Some Images

Trabecular bone is soft spongy bone at the end of the shafts in contrast to the hard cortical bone making up most of the length. At left is a nice illustration by which we may imagine the function of this soft bone to spread and absorb force.

And below, a nice illustration showing blood vessels that we may think play important roles in delivery of materials for mineralization.

and, below particularly note the illustration at top right showing "collagen fiber orientation".
The above indicates that, though exceedingly less dense, the trabecular bone has the same basic osteonal organization of the cortical bone. And, we may note the organization of the individual collagen cells, and imagine, re Planck and Hansma their extra cellular mineral bumps and extrafibrillar mineral rings.

But, with the Planck article, recently discussed, and thus understanding the importance of mineralization in bone strength particularly in terms of "extrafibrillar" (outside the collagen fibril) mineral deposits and mineral rings, the question for our equines occurs as to how speed exercise affects the mineralization processes.

The image below seems instructive, to me:
Note the mineral denseness of the cell organization in the image. And, another below showing density even greater.
I'd suspect these are dead bone images, that live bone images might give a different looser sensation regards mineral density, and that the same images at magnified resolutions might indicate a much lesser compaction and thus the images above "might" create more an illusion of total mineral density, i.e. we'd see far more "spacing" at magnified resolutions.

Nevertheless, considering the effect of equine speed work on cellular mineralization, the question does occur to me that these images already show near maximum mineralization, and that thus an easy answer to the question would be that therefore exercise, regardless of intensity, would fail to add mineralization to the above images. Consider, next post.

Training:
2/8-2/10: Off due to frozen ground and near single digit temps. Begin again 2/11.