Soft Tissue, Distance, And ArchArchArch

There he is. Spittin' image of our colt down to the slope and length of the pasterns. Arch horses seem to have a resemblance to each other. Will say this for ours--those thinking they're breeding weaker horses--I've yet to see a stronger more solid leg structure on a horse than our Rollin' Rodney. At any rate, we're completely OK with continued success for the Arch line of colts. Can trainer of Archarcharch, William "Jinks" Fires pull an Albert Stall as with Blame? We'll see!

As to how much distance a horse need travel in its speed work to avoid soft tissue injury, I've always thought the answer is, pretty much, racing distance. Again, my own thought process on injury avoidance, is to consider the entire panorama of all possible calamities. I.e. for my own horses instead of thinking in terms of "minimums", my thought process involves controlling every single injury causing variable to the extent possible every time we go out there.

As such in terms of soft tissues, I'd like to work up gradually to racing distance and take the horse near racing distance at near racing speed at least once before that first race. For a mile race such a workout might be a mile in 1:45 or 1:46 with several 6f works in near 1:12s. Then I think I am ready to race safely. If I do less, then I worry, and mostly with regard to pulling a sesamoid on a deep sandy surface on race day. And so, the closest I am going to get to science on this subject is that except for two rider errors (i.e. trainer errors of failing to control the rider), in a whole lot of workouts and a few races I have never had a single soft tissue injury.

Training:
Thurs. 2/24 Riderless all out 4 x 3f. Sleet.
Fri. 2/25: Off. 5 inches of snow the weather people forgot to forcast.
Sat. 2/26: Tried to get 'em going riderless in the paddock over the 5 inches of snow. Unable to get the lazy one out of a high stepping trot until yours truly tries to get him going by sprinting in his direction, and trips and takes a dive head first right into an unseen snow bank throwing snow everywhere. This scares the mf into prancing with his tail up, but w/o is on. See if I can duplicate this feat for the first race. 1.5 miles continuous over the snow at real decent speed for the conditions.