Distance And Remodelling Conclusions

My current subject in chief attempts to identify how conventional training injures horses which, much as I expected, leads in all sorts of directions. I'm currently dealing with how conventional trainers breeze their horses, and in particular focusing on:

speed
distance
frequency

It's interesting thinking about this stuff, reconsidering your own long held views, and ferreting out the latest that's available at the Google free of charge. When I finish and get back to my own training, the reader will see that some of this has changedcertain of my opinions with respect to the safety of Preston Burch training.

But for now I want to wrap up to date (and will get to "how long the remodelling process takes" thereafter).

Initially I concluded that you'd have to breeze at a :12.5/f or faster to obtain sufficient fracture resistance at racing speeds and distance, and then I noted that during the breeze the true remodelling effect starts to take place about 60-80 strides into the breeze after about 2-2.5f, as prior to this point the bone is in a process of adjustment to what's happening and the remodelling processes are merely engaging and will (by my estimate) be engaged at about 2-2.5f. That's were I was.

Now the question, once we hit the 2.5f mark and the remodelling processes are fully engaged, how much farther must we carry things to obtain remodelling that will give us race specific fracture resistance?

One answer to this would be to watch what trainers do and compare injury rates for various distances. We know e.g. that Nick Zito for nearly forever has generally breezed his horses 4f every 8 or 9 days (things might be changing with Nick. He's competing against a different group of trainers these days). Additionally, Bobby Frankel, also has used the 4f breeze once a week with great regularity, though Frankel utilizes all distances much more frequently than Zito.

May we assume that professional trainers with large barns over a period of years begin to understand what they are able and unable to get away with in terms of injury prevention. While things training wise in terms of exercise prescriptions are quite different than 60 years ago and the time of Preston Burch, I'm supposing that these conventional trainers and their slightly more aggressive offspring, such as Frankel over a period of time with endless numbers of horses start to recognize, hey, if we breeze e.g. 3f we get injuries but if we breeze 4f we get less, and so on.

What conclusions can we draw from the foregoing observations? Though conventional trainers injure horses at a frightening rate, the percentage of fractures among the injuries are, relatively speaking low. E.g. Neither Zito nor Frankel, to my knowledge, have any reputation for breaking down a lot of horses via fractures during races. Thus, I believe we can make conclusions by looking at the "distances" such trainers use in their breeze work.

In thinking about this carefully and presuming that the necessary processes to get later sufficient remodelling kick in at about 2.5f, I am assuming that the breeze to have any true effect in these terms needs to be carried at least to 4 furlongs. Now, please note, when the horse hits 4f there's also a gallop out, and I'd think that engaged remodelling processes would continue right on through all of the gallop out process, and let's assume this is at least an additional furlong. Thus, in actuality our 4f breeze is 5f in terms of remodelling that goes on.

Thus for our sprinters whose work might be limited to 3f breezes, my opinion would be that these sorts are living on the very edge in terms of fracture resistance. They are breezing far enough, but, just barely. I'd make a similar observation on a distance horse that regularly breezes 4f. Zito's 4f breezes imo are marginally enough to keep his horses off the ambulance. As Kiaran McGlaughlin ( *brilliantly*) observes, why do more when less will do?

And so, may we conclude that conventional training has for the most part ferreted out correct speeds and distances for it's breezes? The Todd Plecher 5f works in 1-1:02 with gallop out certain would qualify in terms of bare minimum fracture resistance, as would Asmussen's slower work with Curlin where we see the horse doing :50s, or shooting for 1:03 in Dubai just yesterday and going slightly slower. These speeds and times "will do" in terms of injury prevention, although again, I'm considering them barely sufficient.

If we want to be more sure of getting the fracture resistance that we need, what is the RR opinion as to how far we need to carry the :12.5/f? My thinking: sprints 4f, distance 6f. I think Nafzger finally got it right with Street Sense last year. For distance believe you can throw in 4f and 5f works, but primarily my thinking and also my experience with my horses tells me that 6f is the sweet spot for maintaining bone soundness in distance races.

Please note there are other factors to consider (performance e.g.) in deciding how far to breeze, but on the present subject I'm much more comfortable with my cannon bones, when I'm throwing in those 6f works. How many of them we need is what is coming up next.

Training: Another raw day on 3/10/08, Monday. The winter is trying its best to hang on. I misjudged putting a shoe on my 2 yr. old--took longer than I thought, and so lost too much daylight and skipped tack work as a result, but we got another riderless 6 x 3f in the running paddock. Went slower last night. I thought the horses had less energy. My initial plan was 7x3f, but i cut it off after 6. The youngster, I'd though, had had enough. He'd gone now three days in a row.