RR Stable And Long Gallops

"...what we were summoned here to do we knew, but have forgotten."
-Goethe

Amart, pictured 6/4/09, and Rod indeed have both forgotten many of their February galloping lessons. We're reteaching right now. Lead changes, control, acceleration, buzzing down the track, around moving deer, etc. etc.

But, this is the fun time of year, and fun time of training. Surely heavenly weather will be the month of June, and at this stage the horses develop rapidly on a daily basis.

We're right now a little past 30 days in, having been able to start--weather wise--on 5/3/09. This was after 3 months of continual weather interruptions and our horses losing much of their conditioning. We've needed thus go back retrace some steps.

Right now the horses are doing 2.7 miles per day which is three times around our farm track. The 2.7 miles consists of :18-:20/f galloping, accelerations of 1F here and there up to :14s so far, and appropriate walk-trot depending on what we're doing. Keep in mind that galloping 2.7 miles on a soft grass farm track is a far different adventure than doing the same exercise on a hard race track. I'm never comfortable galloping more than 2 miles/day at the track, but here at the farm, 2.7 miles seems to be a nice distance and the horses are handling it well.

There is also my own usual quandary concerning long gallops. I initially thought the long galloping is what might get us to the race track the fastest, particularly in that we have a 3 years old with a lot of learning to do, who is also fat. The longer gallops might be the fastest way to learn and also to get the weight off.

Yet, when it's time to get down to the business of speed the long gallops get in the way. I'm already at the point and considering whether to keep up the 2.7 miles, or to quit that and start Preston Burch type breezes (every 3 days.).

The quandary involves that it's very difficult to condition your horse simultaneously for long gallops and speed. You can do one, or the other, but its extremely difficult to do both.

E.g. Let's assume we're doing 2.7 mile daily gallops for 3 straight days. Please note that these are strenuous, tough workouts. Are we then going to breeze 6f on day #4 having galloped 2.7 miles the day before? The danger of course is doing too much and injuring the horse. Thus, we are unable to do a 2.7 mile gallop the day before the breeze. We also omit galloping the 2.7 miles on the day of the breeze, of course AND the day after, which is a rest day. We have now gone 3 straight days without galloping 2.7 miles. Are we then going to go right back to galloping 2.7 miles after these 3 days off from doing it? Again, I'd think otherwise, for the horse is now conditioned otherwise than long galloping, and again, if we ignore this and go ahead and gallop 2.7 miles the day after our post breeze off day, then we're again endangering our horse.

Possibly long galloping lacks any useful place in race training, though I might have a problem convincing a ghost of Tom Ivers on that point, and also maybe Tim Woolley and his Mine That bird. I've noted the timing problems above, but also consider whether we want to condition our animal's musculature and nervous system for 2.7 miles/day instead of for explosive speed.

Early in race training, were you have a youngster to bring along quickly that needs a lot of lessons maybe we can bring them along faster than the alternative of short early breezing. My own main reason was the fat horse thing. Will be interesting how long I go with long galloping. Try to post another video on this in a few days.