Sat. Misc.

Try to catch up after distractions.

Training:

Tues. 7/27: Off. Pain, front left seat of corn, by hoof testers. Would diagnose abscess--except--the limp is slight and way short of abscess. Additional time needed to let things develop and mature--could be abscess, hoof bruise, or something from the last Saturday shoeing. An abscess in this area will be a long term probably 2 week deal. Thinking rest him 1 more day. Let things in hoof develop.

Wed. 7/28 On premonition leave office in mid aft. just to test the horse, and will come back and finish office work later. Put Rod in paddock with older horse with purpose to test hoof. Walking ok! Good luck here, possibly. Break 'em into a trot and he's trotting a little gingerly but way way short of any limp. Either abscess has yet to mature or we've dodged the abscess bullet.

We go on with it, and horses break into a very slow gallop. Rod is short striding a little, but seems ok with it. We go on. This fat horse needs to work. The exercise lasts about 3 miles continuous without problems with the hoof, and I'm impressed after all the off time that they're steady for the whole 3 miles. Tomorrow either he's sore as heck or ok.

Thurs. 7/29: Definitely got lucky here. Still a tiny bit of short striding, but we get in another slow continuous 3 mile gallop.

Fri. 7/30: riderless again--horse is fine today. Decided Rod's problem was definitely from the Sat. shoeing job and was neither a bruise or abscess. We short shoe a little bit--meaning we trim the toe back a little behind the white line at the ground with purpose to keep the hoof in balance longer--i.e. if you shoe for perfect balance then horse is out of balance within the week the minute the toe grows. If you cut back just a little, you gain about 10 days of additional perfect correct toe length throughout the shoe cycle. BUT--cutting behind the white line is tricky, and each horse has it's own limit. I was testing Rod on his limit Sat., and, appears limit was exceeded just a bit, and it made him sore. This day--riderless 2 miles continuous snappy--about 15-17 sec/f--with warm up warm down. Again impressed with strength and enthusiasm of the horses. Will do two :14sec/f miles tomorrow and recommence tack work. Rained again today--twice--14 of 30 July rain days so far.

Reviewing The Role Of Calcification

Trainers considering bone remodeling will be thinking "calcification" and some vague notion that over time the bones of the horse in training will grow in strength and size. Bone growth and strength are thoughts synonymous with bone calcification.

Such is error, in my view, though exercising bones do increase in strength and fracture resistance (FR) even as trainers fail to understand causes. The injury problem for the horse begins, unfortunately, with shallow thinking and incorrect analysis, and so, on we go.

What role does the calcification process play in bone strength, and may exercise, correctly applied, stimulate ideal or optimal calcification?

First review what calcification is and what it does.

Calcification/ossification lays down the new brickwork. We're calling the individual bricks Type 1 Collagen Bone Fibrils. Calcification in bone then is the process by which new born fibrils replace aging or damaged fibrils. The emphasis is on "replace" instead of production of additional fibrils or larger fibrils, or fibrils somehow different in character or scope because the horse is in training.

We're supposing then that calcification produces new born fibrils in roughly the same numbers, patterns, density, shape and make up as bone fibrils have been lain down since the first skeletal organisms began showing up 400 million years ago. I've posed the question--does calcification change because we suddenly decide to race a horse, and answer this in the negative.

Calcification then, or, as we may term it, new born fibril production, is limited to it's primordial physical/chemical processes. The size, shape and numbers, etc. of the new borns is limited by their nature and function in the lattice. Calcification is already optimized before the horse ever lifts a foot, and has in fact been changing the cartilaginous skeleton of the horse fetus into calcium salt matrix since conception.

Thus, what calcification can build in the exercising animal has specific limits. We go back to the brick analogy. A brick is a brick within a framework of bricks. Unless we increase the size of the brickwork, new bricks will be the same as damaged bricks they replace. The blog has previously dealt with the limits of bone growth in terms of form and function. The cannon e.g. does have some small, significant growth in diameter, but this happens early in training, and specific form and function thereafter limit further growth. Ox cannons make for slow oxen.

Does calcification accomplish anything for our running horse?

E.g. does exercise possibly accelerates the rate or speed by which calcification repairs and replaces fibrils? Within on individual fibril might calcification increase the number of mineral platelets (see image--purple dots). Might somehow a new born in an exercised horse have different characteristics than the non-exercised horse?

