Training

Has been disrupted as Nob take a nasty spill. Wracked up, he claims, but improving. I'll plan to post the gory details when I have more time.

Sun. 9/28:
Art. 1 mile gallop + 2 miles riderless easy.
Rod. A few strides into the gallop and down goes Mr. Nob. The horse was then driven 2 miles riderless easy.

Mon. 9/29. Nob unavailable. Both off.

Training

Thurs. 9/24:
Art: 1.25 miles trot gallop.
Rod: .8(wu) + .8(13.25) + .8(:13s). 1st work where horse was pulling into speed. Mark that down. 9/25/09. Slight right front check ligament swelling post work but tightened by morning.

Fri. 9/25: Both off.

Sat. 9/26: Both riderless, back and forth, in deep mud for 15 min.

♦Video: Getting What It Cost

Training

Wed. 9/23:
Art: 1 mile trot-gallop easy + 2 miles riderless in spurts.
Rod: 2 miles easy gallop broken up in prep for faster on Thurs.

Thurs. 9/24:
Art: 1.25 miles trot gallop.
Rod: .8(wu) + .8(13.25) + .8(:13s). 1st work where horse was pulling into speed. Mark that down. 9/25/09. Slight right front check ligament swelling post work but tightened by morning.

Fri. 9/25: Both horses off.

Blog Review, Frequency, Injury Prevention

Fins become legs. Interesting what transpired 465 million years ago. First fish crawled out of the water and one of them becomes an ancestor to our horse. Or maybe this fellow below, although it looks more like something that might "eat" a horse. Left click to get a good look. Been spending too much time on paleontology of late.














And, with that warm up, back to injury prevention. The 2009 blog has been reread and the thought process regathered. Some highlights:

Weather bad. Truly awful. Worse than I remember.

And, "avoid the Quality Road bandwagon due to lack of attention to detail by Jimmie Jerkens."

Pamplemoose: "Canani will almost certainly screw up this horse some way before 1st Saturday in May." I take little pleasure in those predictions. The same could be said for most of the Derby prospects.

How to prevent injuries, 8Belles, GW, Dunkirk, and so on, the blog focused on developing a minimum exercise formula involving:

Speed

Distance

Frequency

Race appropriate bone remodeling requires 4f in :12.5f/sec. Go slower or less distance it's useless in terms of new remodeling (although there might be a reinforcement effect.). How to establish minimum frequency as to how often these workouts must be done.

January 15 Andres Tovar (prescient) doctoral thesis-- much work has yet to be done before we understand bone remodelling. Mathematical theory noting we have establish interaction of bone--cell to cell--unit to unit--in regards response to stress.

Continue tomorrow.

Training:
Tues. 9/22 Very wet. Decided riderless. Art did about 1.5 miles play with Rod. Rod then did 2 miles more in spurts as fast as the mud allowed. Medium tough w/o.
Wed. 9/23:
Art: 1 mile trot-gallop easy + 2 miles riderless in spurts.
Rod: 2 miles easy gallop broken up in prep for faster on Thurs.

Training

Fri. 9/18: Art: Off.
Rod: Fast day: .8(wu)+.8(14s)+.8(approaching :13s). Nice work for Rod.

Sat. 9/19: Off

Sun. 9/20: Rod gallops .8(20s) + .8(19s) +.8(19s). Easy gallop prep for Mon. speed work. Starting to change leads where he's supposed to. Does it on his own instead of as response to aids, but, that's the first step. The horse has done very little slow galloping, and he's starting to learn this.
Art: 1 mile walk-trot-gallop easy + riderless. Had to stop him riderless after 1/2 mile. Limping.

Mon. 9/21 Submerged again. But they canceled the week of rain. Unable to work Rod fast due to rain. Off.

Training

The Midshipman return race was entertaining. 9-5 co-favorites Midshipman and Just Ben in tandem most of the race through blazing sub :45 fractions with "on the muscle" Just Ben according Durkin. Just Ben giving zero understanding of going toe to toe with the Breeder's Cup champ, lol! Midshipman won floating out. Maybe with a little more Just Ben stamina training, and Godolphin might have been eating his dust. I should check who that Just Ben trainer was! Oh my, Barclay Tagg.
Training:
Wed. 9/16. Both horses are off. Art with a swollen left hind.

Thurs. 9/17: Rod in prep for speed work friday slow gallops: .8(.21)+.8(.18)+.8(.18).
Art's leg has ballooned up again despite the antibiotic, but Fri. morn its on the improve again.

