More On Off Day Galloping

The epiphany re long gallops indeed involves, per Pressey comment, training the horse after racing begins.

 Before the first race most trainers albeit in differing ways do a decent job of first race prep just as 90% of them botch things up after racing begins.  Horse trainers like their human counterparts seem without a clue that fitness must be maintained and hopefully improved after the games begin.  The coaches in the National Football League currently have this dilemma of figuring off day practicing in wake of the limitations on practice time and even content in the recent NFL collective bargaining agreement.

For myself, to illustrate the problems more precisely, most of the 1990s into my Eureka
Downs racing in the year 2003, my entire program was built around lengthy volume galloping in hybrid Tom Ivers style.  More galloping seemed better to me and yet, once the serious breeze/race work began deciding what to do in the 3 off days between the speed work--I was never ever comfortable incorporating two mile slow day work. Never was able to figure out how to logically and smoothly incorporate this into the program.

What does a 2 mile gallop get the horse?  After my horses became "fit", as I mean the term, in any two mile gallop it is hard to restrain the horse to a 2:30/mile speed.  In general horses would tear around there between 2:05 and 2:15/mile speed for two miles, and to watch a horse do this successfully between breezes gives a certain sense of satisfaction that the horse easily does some fairly serious aerobic work.

As above, the value of the 2 mile gallop in this sense is unquestionable, and indeed I believe one--per Neil Drysdale-- can build a whole program around 2 mile gallops and slow 1 mile breeze work in the :13.5-:13 sec./f range.  Can testify from personal experience that this produces a fit animal that on race day can compete for the whole distance.

However, there's a large problem with the above two mile work illustrated by the fact--how many Neil Drysdale horses do you ever hear from again after they win a major stakes.  Hardly ever.  And, its rare to even see Neil Drysdale in a stakes race.  Why?  First, the above program is insufficient for injury prevention. It is a non-speed specific program and you're asking the horse to go much faster on race day.  Second, horse racing is a speed game.  This two mile program is great for aerobic fitness and a strong horse but is woefully inadequate for training a horse to gear up to :11 sec/f when necessary to run down another horse.

Yet, likely, one might conjure up a sustained two mile program with accelerations, combined with frequent racing, that might be truly superb.  This is, however, other than the way I want to go, from long personal experience.  I transitioned from this sort of thing after reading Preston Burch's book and saw first hand how my horse Aylward in the year 2003 progressed so much faster with every 3 day 5f breezing then he ever did with the two mile gallops. 

Yet, in 2003 the need to slow gallop longer was always with me.  It nagged at me.  Galloping a horse a mile on an off day always seemed a woefully inadequate amount of work.

After the epiphany of completely eliminating long gallop work--specifically the two mile gallops--from the program, suddenly the nagging feeling engendered by reading Tom Ivers books has disappeared.  The days of standing there one month after racing has begun sending a horse out for a 2 miler in 2:10 and realizing the horse has actually done only 5 2 mile gallops in the last 4 weeks and thinking--what the heck is to be accomplished by this are over for yours truly.  This sort of work has been eliminated.  Why?  Possibly there are both physiological reasons for this, and also better ways.  Elaborate next post.