Possibilities for this include:

early optimal orientation of the newborn fibril in space.

fibrils born already adhered to their neighbors (without inter fibril nano spaces).

increase of mineral platelets within the fibrils.

Training:

Fri. July 23--off as we expect incoming weather, and will work early in the morning before rain.

Sat. July 24--5x3f riderless progressively faster. Nice work. We beat the weather. + 4 times up and down the hill with some gallop.

Sun. 7/25: 4 inches of rain in the buckets. Off.

Mon. 7/26: Riderless at their own speed for 10 min. in mud. Rod is foot sore. Either developing abscess or toe a little short from Saturday's shoeing. Call tack work after 5 min. walk as he trots gingerly. Probably should have backed off the riderless work also considering road founder possibilities in this situation. Will see tomorrow if horse is ok.

Fri. Misc.

Hit the beach once again with this next bone post. needs a little work. Role of calcification in frequency, next.

Training:

Thurs. 7/21: 6 x 3f riderless spurts in light mud progressively faster. 4 times up and down the hill walk-trot. Is Nob gaining enough confidence in the horse to commence galloping? The tack work has been without incident, which is good, but Nob reports the horse still looks at everything and threatens to bolt if a blade of grass is crossed the wrong way. The horse is dangerous right now. Unable to figure how to deal with this except just send them out there every day. Hopefully by habit things will calm down. Unknown how long this might take.

Role Of Calcification

If it just sits there, bone, as any other material, progresses by its chemical/physical/atomic characteristics. By e.g. studying paleontology and history of the earth and the environmental cataclysms that result, we get full appreciation of materials changing over time without external stimulus and due mostly to planetary chemistry and physics now being accelerated beyond belief by human intervention.

Similarly, if the image above left represents bone, and this just sits there over time inactive, might we think the blue connective dots holding up the lattice would deteriorate or strengthen as surface receptors attract calcium and thicken the nodules. The point is that even absent external stimulus, something is going to happen, i.e. physics and chemistry will change the bone lattice over time, as most old geezers as yours truly can relate.

If we add to this huge concussive forces in taking the horse at speed we may presume numerous additional "changes". Unnecessary to know exactly what these involve. You may read my copious speculations over the last two years of this blog. The point is something is going to happen as the horse motors down the race track, and, by my reckoning, post race what happens will start of process of undoing itself and restoring itself to the pre-race state.

Last post on this speculated the time length of "bounce back" of some of these processes, concluded that complete bounce back occurs in day 3 through day 8, post race, considered various factors, and questioned whether there is anything else that needs to be considered.

I have "considered" what else needs to be taken into account. The thing or process that has been omitted from the discussion and continues to nag is the on-going process of calcification resulting from interaction of the osteoblasts/clasts. Normal thinking about "bone remodeling" probably refers exactly to this process of calcification. The general theory would be that exercised bone undergoes a process of destruction/reconstruction whereby additional calcium is layed down and bone thereby becomes denser and stronger.

Based on my exam of this, I believe there is much more involved than the simplistic calcification idea of remodeling. While certainly over time exercise will stimulate the calcification process, increase the total volume of calcium salts within bone tissue, and hence cause increased density, I am unable to pin point the time frames involved, and this makes me a little uncomfortable in reaching final conclusions involving necessary frequency of speed work for FR.

About all that I am able to come up with in terms of the calcification process is that there is that it is possible to do to much or too frequent speed work since horse exercise also involves damage to individual bone cells. You must be careful to avoid exceeding the point where bone is able to repair over time these little pockets of destruction. And, that it is possible to do too little speed work in terms that the stimulus to calcify is insufficient to activate the processes necessary for FR. Probably there is an "optimal" formula of exercise where building up and tearing down of bone at the nano level operates. Where this optimal point is involves total guess work. I'm unable to reach a conclusion except as follows.

My thinking is that the calcification process is a longer term process than the very short--matter of days--other processes that I believe are involved in bone remodeling. Prior posts have referred to the lengthy process of bone repair--i.e. complete recalcification of injured fractured areas taking 60-90 days to complete repair. Prior posts have speculated that repair of damaged areas--and by extrapolation increased calcification in healthy areas--would take a minimum of 30 days and probably a little longer to complete their work.