How To Determine Frequency

The blog has looked at possible variables to determine how often a horse needs to breeze or race to achieve (and maintain) race appropriate fracture resistance. Racing's biggest problem and biggest question imo. The extent of the problem can be seen here if you look at the injury rates of these noted trainers as extrapolated from their websites:

http://ratherrapid.blogspot.com/2009/01/trainer-summariesa-continuing-post.html

Time, after more than a year of posts, to pull everything together and reach some conclusions, although I've yet to post on the crucial concept of "detraining", which means bone loss, and calcium loss over time, and will do that. But, believe to proceed I'm going to torture myself and read what has been posted and try to pull a few things together. I'll do that over the next days, and post the highlights. Then on to considering detraining, and reaching some conclusions.

Training:
Tues. 9/15:
Rod: we decided to back off just a bit after a tough training week for the horse. 3 miles riderless continuous planned to slow gallop, but the older horse kept taking off and so much of it was in :15s and some :14 spurts. Rod was into it, but we felt a little too much was done in this workout.
Art: swelling this morning from cut on right hind has by this evening ballooned so that the horse is unable to put weight on the leg.

Wed. 9/16:
Rod: due to the "too big" a w/o yesterday, it was decided to go 36 hrs. between w/o with Rod. We'll go in the morning. Hence technically a day off. Plan speed work for Friday. This horse could be 45 days from racing should we push.
Art: Tribissen antibiotic paste reduces the swelling by nightfall and he's walking comfortably. Should be able to do some riding tomorrow and we're back in business.

Osteon Summary

Getting back to this, the myriad of distractions lessened for the moment, focus back to where it needs to be, hopefully.

I had decided mere bone growth by itself probably plays an insignificant role in fracture resistance while calcification and density increases of the new growth and existing bone might be significant.

In terms of the basic structure of cortical (hard) bone, the tubular osteons--which are nicely illustrated above--the conclusion had been that in response to exercise osteons neither proliferate in number or grow in size (diameter). Instead, bone growth outward and also inward is confined to new collagen layering outside and inside the osteon complex. The further conclusion is that the cannon bone has grown, mostly as much as it is going to, early in the exercise program with the limits on growth in diameter resulting from form and function of the structures. I'd add that I suspect inward growth into the soft trabecular bone that lines the inner medular cavity housing the marrow and circulatory system probably quickly fills in with cortical bone even for mostly sedentary horses merely due to the sheer weight those bones must bear when the mature horse rises from a prone position on the ground. In any event, anyone interested how all these conclusions were reached, in the most excruciating manner, may go back and read the posts of the last two months.

What the significance of all this is in devising a training program for fracture resistance is that we may avoid consideration that we want the bones in this regard to grow in size. Rather, what I believe needs to be considered is appropriate increases in density and calcification both in view of how to maintain these qualities to the point of FR and also how to avoid losing them after they have been achieved.

Look at all this more closely in the coming posts.

Training:

Mon. 8/14 both horses were off. We are reminded of the comedy that training TB racehorses can be on Tues. morn. when our 4 yr. old Art refuses to move due to something wrong with his right hind. Normally I'd think abscess but the hoof testers show nothing. Next possible culprit is a wound the horse received about a week ago 6 inches up from the fetlock. The thing is almost healed now but there is a little fetlock swelling indicating infection. Good grief. Monitor.

Training

An Osteon post coming. All breathless in waiting probably!

Training:
Sat. 8/12: Art: .8(:20s) + .8 (15) + .3(:15)
Rod: .8(20s) +.8 (:17s) + .8 (:16s)

Sun. 8/13: Art: limping. wtf we say. The freshly shod horse is limping at the riderless trot in the warm up. Looking like an abscess type limp which is other than good. Hoof testers show nothing, but there he is ouchy to having his left foreleg shin touched. That, by chance is where he lost a patch of skin 1.5 inches by 1 inch right on front of shin a week ago. We're without heat there, and thinking the horse might have been bit in a fight. But, best guess probably is sole soreness post shoeing since we've been there several times before with big Art. Looks minor. Will see tomorrow. Off.
Rod: Nob goes a little faster than planned in the biggest w/o to date scotching the Mon. fast work.
.8(:20s) + .8(1/2 :17s + 1/2 :14s) + .8(:14s--on our circuit that's about 4f in :14s and 2.5f slower where we dip and doodle.). nice work for Rod.

