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Re: [RC] Endurance Polls - rides2farIt is in regards to how long it takes your horse to pulse down upon arrival into a vetcheck, I find people tend to have selective memories on this...sort of like I remembered making all "A's & B's" on my report cards until I found my old scrapbook recently. >g< Some riders may tell you how long it is from the time they get to their crew spot till they get the pulse down. Others may tell how much time they lose between their arrival time and their official P&R time. When I have covered a race for The Chronicle of the Horse I have to get really into the strategy of the race etc. so I copy all that info off their ride cards (while the manager is holding them for the BC) Then I interview the top riders. Without fail they'll say "He was pulsing down in 2 min." or "He came in down" but the difference in their arrival time & P&R time may be 5 or 6 min. My horse often takes a long time at the first check, but then has fast recoveries as the day wears on..even when we're maintaining the speed going for the front. A lot of it is mental with him. It helped a lot when we got the hand held heart monitor. I had been taking his pulse, getting "80" and then not bothering to take it again for awhile. After we got the hand held we'd see "80" then an instant drop to 64. I'd been wasting time not taking it because I thought it had a long way to go. Problem with him is he may drop right down and stay there at the buckets, but when you walk him 10 feet to the vet area and he looks around and goes up to 80 again. I don't know how many times I've gone from having the minitor on him at the gate and it's said 72. Then walk in and within 30 seconds he gets a 56 from the P&R person (even when they used a heart monitor) :-P That said...I still like his attitude. His pulse goes up because he's competitive. If he sees a horse leave camp his pulse jumps. I know the ones who look like they're dying are really just taking care of themselves and resting but they still make me feel squeamish until their heads pop back up and they trot out of camp. I just want to say to those whose horses don't have the lowest resting pulse or instant recoveries that's not an automatic sign they're not good endurance horses. The heart is only one part of the equation. I had a horse with a 28 resting pulse and a very inefficient gait. That was like a souped up engine on a warped chasis. More often than not Kaboot vetted in at 44. He often took 10 min. to recover at the first vet check. And he was OFTEN the high vet score horse at the end of a ride. If you're going to ask recovery times don't you need to know how fast they're going, heat/humidity, etc. for it to matter at all? Angie ________________________________________________________________ The best thing to hit the internet in years - Juno SpeedBand! Surf the web up to FIVE TIMES FASTER! Only $14.95/ month - visit www.juno.com to sign up today! =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 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!! =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
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