More Overdistance/Underdistance

The 100 year old marathoner, at left.

The interesting Q--for performance we consider varying our w/o in terms of speed and distance. Here it is:
3f in :35.5 on Tues.
8f in :13.5 on Sun.

We also need consider this workout in terms of injury risk and long term injury prevention.

How to view? The first reaction the normal one. Omg. "That is a lot for the horse" presuming we're going to enter next week at a mile and a 1/16th. The natural human intellectual tendency considering the volume track work for the horse is to back off. As athletes, or as non-athletes but understanding athletics, we are afraid to do too much with another human or our own horse, whereas such a regimen for ourselves we'd hardly give this a second thought. For ourselves the thought process is:--I do a short sprint then wait another FIVE days to do a short mile, what is up with that. For our horses it should be the same. I have found, in riderless workouts at our farm, that horses do short sprints with enthusiasm every 36 hours for several days at a time. Eventually it gets stale for them, of course, but in general they are like little kids--they love to run. Moral of the story is to fight that nagging natural tendency to always consider taking the animal to the track as "too much for the horse". Instead, consider the horse's workouts as you would your own.

What of the injury effects of this w/o? Can we decipher this absent wild guess work? Here would be my thought process.
1. Red Flag. Does this work qualify for FR since the minimums required--as outlined on this blog-- are present in neither workout. Read on.

2. Would the workouts in combo produce FR? Here is were some knowledge of horses working out, injury production, experience, etc. come into play. Read on.

First, how the heck could we possibly tell what any w/o or combo of workouts, with all the possibilities, would be in terms of injury risk and injury prevention? The answer is that the best we can do is educated guess work, and although hopefully this blog is of some aid in such guess work, we're guessing nevertheless. The very first thing we need do--THE #1 THOUGHT--is to begin with the "I don't known" that I prefer to phrase as "Unknown".

If something is "unknown" for our animals--such as in this case, the FR effects of a combo workout-- we are in the realm of uncertainty. How to deal with uncertainty on the race track. Very simple. We have a rule that I call RR Rule #1: never (ever) do anything with the horse unless you are 100% sure you can do it without injury. If you're a horse owner, take"never, ever" seriously!

3. Since there is uncertainty as to this protocol, the Q is whether we should use it. I think we can use it, and here is why:

4. The key to viewing this workout is speed. We take note: 3f breezes are not all created alike!!! There is a significant difference between a :37.5 and a :35.5. How?

5. Consider watching the horse in it's 3f work for our typical trainer. The horse will do a paltry warm up by galloping to about the 4f and then suddenly commence acceleration. The usual is that the rider will barely be into sub :14s at the 3f pole and will then spurt the horse from there to get the :37.5. For a normally talented horse a :37.5 is a piece of cake, and the rider knows that. After crossing the finish line the horse will quickly slow down and be basically into a slow gallop by the 7f.

The :35.5 differs significantly. To get this faster time the rider has in their mind the idea of going all out from the get go. The key--for purposes here--is that the acceleration into the work will be both longer and significantly faster. Additionally, the gallop out after the work will be faster and longer. The moral of the story: the horse doing the :37.5 does just that--3f at a :12.5 rate of speed that fails to qualify as an FR workout. BUT, for the 35.5 the horse is already into a :12.5 rate of speed before the 3f pole and will maintain a :12.5 rate of speed after the wire--the :35.5 workout is a essentially a 4f FR workout that does qualify as an FR w/o!!!

6. If our 3f workout goes in :35.5 it will qualify in terms of injury prevention. If we go in :37.5 that's insufficient.

Training: After a week of this, we're starting up again today.