September 1 Eureka Warm Ups

Saturday's Eureka trip went without a glitch. I was determined to try the farm warm up schematic that I'd pegged in the prior posts as the ideal for max performance.

2.5f + 1f + 1.5f

There is gradual acceleration in each heat and walk-trot between heats depending on the excitement level of the horse. The speeds at which each heat ends up (the speed being accelerated to) :15, :14, :13.

The track Saturday was cuppy dry sand (as opposed to cuppy wet sand). Had been worked maybe two weeks ago and showed a lot of traffic. However, there's very little sand over a pretty nice base, and since the sand was dry, though far from ideal, this track was such that we could work though at slightly slower pace than we'd have done with a better track.

Groovin' Wind cooperated in his warm up. The horse is getting the knack of the stopping-starting routine and seems even to be enjoying and appreciating it. The final two heats were done on the back stretch, one on each lead. After finishing the horse was walked to the 3f pole on the backstretch of the 5f track to begin his one mile breeze.

Would we get max performance? Please note since this is the first one mile track breeze for Wind for the year we were planning to let the horse determine his own speed with minimal urging and use this breeze as a bench mark for breezes to come. Nob's report was as follows:

Wind got into the breeze immediately with little urging and on his own got into about a :13.5 pace. The horse maintained this strongly without a bobble from beginning till he crossed the wire. He was tired at the end with little desire to gallop out but with almost zero blowing. If there was any negative at all it would be that the horse showed zero inclination to exceed this :13.5sec/f cruising speed.

So, it was a 1:45 about as we expected--though that's only a rough estimate without the stop watch(we forgot the watch). Stone cold legs afterwards. Zero signs of bleeding, and a staid, somewhat tired horse compared to the usual at the farm on Sunday morning.

Aylward performed the same workout as Wind, though he's two weeks behind that horse. Nob reports that he felt the warm up probably does exactly as advertised and certainly is a positive instead of limiting factor for the performance.

Art: rested yesterday after a riderless 2.5 miles slow Friday with some minor tack work.