Due to the length of the calcification process, as I am interpreting, I am only able to take a wild guess at what optimal speed work spacing involves for sort of calcification that will build up and remodel the bone to FR. I'll take a stab at that next post.

Training:

Tues: 7/20: 10th rain day of the month. Off.

Wed. 7/21: Second rain of the day commences right when we start training. Horses go riderless in 2f spurts for about 10 min with complete rest between. Nob declines to ride in the mess.

Tues. Misc.

For my future reference, a seemingly good product catches the eye. Combo of several forms of arginine. Seems legal. Merely protein, capillary expansion, etc. Will come back to this one!

http://www.forcefactor.com/?fb_lgid=112&fb_lpid=107&fb_itid=914&nid=22&sub_id=YR2HowIGotRippedShirt_300x250

Training:

Sat: 7/17: 2 miles slow riderless + 4 times up and down the new hill--walk/trot. In prep for big w/o on Mon. that never happened. Read on.

Sun. 7/18: Riderless planned slow 2 miles tomorrow fast aborted when older horse jumps out of paddock too close to dark to catch him. Rod was tacked up and down his new hill--trot-walk.

Mon. 7/19: riderless fast sabotaged again when older horse jumps out. 30 min. to catch him and dumbfounded as he jumps 6 feet straight up and he's out again. Is anything easy in this game? Thus, an attempt to get Rod to go fast by himself which is something akin to stopping the oil leak. Though I'm in insufficient condition right now to chase the horse full speed, but, the arm is still strong and with the assistance of numerous well aimed clods of dirt we do get a riderless workout of sorts. Far less and slower than planned. Thereafter near dark 4 times up and down the hills, and, would you know it that 4 straight times a deer right across the path. Nothing easy.

More On Post Race Bounce Back

This 200 nm image from Hansma lab shows a fracture. But what happens if we take a tiny human hand and squeeze these fibrils together, hold them until they stay together (aided by the bone glue proteins, as you see), and then release. How quickly or at what rate do these fibrils "bounce back" to original shape?

Last post indicated temperature effects on this process, and specifically post race heat. What other factors operate?

Certainly the inherent nature of the material, its location and security in space would be significant. A tree branch will rebound more forcefully than a twig. Socking a feather pillow produces rebounding that is only partial--different rates, force and speed of bounce back due to nature, shape and security of materials. Can we conclude anything, then, about bounce back in these bone fibrils shown shown at 200 nm resolution?

Live bone is nearly 50% water and more malleable/less rigid than the dead bone. Again consider a comparison of properties we'd get squeezing and releasing dry pasta noodles compared to moistened noodles, and how this might affect rate of bounce back. Moister will likely bounce back slower!

Conclude that bounce back in live bone instead of being immediate and fast probably will be slow but steady.

How slow? Picture your horse standing there in its stall with the fibrils of its cannons slowly uncorking as the post race time proceeds. High temps will severely limit bounce back in the first 48 hrs. (last post). Thus possibly we'll get bounce back going full bore by day 3 post race!

How does this proceed? Instead of a uniform rate of rebound, possibly the situation would be that some few fibrils--possibly the outer, lighter ones, begin to stir, then move slightly. With each movement surrounding fibrils are influenced causing movement in them to commence. The distances involved are infinitesimally small.

In this scenario--a fairly safe guess that by day 4/post race 50% bounce back has completed with the rebounded fibrils locked back into original pre-race positions. Bounce back inertia stemming from their rigidity, location of roots, etc. has overcome the physical/chemical bindings of the squeezed together lump of fibrils. The forces holding the compressed group are starting to be completely overcome by opposing forces as velcro mineral bumps release and bone glue protein recede!

By day 5 could the fibrils most resistant to bounce back would be starting to stir. These probably are the larger fibrils and those located near the bottom of the pile. By day 6 bounce back would almost be completed.

Total, but plausible speculation, that fits with physical characteristics and also circumstantial evidence we have involving different methods of training and results from those methods. More on the circumstantial evidence later.

To conclude:

48 hrs. post race--minimal bounce back due to high temps.

3 days post race--bounce back in full swing--can we say 50% complete by end of day 3.

4 days post race--the outer fibrils have completed bounce back, the underneath and sturdier fibrils are stirring. End of day, 75% complete.

5 days--stubbornly rooted fibrils are still squeezed. Maybe 85% complete.

