Monday--Back To Bones

The deep pockets and their $200,000 horses win their share of races, but a $9500 colt won the Pat O'Brien Saturday. And, what's with the flopping tongue on Rachel Alexandra. First Curlin, now her. Can someone in Rasmussen Barn figure out how to tie a tongue tie? Rachel probably was cooked down the stretch, yet, anyone notice how she was playing with her tongue instead of concentrating on the race at the 1/16 pole?

On 8/1 with that little epiphany on calcium receptors mucking up prior thought process, the subject became lost again for a time. Back on track this week hopefully to reason out how frequently the horse must do speed work to minimally achieve fracture resistance (FR) in its bone structure.

Various processes have been identified that operate on horse's bones at speed some of which are "destructive" of the bone tissue and some "constructive". In particular the blog had focused on:

bone glue proteins and their role in the bone density equation

compaction and subsequent bounce back of the mineral lattice

Included also is the calcification process and how this works in terms of fracture resistance. The following paragraphs lifted from my 7/22 post provide a review:

"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(fracture resistance).

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...."

And so, I'll try to recommence this and come to as swift a conclusion as possible to the question: how often do we need to breeze/race our horse to achieve FR?

Training:

Fri. 8/27: Off

Sat. 8/28: riderless 3 x 4f at about 85% speed. Lazy Rod is back. Then 4 times around the new course, gallop/trot. He did well. Ears normal instead of parallel pointed. Got this backwards. Need to do the tack work before the speed work!

Sun. 8/29: Tack work around the new 3.5f course was trot-gallop. First strong gallop in a while. The horse did well. Powerful, reports Mr. Nob, and also--given fact the horse may bolt at any time--hair raising.