Warmup Max Performance: Is It The Aylward Formula?

My 12 year old Northern Baby-Northern Dancer look-alike is a classy horse named Aylward out of a mare by Bold Forbes that won 120,000+ way back when. Al was conceived and raised at Stone Farm in Lexington where Northern Baby once stood. In different hands than mine big Al might have won a lot of money. Presently he's an old racer having some trouble with maintaining his breath beyond three furlongs, and retirement looms in the next three weeks if Al is unable to hold his speed for longer distance than the 3f.

Al breezed Wednesday night after Groovin' Wind, and like that horse did a 4 x 2.4 f without stopping to walk except between heats 2 and 3 (the midpoint). After each heat otherwise there was a gallop out, and trot back to the starting point.

Al warms up quite differently than Wind because Al refuses to go into a gallop except at certain points along the track. This is due to a mouth problem, and instead of fighting with the horse every day, we just trot him to his designated starting point and, off he goes. I've lately decided, after much tooth investigation, that the bit might just be pressing the tongue against a tooth, and so we've ordered a (surprisingly light) Myler Level 2 ported bit to relieve tongue pressure. We'll see.

So, for his pre-breeze warm up Al trots about 3f from the barn to his starting point and commences a continuous slow gallop at about :20s for 3f with some acceleration to :17 in the last strides. Al then trots 1.5f more to the breeze starting point and walks prior to the breeze. The whole exercise is about .8 mile.

You'll note the fairly close similarity in this warm up to the conventional pre-race warm up.

For the first heat I intended to start Al fast, but then let him cruise along on his own with minimal urging (same thing I did with Wind after a more thorough warm up). How did the first heat go?

Al got into his speed about 30 yards in and it was about 75% speed--I'd estimate 14.4f/sec, thereabouts. Al easily maintained this the entire 2.4f, but even with the slight urging was without any desire to go faster. This speed seemed quite enough for him, and so his first heat was really nothing more than additional warm up.

What might have happened in this first heat had I forced Al to 100% speed? Educated conjecture would be that he would have done it, been fairly strong, but been gassed at the end. Had this been a race, given his state of conditioning, Al would have backed up severely probably to a :14 pace.

How did heat #2 go? Al was now warm up and like Wind he was driven through heat 2 and performed it strongly, though Al at this stage is near cooked at the end. Heat #2 was much smoother and stronger than Heat 1 but by far the best and fastest heat turned out to be Heat #3. The 3rd acceleration, as I've noted over and over, almost always is the strongest heat. Al's conditioning is such that his fourth heat was only about 90% speed and he was tired by heat #4.

We may conclude that for the horse Aylward the warm up was grossly deficient unless you want to include Breeze Heat #1 in the WU. After he breezed 2.4f Al was quite strong and indeed "warmed up" for max peformance for heat 2.

Training:
RR took a horse day off Thursday. Everybody rests.