Evaluating Warm Ups

What difference does it make how a horse warms up? Any serious human athlete may watch a typical North American warm up and understand intuitively that due to the deficiency of the warm up sadly the horses come out of the gate unable to give their best performance. I'd venture to say 90% of our races are run this way giving us such ridiculous pronouncements as Richard Mandela's statement in "On the Muscle" post-race observing his horse Kudos after a dull performance, "looks like the race woke him up, he's ready to run now." Earth to Richard, have you considered waking up your horse "before" the race?

We care about warm up with horses for two reasons:

1. Performance.

2. Injury prevention.

and, since we're in an athletic event we're interested in maximizing both of these. We want the horse to come out of the gate physically ready to give its best and in such condition as avoid injury to the extent that appropriate warm up can assist.

Given the range of possibilities, what sort of warm up will maximize what we want, next post.

Training:
At some point we also maximize our farm breezes, which means the horse went as far and fast as our farm track allows. Once the horse gets to that point on the farm we stop moving forward with subsequent farm works, and it's time to hit the race track. Last night we were on the second breeze since the 8/1 "back off" and planned to let the horses go at their own pace in sort of a strengthening work. Groovin' Wind did this at 3 x 2.5f on his own, as planned, without raising a hair about as fast and strong as the farm track allows. This performance I consider testament to the nine breezes in July. Wind is just about were he was 7/29, and we'll finish that process with a planned 2 x 3f breeze at Eureka Saturday.
Art:

8/13/07 Mon. Day 3 Burch 4x 1f riderless all out.
8/15/07 Tues: Day 1 Burch 5 min trot-walk under tack.
8/16/07 Wed. Day 2 Burch 1 mile WU + 1 mile at about :16/f riderless. The disappearing daylight finally got me. To dark for tack work.