Overspeed

Last post noted the :57 Tuesday workout for Ever So Lucky trained by Johnathan Shephard for Saturday's Bluegrass Stakes. Aside from nearly ideal spacing of the breeze (4 days out) we have what the 800 meter human distance runners call over speed training which translates as training licks faster than race speed.

Very timely for me as for the past two weeks I had been doing over speed workouts on the treadmill in my attempt to run sometime this year 6 miles at a 7 min. per mile rate of speed, which is roughly 8.6 miles per hour for 6 miles. It's moving. Give me allowance to post some personal experience and apply to Ever So Lucky.

My treadmill workouts last an hour and the last two weeks I limited the speed to 3 mph with 15 to 20 speed fartleks thrown in during the hour in this manner 2 min at 3mph then a 1 min. speed lick starting slow and gradually increasing speed each lick till the final licks were in the 5.5 mph to 6 mph range.

This was done for the reason it's been 10 yrs. since I last did 6 miles in one hour and probably 25 years since I did the target speed of 7 min miles for 6 miles which is 8.6 miles per hour. At my tender age it's a Q whether the speed is still there and how to get there safely without breaking my legs.

By chance this morn. I was lazy and decided to go with the flow on the treadmill.

To my surprise I was easily able to sustain 4.7 mph to 5 mph for 15 to 20 min at a time. Almost zero effort. My heart rate at 3 mph was a scant 81 beats per minute. My heart rate at 4.7 mph averaged 101 beats per minute. Before the fartlek training 4.7 miles per hour would dial the heart up to 120-125 beat/min. Big improvement in heart rate, and hence physical effort, in just two weeks.

What surprised me in this one work this morning, and this is the relearning, was how effortlessly the 4.7 -5 mph speed was maintained since prior the the farlek workouts it took medium to hard effort to sustain that speed. This morning it was easy. Why?

Over speed training seems to have two components. It makes the slower speeds easy physically and just as important, easy mentally. By doing the over speed I know in advance my legs will churn fast enough to get the speed(which is slower than my max speed in the fartleks), and the cardiovascular system is taxed much less than it would have been without the fartleks as indicated by my low heart rate.

So how will the :57 affect Ever So Lucky on Sat. There was a Chestnut horse about 10 years ago, forgetting his name--started with a T(Old Trieste, 1998 Derby)--that did a :57 before the Derby and everybody was chirping about it. The horse faded in the Derby and primarily was never heard from again. Died recently. And then there was the Hard Spun -Street Sense Derby where Hardspund did the, what was it, :58 before the Derby and had a very decent performance. The brilliant trainer of Hard Spun, Larry Jones naturally declined any more fast works after that and Hard Spun primarily finished up the track in most of the rest of his races. Amazing isn't it how these TB trainers fail to make the simplest connections between training and performance?

Let's note that :57 is hardly fast for these talented animals. Seems to me if u're suddenly going to do a :57 the subsequent performance will depend on the conditioning of your horse. If the surprise of a :57 work prevents the horse from full recovery by Saturday because of lack of condition, then I'd expect a poor performance. If the horse is in decent condition I might expect a bounce.

Note that for Ever So Lucky this is a one time deal and therefore this one fast work hardly qualifies as sustained over speed training. More likely the work, if the horse recovers, will simply make the horse a little tighter than Todd's Plecher's horses. Will see. Since this is rarely done, should be interesting how the horse responds.