we'll be off to the track again, probably Eureka. Of course that's another story. Will they find a radiator for a 28 year old F-350 with a 460 engine. They barely found one 15 years ago.

As for the two year old, very disappointing. Last Wednesday the abscess had healed and he galloped. Thurs and Frid to0 wet for training. Sat. night in he comes badly limping again. Removed the same shoe again, and I think I popped the abscess this time, but, it was so muddy had to put on a Davis boot (rubber boot) to protect the abscess or it would have come back. Deep mud and overcast till yesterday, so boot stayed on to prevent re-abscess. Put shoe on last night, hope it holds, and so mark June 13 as the day we start over with the young fellow.

So, state of things with the RR stable:

two half way through their 12 yr. old year yet to race.
one unraced six year old
one two year old too small for our rider.

pretty depressing I'd say, except for sure the next two months are always trainable months. I'll hold the thoughts for 60 days and see where we are. We're working on it is all I can say for the moment. Below some pictures from yesterday. No humans. More peaceful that way. Shows for posterity our tractor repair which took two hours and our track where we'll be two minute galloping in the next days and breezing this weekend, and also the mud still there from last night. Lush and green in these parts. Nice time of year!

Triple Crown Tidbits

Very little has been going on as we've been under water again. I'll catch things up tomorrow. An entertaining TC series this year has me looking back:

1. Some say SS stopped in the Preakness when he got the lead. For me Curlin winning was purely fatigue by SS, too far back, too long a move risked the loss. When your horse is training so well you get to thinking you can get away with anything on the track. SS galloped hard the day before the race according to Steve Haskin. By my experience you just never do that if you want the horse really sharp for the race. Nafzger trapped himself into that gallop by flawed scheduling that may have cost the TC.

2. Was the most amazing event of the series Curlin getting outfooted down the stretch by a filly in slow final fractions? You only need say Safely Kept or Meafara to know that fillies can run with colts and have just as much natural speed. The story here was Curlin running out of gas instead of the filly. Hello Steve Asmussen. Postscript: S. Haskin this morning writes the final 2f was in a "sizzling" 23.83. Whatever. A 3 million dollar colt is unable to exceed :12 sec./f down the stretch of a race run in slow fractions?

3. Greg Fox, the trainer of Slew's Tizzy, is a former collegiate distance runner, a veterinarian, and reasonably bright fellow based on his Belmont interview. We'd expect innovative imaginative training from a person with this background, though the indicators were otherwise. I'd enjoy having a conversation about training with Greg Fox.

4. Larry Jones: Jone's horse rendered a buffo Derby performance off a :57+ breeze running on the lead. Might it have occurred to Jones (and Bill Currin with Stormello) when you have a horse like that you might want to repeat some version of the fast breezing between races and perhaps train the horse to go on instead of trying to slow him down? Is it judgment, brains, gray matter or a fellow similar to 75% of the population, a nice fairly smart guy lacking the basic common sense to connect the dots? Thank heaven for trainers like Larry Jones.

5. John Shirrefs: Unlike Giacomo Tiago continued to gallop after the last pre-race breeze. Almost Nafzger-like training of Tiago. How this develops will be interesting!

6. Todd Plecher: Pre-Belmont everyone of course was thinking "Curlin" which obscured quite a bit Pletcher's almost clandestine arrival into the picture when he entered the filly very late. The Belmont reminded that we should never ignore this very intelligent fellow. How Plecher gets these gate to wire performances will be a continuing subject on the blog.

The Belmont: Why and How?

Congratulations to all the supporters of Rags to Riches! The familiar crow in full glory appears again as he will again soon, undoubtedly. And hats off to those astute handicappers who picked the filly over the colts before the race was run!

The visual image of Rags to Riches scooting by a beaten Curlin in the stretch undoubtedly will stay with us for the ages. And so, before rendering the RR opinion of the race an acknowledgement that this was a special performance by a very good horse who happened to be of the female sex, an extraordinary accomplishment!

The focus of the blog is on training, and so the question HOW a filly suddenly beats a talented group of colts including a three million dollar horse that was touted even on this blog.

This gate to wire Pletcher performance took me back to February and March when it seemed that every horse Pletcher entered seemed the only one in the field able to run all the way. And, I was posting about this as to how it was happening and what Pletcher might be doing to bring about such performances. We saw this again yesterday as it appeared to me that Pletcher's horse was the only one in the race with any pizazz or spirit or running with energy throughout the race.

As I consider it there might have been a lot of ingredients here--the mundane ones include a horse from the top of the thoroughbred world both in terms of breeding and ownership which alone brings to the race a certain degree of intelligence and sophistication difficult to match by the Larry Jones-Bill Kaplan-Greg Foxes of the world. These latter trainers are in the RR world and I understand what they're up against.

Then there are the handicapping factors that I ignored in my pre race analysis a couple of posts ago. There was the normal Pletcher series of three pre-race breezes spaced about three weeks apart. I've noted this in February and March--all of Pletcher's horses were doing this every race and for unknown reasons he seemed to depart from this pattern in the midst of the triple crown. I also speculated that there is more going on here in Pletcher training than the published 5f breezes, and I still believe this to be so in the training of R2R. Unknown to me how a filly runs that strong a race off of a couple of 4 and 5f zips, and a 5f in 1:03 and 1.5 mile slow gallops. Doubt it happens or happened in the training of this horse. There was something else which is unknown.

Then, and maybe this was the deciding factor, R2R has been training at Belmont. She was the only horse in the race with the home field advantage which probably at Belmont with the long distance of its turns and straightaways makes home field more important than at any other track particularly when being ridden by a local jock. (just remebered--cpwest also)

But, in my view, the most significant factor in the R2R win was the flatness of the the rest of the field. Besides Tiago the only other spirited performance was the winner's. Let's take them briefly one by one:
Wild and Crazy--pretty much as expected though I was impressed by the number and quality of pre-race breezing--predictably Kaplan got this all backward though.