6-8 days--some where in there bounce back will be nearing 100%

If we take the horse back to the track for speed work we will presumably reverse bounce back and reinforce the alignment and adherence produced in the race. Next post--are their any other considerations to this, and how might our subsequent speed work operate on the bone fibrils.

Training:

Fri: 7/16: 4 x 4f riderless in light mud as fast as possible, about 80% speed. an attempt to get horse back under control by trot work in the paddock is complete disaster. This horse does not trot. Between his sky gazing caused by his breathing difficulties at the trot, constantly stumbling since he is unable to see where he's going, and repeated spooking since the trees by the paddock are suddenly lines with a pride of lions, trotting or dressage work in the paddock gets us nowhere with Rollin' Rod. This wasted effort, however, leads to a thought process of something that probably will work, to be commenced next day.

Sat. 7/17: 2 miles continuous slow riderless gallop + 4 times walk-trot up and down a safe hill in the pasture. This is our new "method" to get Rod under control. This night we give him the idea, and will start the gallop soon in hopes he'll be doing 1/2f full speed spurts under tack within a couple of weeks, without endangering our rider in process.

How Much Time For "Bounce Back"?

Left click on each image to enlarge. The larger structures within the dead bone image at left called "osteons" (the round, circular structures) seem made of material that is continuous and dense.

But increase the resolution and significant gaps with fibrils rooted at certain points seeming more suspended within spaces start to appear.

The Planck image at left represents banding and coating of individual bone collagen fibrils.

And the Hansma lab image above at 200 nm-quite small- shows dead fibrils coated with mineral bumps with a Velcro like appearance. Under pressure might these bumps given their chemical, physcial properties congeal together and hold like velcro.

Image below shows a dead bone slice, and we consider what may occur if we placed these fibrils in the palms of our hands and pressed them together, released, press, release and repeat 240 times.

Same deal with the Hansma illustration below.
The question after the race-- if we got some adherence (congealing) and alignment of these fibrils, what might be the time frame in which they would bounce back to their original positions? And, how is this to be determined?

Considering this, I believe some educated guess work is possible merely by considering the nature of the materials and how things happen within the nano-structures as previously discussed on the blog.

E.g. one of the immediate post race characteristics of cannon bones is "heat". Temps within the bone are extremely elevated, dissipate slowly, and, depending on conditioning and race exertion level there may be some heat even 48 hours post race. In view of this heat may we think that fibrils would be more likely to stay in adhered/aligned positions during this period of heat when they are less stiff, and that bounce back effect will accelerate when the bone cools.

The post race heat factor by itself permits thinking that bounce back will probably begin only after the expiration of 48 hours. Possibly by day 3 will see the bone material in full bounce back mode, and by day 4 perhaps bounce back will be on the way to completion.

Other consider this, next post.

Training:

Tues. 7/13: riderless play in 4f spurts for 10 min.

Wed. 7/14: 5 4f spurts at 80% speed + 10 walk under tack.

Thurs. 7/15: Off

Thurs. Misc.

Still too busy to blog. Photo is from an earlier post.

Impressed that both these gents seem to know what they're about. You sort of recognize competence. Take a look at those faces.

Training:

7/13: riderless play. Horses went their own speed for 5 or 6 4f heats.

7/14: Light w/o planned with increasing intensity in coming days. Visitors arrive, and instead we're "showing off" and w/o goes much harder than planned. Will affect coming days and make overall less effective, oh well. 4 or 5 4f riderless heats at 80-85% speed + Nob walked under tack for 10 min.

Wed. Misc.

What fascinating stuff there is on the internet these days:

http://www.vlib.us/medieval/lectures/sidonius.html

Busy week here and next bone post being worked on.

Training:

Sun. 7/11 Off. Rain.

Mon. 7/12 Off. Rain.

Tues. 7/13 Nob complains. Feeling like a 63 year old. Refuses to get on. Riderless play -- 4f spurts. 6 or 7 I think.

Nitty Gritty

A prominent proponent of post race "rest" is the fellow saddling this horse. While I'd want to have a talk with this fellow to discover his thought process, apparently the thinking goes that the race does so much damage that three weeks recovery is necessary before breezing recommences. Hence the Plecher pattern: race, 3 weeks without breezing, 5f breeze, 5f breeze, 5f breeze, race, 3 weeks without breezing. With this sort of work we have such as Momba or the three million dollar colt Dunkirk fracturing as he crosses the finish line of the Belmont, et. al.