Mon. 8/14 Off.

Training:

Wed. 9/9: Off. Weather.
Thurs. 9/10: .8 + .8 for each horse with 2/3 trot, 1/3 gallop to get legs back under them.
Fri. 9/11: .8 + .8 + .4 for both. 1/3 trot, 2/3 gallop, each heat. Art galloped :19s. Rod :17s. Rod on final two heats accelerated to :14s for 1.5f on each of the final two heats. Nob said he felt some wind in his face.

Monday is the speed day this cycle, if we can get the rain to hold off!

Training:

The farm is right there to the west of
Gladstone.

Training

Yesterday 2 weeks of dry was predicted by our good forcasters. First thing this morning at left bearing down. 4th big rain of last 12 days.

Possibly this is the first day the thought has seriously crossed my mind that we're going to fail to get it done in KC because of the weather. By training time rain coming down.

Mon. 9/7/09:
Rod: .8 +.8 +.4 mostly in :19-:17 with one 1.5f spurt in :14
Art: Art suffered scrapes on 2 legs yesterday, just skin, but one is festering today. There's nothing
to keep from working although we realize the little bit of swelling on the right rear might be sore. And, surely, 30 steps into the trot the horse steps on and springs a front shoe. Off.

Tues. 9/8:
Weather again. We go riderless in the mud. Art as expected is indeed sore on that slightly swollen hind, but forgets all about it as work commences. The horses do about 3 miles much of it spurting in :14s. Nice workout which leaves a bit for next day.

Training

Sat. 9/6: both horses did 10 min riderless speed work in deep mud fast as they could go.
Sun. 9/7: both horses galloped .8 + .8 in :21s with good enthusiasm after yesterday's gut buster. Looks as if we have dry weather ahead!

Training

My blogging suffers as our attention to our horses continually gets diverted by the weather. That's my excuse for the fall off in posts, and sticking to it. Things have reached a new level of absurdity with the KC weather as the normally relatively dry summer has turned into an almost every week mud fest. The map below is from yesterday when rain fell here most of the day. That's, I believe, our 3rd rain of the week, with similar patterns now for about 4 weeks in a row.

I have long ago given up thinking things are getting better weather wise. Just the opposite, I think they'll get worse, and I am only hoping that we can get enough training in to start thinking about a race track, which at this time of year are about 350 miles away.

In any event, presumably my thought process will return to my subject and I will start posting again about injury prevention.

I'll be watching the Woodward, of course. Unknown why, but I'm one of the few having trouble generating interest about Rachel Alexandra. Sure she is the perfectly conformed TB filly. I'm unable to recall one having seemingly every part just the way it would be drawn up in an ideal sense. Suspecting my thoughts are dampened both due to the connections, and what smacks of exploitation of an animal, and in any event I am one who simply fails to get the point of racing fillies against males. Does this sport at this point in time really need to take any chance at all on another 8Belles happening. All this will get lost until the next one goes down, I fear.

Will she win? I glanced at the PPs. Hilariously, Rachel seems to have the most logical training of the bunch except the last listed horse, forget his name now Past the Points or something like that. Live long shot I'd think. There's the Borel factor working, and probably she'll be tough to beat taking everything into account. To say she will get beat probably overlooks what you'd normally consider, but I do have a premonition something untoward will happen. We'll see.

Training:
Thurs. 9/3: Ground conditions were such that we could gallop. Art went 1.6 miles mostly gallop. Was looking forward to a big Rod workout. Put on the saddle at near dark, and ooops, sprung rear shoe. How does a horse spring the rear. I'm unable to recall it happening before last week with Art. I'm sure it has happened. I just fail to recall. Now 2 rear sprungs in one week. Shoe slapped back on and we ran the horse riderless in moonlight with the 14 year old very snappy to keep some weight off. Of course the next day would be rain. Never fails.
Fri. 9/4 Off. Rain.

Training

Mon. 8/31: last day of August and its dry!
Art: 1 mile gallop in :21 + 2 miles riderless with spurts.
Rod: 1.9 miles mostly gallop in :18s

Tues. 9/1:
Art: 1.2 miles gallop in :19
Rod: 2.4 miles--.8+.8+.8 in :16 with two 1f spurts in :14. The horse did the fast parts on his own and had to be restrained. Rod likes his new shoes.

Wed. 9/2: Scheduled day off. It rained. 3 days of rain predicted. We'll see.