CP West--typical Zito performance. Good horse to last a mile running for Nick Zito.

Slew's Tizzy--something happened there. He faded way too fast for any other explanation.

Hard Spun--looked predictably fat and out of shape in the post parade. Ran according to this and his training or lack of training. Good horse--typical conventional good old boy soft trainer will never compete at this level.

Tiago--looks like a Grade II horse developing due to his training into a significant Grade I animal. He was too far back but maintained distance in the stretch. Nice training job!

Curlin--In my last post on Asmussen training instead of endorsing it I wrote that I'd think about it. I never saw any of the Preakness spark from Curlin at any point in the race. Flat as a board, flat as a pancake describes what I saw. Biorhythms? Training? Lack of rest? Something else? It was other than the Curlin that we've seen in several prior races. Curlin at the top of his game runs away from this filly. Think we might have seen the problem with Asmussen training yesterday--I was continuing my thought process on this after my yesterday post: is the horse tight enough? As this blog goes on, hopefully we can identify the correct formula.

R2R--while I congratulate Pletcher and the connections my questions on the WHY of this entry remain the same. Pletcher and Tabor in their "let's give it a shot" conception ignored the possibility of a breakdown, which had it occurred would have rocked racing. Fillies compared to colts train lighter, race lighter, and when forced to extend themselves against colts on a hard surface endanger themselves. My "what is the point" remains despite the win.

Steve Asmussen Training

A very talented field goes to post today in the Belmont Stakes. Since I've predicted a Curlin runaway, just a word about what I'm seeing as something new and interesting, the training of Steve Asmussen.

Asmussen, justifiably or unjustifiably--we'll never really know--has suffered the slings and arrows over his drug illegals with the public view of Asmussen hardly helped by the suspended lawyers owning shares in Curlin. I've joined in these negative opinions several times on the blog though I've hedged them with my proverbial "but, unknown" due to insufficient information.

Why have I hedged on Asmussen besides wanting to avoid jumping to conclusions on tidbits? After studying recently the 2006 KY Derby past performances in the DRF, I concluded that Asmussen's horse was one of the best conditioned horses in that Derby, and that therefore maybe with Asmussen there is more than immediately meets the eye.

Now with more information available and Asmussen in the spotlight, while I'm yet to be ready to totally change my negative opinion, I am seeing on the videos an educated, thoughtful, well spoken fellow and also possibly a new method in the training of his horse.

Again have to hedge this that I'm without any inside info on Curlin's exact training. We know a few things though, and I want to highlight my above description of Asmussen as "thoughtful". There appears nothing accidental or haphazard about the man, and I'm positive this extends to his training. What is being done with Curlin is well planned, and as I'm here noting, possibly very well imagined.

What we do know is that the horse has been galloping two miles and seeing the track consistently on his slow days. Nothing new there for the capable trainer. There has also been a steady diet of scheduled races at less than four weeks apart. This has interestingly been interspersed with a series of slow 4f breezes in the :52-53 range. Who breezes 4f in :52? Has anyone ever seen this? And, if Asmussen is deliberate and thoughtful, why is he breezing the horse in this manner.

A little background first:

The Triple Crown dilemma for any trainer is actually getting the horse to the races without injury. The theory in hard training would be to get 'em "in shape" to stand the rigors. If they break down, at least you've done all you can. Or you can go the Brother Derek or D. W. Lukas route and do so little there is no way the horse could get hurt pre-race.

But, with Curlin we're seeing a unique Asmussen formula to get his horse to the races--appropriate slow day galloping, frequent racing, and breezes just barely sufficient to maintain both structure and performance. Are we seeing for the first time "maintenance"" in all its facets at an absolutely appropriate level and then you let your talented horse take it from there in the races?

This hit me the other day as I was considering it as possibly something new. I'll have to give it some further thought.

The Belmont Stakes

A quick word about the Belmont before RR begins his Eureka recovery. I've followed this only peripherally as there's been so little word about the training. But, some general observations:

1. C.P. West--can he overcome Zito training? Possibly. He looked like a decent horse in the Preakness. Fear Nick Z. might have gone on with him. So, dangerous. Unknown though.

2. Slew's Tizzy--liked the looks of him in the last race. Showed trainer is other than a complete fool. Biggest threat to the winner.

3. I'mawildandcrazyguy: up the track. the trainer with his horse.

4. Hard Spun: There is no published evidence that HS has done anything of note since the Preakness. That's too long! Has anybody gotten more ink for finishing up the track two successive races. Repeat.

5. Rags to Riches: Who was dumb enough to enter this filly, Pletcher or Tabor? Suspect it was Tabor. Unnecessary to relate the lack of adequate training or racing for this filly. I feel sorry for the horse. What is the point? Up the track. Hope she makes it through.

6. Tiago: Shireffs seems to be the only one that recognizes the race is 1.5 miles. Two things will do in Tiago--lack of a recent race, i.e. racing fitness, and lack of talent, and possibly Shireff's disposition to do almost nothing with a horse after the last pre-race breeze. I think he'll put in a run, but he'll be way back.

7. Curlin: this race should be a Secretariat type runaway. Is it Asmussen's training? In this group of trainers, probably. What other horse here has been galloping two miles?

Hard Spun will fade at the mile like a snowflake on a hot griddle being passed by Slews Tizzy and Curlin and then CP West who is unable to catch the top two. Curlin will leave Slew at the 1/8 winning by x number of lengths. As the pictures fades, out of the corner of our eye we see Tiago flying at the edge of the screen. Carl Nafzger is in the stands scouting for the Breeder's Cup confident his horse can take these.