The emphasis here is the speed work "pattern". This blog has been focusing on establishing a minimal pattern that will produce fracture resistance (FR) in equine bone structure.

Given all of the physical variables discussed here ad nauseum, what is the manner we may go about establishing the breezing pattern that will work for FR? What is too much? And, what is too little?

I will reserve for now the question of too much, although this has been dealt with before, way back when. It was thought that consistently doing speed work ala Preston Burch every three days might be long term too much. The damage done to bone fails to heal 100% in this short a time period and there is a cumulative effect that probably will eventually fracture.

If every three days is too often--and again, since this is P. Burch I'll come back to this--then regardless of other physiology we need look at repeating speed work at more than every three days.

But, what do we look at? Hopefully a sufficient frame work has been developed for a rational conclusion.

If you put everything together that has been discussed possibly one of my initial concepts--that of "rearrangement" or the generalization that speed work produces a rearrangement of materials at the nano level predominates. Rearrangement was further looked at in terms of specific effects:

bone glue protein increases in volume and buttressing effect.

denseness increases due to contraction of atomic structures of the mineral lattice.

fibrils are moved or aligned into ideal directions.

fibrils adhere to increase density and calcification

The above "effects" immediately run into the opposition inertia that I call "bounce back".

Given all this the logical assumption would be that if there is a bounce back effect in the material--at that point where there is 100% bounce back we will have the same bone as we had pre-race. Stated differently--if we wait too long, instead of getting bone remodeling from the speed work, we are likely to get very little.

But, how does this work? We may think that "bounce back" will operate in certain ways as time passes post race. We may consider the "rate" of "bounce back", and what we need do in terms of how slowly or quickly bounce back happens.

To determine the rate of bounce back we need again consider the physiological processes that operate. And, since these have hopefully been fairly extensively documented, I will be dealing now with generalities and conclusions involving bone tissue, materials science, chemistry, physics, and so on.

Possibly it's easiest to look at this in terms of a model:

Bone Fibril #1 pre-race--#1 during the race--#1 post race for 24 hours, 2 days, 3 days, 4 days, and so on. What happens in the course of this to Fibril #1? Is there anything from this we may extrapolate that would apply to many fibrils, all fibrils or the entire cannon bone in general?

Training:

Sun. 7/11: arrived at the farm to a total mess. 1.5 inches of rain Sunday. We'd had a fairly hard preceding two days, and took this day off.

Training

A dry July we had to have. But, another inch this morning, with the map at left showing per usual, most of the country dry; us otherwise. We give up any pretense of trying to race train at the farm this year. About all that is left is to try to keep the horse in as good a condition as possible until better situation develops. That is being looked at, but is tempered by the need to stick around KC and make money for the next horse purchase. Vague plans at the moment to buy the horse and move the operation to St. Louis.

We had 7 straight rain days and about 4 inches of rain ending Friday. Here is our training.

7/3-7/7 Off. Rain.

Thurs. 7/8: 10 min walk under tack through wet pasture.

Fri. 7/9: 10 min. riderless play + 10 min walk under tack. Trying to get the spooky horse back under control.

Sat. 7/10: Riderless 1f spurts. Very enthusiastic + 10 min walk-trot. Trot were horse is trusted, elsewhere, walk.

Alignment/Adherence Continued

Aligned mirco structures in bones--fibrils, fibril arrays all organized into 2 inch long thin osteonal structures presumably test stronger than random arrangements. And, stuck together or "adhered" fibrils provide stouter bone composite material than fibrils randomized in space surrounded by the water.

So goes my theory. Concussive pressure operating during equine speed work forces or aligns micro structures in certain (favorable) directions. We ascend a flight of stairs and can feel this alignment in our knee caps and may thus consider the sort of aligning pressure that might be occurring with a horse motoring down the free way undergoing 12,000 lbs/sq. inch of pressure in its cannons.

When pressure ceases such as between strides or at the end of the work the opposite sort of force operates which I call "bounce back". This is the inertial force that causes a structure, e.g. a branch of a tree in the wind, to revert to its former position when the wind stops blowing. In our horses post race the "branches" will have undergone tremendous forces over the course of 200 or more strides. I am thinking that bounce back, also affected by changes in bone glue proteins and compaction of the mineral lattice, will be slow but steady. The rate of bounce back will additionally be affected by the pre-race strength and conditioning.

