Endurance.Net Ridecamp Archives

Jim and all,

The risk factors idea came out of a discussion with Art King and Steph
Teeter. I don't remember exactly who's idea it was probably collective.
But the cruz of that discussion and the whole matter is we need to
collect data so we can develop trends. While we will never really be
able to do the classical "double blind" studies in the development of
these trends, there are, however, statistical techniques that will allow
the development and refinement of the trends as more data is collected.

I would like to see this developed so we can develop a "steady state
model" for endurance rides. This model would include as input parameters
( this is off the top of my head while I'm drinking my first cup of
coffee so bear with me ), minutes per mile (for holds) - this was Art's
concepts - distribution of the hold time (how these min/mile look
dynamically over the ride), availability of water on the trail,
distribution of ride times. Another set of inputs would have to be
ambient conditions and the normality of the ambient conditions. For
example a freak hot humid day on a ride in the semiarid west would
present a much higher risk than the same day in Florida, East Texas,
Oklahoma, etc.

As output parameters it would include pull ratios, treatments in several
categories from minor to horse death and I am sure others.  This "steady
state model" then be used to help assess the risk for given situations
and could be very beneficial to both the education and vet committees.
This model would be continually have to be reevaluated and modified as
we get smarter and as more data becomes available.

I believe that while the data necessary to start this effort may not be
currently in the data base, it is available. There are even fields for
some of this currently in the data base but they are currently blank.

We all have our ideas as to why this or why that happens, but these are
educated guesses and these guesses need to be put the test by cranking
them against the ride data.  We have the data available to try to get
our arms around the problem and to develop the statistical trends that
seem to govern our activity.

The other thing that we seem not to be doing is gathering all historical
research that has gone on and using that. For example the Univ. of GA
did extensive studies in 1995 and '96 gathering data (blood and weight)
on  endurance horses. They gave a very interesting presentation to GERA
on these results. That report should be available. There has been a lot
of work by other people and their conclusions (and even raw data )
should be available. SERA has been collecting weight data at SE
endurance rides for a year and has a large body of data and we may an
opportunity to have a graduate student use this data in his thesis
research on "weight loss in sports horses." We are continuing to refine
this process and will be collecting this data in an ongoing effort to
better educate the riders. The pride project has collected a lot of
data. There are a lot of nuggets in "them there hills," we just need to
mine them and use it.

Stagg and I had a conversation about this at the convention and Stagg
indicated he was going to go after these sources. That would be a giant
first step in the right direction. I also got the sense that the board
got the message loud and clear and we are making progress on this front.
The better quantitative information we have about the risk factors in
our sport the better off we will all be - especially our equine partners.

Best Regards
Truman





Jim Holland wrote:

>(Where else would you expect to find Susan?) <grin> In a discussion with
>Truman, he mentioned a "risk factor" projection based on the parameters
>of a ride, the weather, distance between checks, etc. based on
>statistical sampling of why and how many horses are treated under
>specific circumstances. Hope Truman will post on how this would
>work...(Kathy says he can write two pages of formulas while adding 2 +
>2) :)
>





=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
Ridecamp is a service of Endurance Net, http://www.endurance.net.
Information, Policy, Disclaimer: http://www.endurance.net/Ridecamp
Subscribe/Unsubscribe http://www.endurance.net/ridecamp/logon.asp

Ride Long and Ride Safe!!

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=