August Review

Serious galloping for us commenced May 3 after five months of weather which began in late November 2006. The five months of bad weather are documented earlier in the blog with some photos conveying the daily horrible conditions, and, really, I'm unable to recall a more frustrating period since I've been training horses.

The weather cleared up in May and we began the current series of gallops, first acclimating the horses to our heavy rider then packing 165 lbs, and working around more weather all of June. We commenced short speed work in early June and now have behind us two months of consistent breezing with the two twelve year olds about every three days.

Two months of speed work have gone by, seventeen or thereabouts breezes, with our horses certainly rounding into racing shape. I'd believed that they might have raced at the County Fairs on June 20, and we've gone from there.

Coming into August I was ready to go right on with the every three day breeze work with possible plans to get some mid month timed workouts in St. Louis. This is what is under review. Do we make the enormous effort to travel to the closest race track 290 miles away (we're ineligible for Des Moines) with what we have, or do we wait for the 9/23 Woodlands meet that looms before us?

This all was affected by the 8/1 decision to back off a few days which then was lengthened by some unexpected rainfall late last week. Consequently right now I'm still in a day to day mode of seeing what is developing. Saturday breezes at Eureka are planned, and by late next week, we should be in a position of being ready for timed workouts. Whether we'll proceed from that to St. Louis is still percolating in the RR mind. It's an interesting period, and I'll let the horses do a little talking over the next two weeks.

Training:
A Wednesday breeze is planned for the 12 year olds. Acesmash, the six year old, is on route to become horse of the meet at Eureka next year, i.e. still training but shelved for the present.
Art:
8/3/07 Fri: 10 min snappy riderless gallop over mud.
8/4/07 Sat.: 5 min walk under tack.
8/5/07 Sun. Day 3 Burch: riderless speed work with oldster 5 x 2f at about 90% speed with 3/4f of each heat all out. Fairly tough workout. 10 min. walk under tack.