Similarly adherence of fibrils to each other will be encouraged with each stride with similar reductions in bounce back effect as the speed work proceeds.

A safe guess might be that the "degree" of these adherence and alignment effects vary widely over the structure of the cortical and trabecular bone. But the principal is the same everywhere. The micro structures are being aligned in certain directions and pressured by the force of each stride. And, post race they will be in certain condition that probably differs in some degree to where they were pre-race.

Assuming these ideas are true in real time, the 64000 question involves the degree of change during each speed work, and what happens exactly, post race.

To answer this question I have to go back to a lot of what was covered extensively in the blog over a long period of time. I'll simply make the blanket statement that with each race I am doubting that these changes are extensive, and in mature and highly trained areas of the bone structure there may be few changes at all--i.e. the force of repeated striding is insufficient to affect the structures.

But, however small or insignificant the change in any particular area of bone resulting from e.g. a single race, the basic idea here is the tendency post race of these structures to revert to their pre-race positions. Thus, after a certain specific time post race the bone will revert to primarily to the same condition as it was pre-race.

And so, we seek to reinforce these strengthening processes by subsequent speed work. Can we e.g. wait 9 days post race for our next speed work--as many famous trainers particularly on the East Coast do--and expect to strengthen the bone? And, same analysis post race for 8 days, 7, 6, 5 on down.

How can we have any idea what is required here? Since we're unable to measure the degree of bounce back all that's left as a method is to logically consider this.

Tues. Misc.

Nice straight-on shot of good rider technique with a galloping horse. Everything seems positioned correctly with the rider showing appropriate focus, concentration and anticipation. The latter quality involves the exit strategy if something goes awry.

And, since the photo is of Big Red Mike, he of the 3500.00 stud fee, that just won the Queens Plate, this even more makes the day. Seems as though you can still be successful in this sport with a modest wallet.

And, I am also sitting trying to fathom in midst of the biggest environmental disaster ever and having ramifications far beyond the destruction of the ocean, how a government would permit ocean oil drilling without shut off valves embedded in the piping. Possibly this would be related to the idiots we keep electing to office with better candidates available.

And, here in KC we're on day 4 of a predicted 8 straight days of rain--in mid July. The rain gods know we're trying to train horses here. Though Nob the rider is ready to get back on, we've had 3 inches since Sat. with thick moisture still above us. As I approach mid July the thought begins to creep that I might be unable to get this horse to the race track. Is impossibility an excuse in the horse business?

Training

Sat. 7/3 Nice fast riderless w/o with some walk under tack.

Sun. 7/4 Off.

Mon. 7/5 Off. Rain.

Alignment

Walking up a flight of stairs we feel our knee caps tighten. Paying attention to this sensation, we notice that tightening occurs in a certain up and down direction. As we walk on up the stairs at a certain point we might even feel the area of the knee cap fatigue. Walking up an infinitely long flight of stairs if our limiting factor in continuing on up would be strength of knee cap, at some point we would feel fatigue in the area to the point of danger of injury. Part of this is ligaments and tendons, of course, although this alignment-fatigue sensation also permeates to the bone of the knee cap itself.

The above illustrates what possibly might be one of the two major effects on bone under stress--

1. Alignment or realignment of bone at the cellular level, and

2. Adherence under pressure between the bone cells.

As to alignment we might consider what happens to our aging knee caps in absence of periodic strengthening exercise. They go to hell, and finally must be replaced.

This possible is illustrated in the Max Planck Institute image at left/middle showing possible bone fibril array patterns(left click to enlarge). Notice some appear perfectly aligned, others are random. May we think unexercised knee caps would eventually have completely random, rough and much weakened array patterns?

Similarly we might consider the difference in array patterns in the cannon bones of horses--the woefully trained 3 year old War Pass e.g. his sesamoids shattering as he crosses the finish line in the Wood Memorial compared to extraordinarily well-trained 1946 TC winner Assault.

Of course the above is only my own personal surmise. I think the process of "alignment" of fibrils, fibril arrays, and osteons under exercise stress is completely logical given what we know about the physical characteristics of bone. Certainly the concept is supported in the Planck Institute research presented earlier in the blog around Dec. 2009.

Hence, my present question is in what manner might "alignment"--and thereafter "adherence" be affected by the frequency of speed work. Continue next post.

