----- Original Message -----
From: Heidi Smith
Sent: Tuesday, May 28, 2002 10:01 AM
To: tprevatt@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx; Tamara Woodcock; ridecamp@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: Re: [RC] [RC] Born to Trot?
> > > I want a nice steady 8mph trot and a 12mph canter... And I would absolutely love to get an actual honest clockable 4mph walk...
> > Without having to use *my* legs to keep it up. Sadly my horse doesn't
> > have this walk on his own, more like 2.5 to 3mph...
Truman, this is SOOOO true. One of the most exhilerating rides of my life was doing the final leg of the Santiam Cascade 100 (12 miles that goes up over a big mountain, up a little mountain trail, with kind of a jeep road down the other side, and then a USFS road on into camp) in the dark in 2:05 and never breaking out of a walk. My old stallion Abu Ben Surrabu (aka "Junior") has a 5.5 mph walk (actual, clockable) that I call "march mode" and he just swings along with this big huge overreach. You can improve on
such a walk with training, but the ability is born in them. I get goosebumps when I see young broodmares hiking around out here in the pasture with an 8"-12" overreach, just "plodding" along to the water trough or to another patch of grass. And the canter likewise has to have the reach and the smoothness--one can't teach that.
But in my experience that "big trot" is both metabolically and physically hard on a horse (back to the HR discussion about this--Howard and others, if your horse's HR isn't going up in the faster phases of the trot, then he just doesn't have this gear--it's like revving an engine up into the red zone instead of shifting gears, and that's how it gets on the HRM, too) and has very little application to our sport anyway. I agree with Tamara that
an 8mph working trot is great. Yep, I've ridden horses that can "clock" at a 15 mph trot--and we used to laugh about horses that had to canter to keep up. But I also noticed that the horses that break (even though they may be able to DO the "big trot") and go into a nice easy canter tend to go farther and last longer...
Heidi
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Well, I do have one horse who's extended trot is incredible, but I doubt it's 15 MPH, which is one of the reasons I didn't think this study was very useful for endurance riders. I don't think many breeds can cover than kind of ground that quickly for that length of time. I used to wonder why Standardbreds aren't the breed of choice in endurance since they can do that kind of speed in the trot. But, like some have already said, who's to say the trot is the gait of choice anyway? I know those top runners in the LD and 50 aren't doing much trotting.
But what about the heart rate? Am I the only one who has horses that are definitely lower while trotting than cantering? And, let's just say my guys are doing the slow trot, which is perfectly fine with me, I just want to get a completion. Isn't it better to keep the heart rate down, as much as possible, during the ride? I'm not talking about the training sessions, I'm talking about a 50 mile ride when you just want to finish and get thru those dreaded vet checks. Wouldn't this be the way to go? Isn't the heart rate a good indicator of the metabolic toll the run is taking on your horse?
cya,
Howard (who is all bandaged up, covered in gauze, looking like a mummy; but I got my new briefs on, all the way up this time)
