Re: some interesting facts

["Celia Krall" <celiak@pcrs.net>]

That does help, David.  Thanks.

Cel

----------
> From: David LeBlanc <dleblanc@mindspring.com>
> To: Celia Krall <celiak@pcrs.net>; ridecamp@endurance.net
> Subject: Re: some interesting facts
> Date: Wednesday, June 07, 2000 9:36 AM
> 
> At 09:43 PM 6/6/00 -0600, Celia Krall wrote:
> >My question, ti's condescension aside, is what are your perceptions of
what
> >is fast and what is slow, in mph?
> 
> I'm not sure that I can answer that directly, but for the rides I was
> comparing, here's some numbers - for LD rides, the median (1/2 were
slower,
> 1/2 were faster) _winning_ ride speed was 8.47 MPH.  For endurance rides
of
> less than 100 miles, the median winning ride speed was 9.42 MPH.  If you
> can't manage 4.6 MPH, then you don't complete, so that's too slow.
> 
> In both cases, the standard deviation was about 2 MPH, and that means
that
> 99% of the winning ride speeds were +/- 4 MPH off the average (not quite
> exactly the same as the median, but in this case very close), and about
60%
> were within 2 MPH of the average.  The maximum speeds in both cases were
> very close to 15 MPH, so that's really fast.
> 
> This is an important point, as someone pointed out to me offline - when
> judging the condition of a horse, a better rule than placing in a ride is
> what pace the horse can handle over what distance. Beware of using ride
> times to determine this - many rides are not accurately measured.
> 
> I'd also point out that fast is a relative term.  For example, in this
> year's Stookey Stampede, you can get the actual ride times for both LD
and
> endurance riders at the PNER page.  There was a 30 and a 60, the 60 was
> just twice the 30 on the same course (I was there, finished last in the
> 60).  If you took the winning 30 mile rider and doubled her time, then
> looked to see where she would have placed in the 60 at the same pace, she
> would have been 23rd!  The 10th place 30 mile rider would have placed
34th
> in the 60 using the same method. So what might seem like a very fast LD
> ride can often end up being a very conservative, middle of the pack
> endurance ride.  Note that this comparison is actually unrealistic, since
> the LD horse won't do twice the distance at the exact same rate, so real
> results would put them even further back into the pack.  Considering that
> this scenario is very common, some of the criticisms of the faster LD
> riders puzzle me, but perhaps those opinions are based on perceptions and
> not real analysis of hundreds of rides.
> 
> Hope this helps.
> 
> 
> David LeBlanc
> dleblanc@mindspring.com
>