Training:

Fri. 7/2: One of those nights. Neither horse cooperated and yours truly, a little short at the moment on ability to navigate, had trouble keeping them rounded up and thereafter getting their attention. Neither the projected riderless speed work or tack work happened, although we did get about 3.5 miles of intermittent slow stuff with a few spurts out of the recalcitrant animal. He wanted to avoid running this night. I understand. Been there.

Sat. 7/3 This night went as well as last night went badly. Riderless: 5 x 4f with full rests between. The first four went at about 80% speed. The last heat our good horse really got into it and motored 4f as fast as possible around the near circle of our running paddock. 10 min. walk under tack afterwards as our somewhat pea hearted rider ventured into the pasture with the horses. Understandable since Mr. Nob, as the moment, lacks full strength in his left hip. But, improving fast and we hope for full galloping shortly.

What Do We Need To Know About "Frequency"?

The June 26 post contained a summary of what I believe may be the processes working on equine bone at speed. These are a combo of mechanical/physical/chemical and are described as slow working processes in conditioned bone that over time will produce increases in strength and fracture resistance(FR). In a practical sense as we look at those cannon bones post race we need realize that indeed things are happening in there as exemplified in part by the emanating heat that we feel, and that what we do subsequently with the horse may affect this in a positive or negative sense. Our calculation of what comes next, I think, is extremely important.

We look at this here in terms of "minimums"--what is the least we need to do to achieve and maintain race appropriate fracture resistance while understanding that as in the training of the horse Assault by Max Hirsch in days of old, we might also do a lot more!

And so, if, as the blog has surmised our speed and distance minimums for FR are 12.5 sec/f over 4f, how often need we do such speed work? How to analyze?????

Step #1 possibly is to understand that the "processes" described on June 26 are by and large temporary. If we retire the horse after the race the "bounce back" effect will operate, and so will "detraining" of the tissues involved.

Thus, what we need to know is "how to keep the positive processes going". In simple terms-- it appears to me that after passage of a certain period of time that bounce back will restore the bone to its pre-race form and there will be zero increase in FR from that work "if we wait too long" before the next speed work.

Please note that I have made some prior frequency conclusions with regard to some of the processes. I concluded that with regard to lattice compaction at the micro level, and bone glue rearrangement that bounce back will be completed within 8 days, that the 3-4 day post race period is the crucial phase when reinforcement is most effective, although there will be some reinforcement if the horse breezes in 5, 6, 7 or 8 days with the 8th day provide some minimal benefit, and by day 9 there is no benefit at all. Breezing on day 9 means the bone is starting all over.

Another way to say the above--if we have a 12 months schedule and there is speed work every 8 days there should be improvements in FR over time, and, we will eventually get there even though there might be some danger points especially early. And, we may do anything less than 8 days over time and again feel fairly comfortable the we'll get to FR somewhere along the way.

I'd decided with regard to these two processes--lattice compaction and bone glue rearrangement that Ivers probably got it right and that the point of maximum benefit is speed work every 4 days.

Since making that conclusion I have decided that possibly the most important processes in FR are the realignment of the fibrils, fibril arrays, and osteons in optimal directions and the "adherence" of fibrils to each other and arrays to each other. I'll look next to see if we can glean anything from this in terms of frequency.

Training:

Wed. 6/30 Off.

Thurs. 7/1: Riderless about 3 miles total with 2 x 1 mile spurts at about 75% speed with short rests on the turnaround in the middle of the miles + still limping Nob gets on for 5 min. walk. Neighbor arrives by horse in the middle of this. Just what we needed, but all ended well.

Thurs. Misc.

In a busy week and my free time taken up by transporting the old cat back and forth to the vet. An operation on one of her toes. No foot, no cat. Nob is healing fast as expected but says he had a little farther to go than he thought. Getting back on tonight and hardly looking forward to it. Full report later. Txs to Rich for his comment on Robert Byrd.

Training:

Sat: 6/26: 2 miles mostly slow gallop with 4 x 1f spurts approaching 14.5 sec/f.

Sun 6/27: Off. Rider injured.

Mon. 6/28: Riderless--fairly fast and mostly continuous for about 8 min.

Tues. 6/29: Riderless breeze work. 4 x 4f at near full speed + plenty of warm up and warm down.

Wed. 6/30: Off.