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Please Reply to: ti Tivers@xxxxxxx or ridecamp@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
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This may be the onloy post I author by this name, or there may be several, 
depending on my stamina.

A better name is "How to properly Prepare for a 100". This will be all 
"educated opinion". Ed will hate it. I'm not too fond of opinion myself. But it 
will not be "baseless opinion", and I am certaily ready to defend it with every 
scientific cite that supports my position. Ed can find the cites that don't, so 
we can muddy the waters a little for those of you who prefer swimming through 
the murk. I'' try to keep things clear.

First, let's define the word "compete". for the purposes here, it means "try to 
win". That is, try to be first , with BC, in a 100 mile endurance race. That's 
a genuine win, and anything less is not a win (politics on BC aside--you might 
win, and have the BC horse, but the Shiekh finishing 16th might easily be 
awarded BC for political reasons--happens in the US as well).

So, we're talking here about preparing for a competitive 100. And let's further 
refine that definition, at least at first, to mean a 100 conducted somewhere in 
the Middle East, where the money is, and where the most competitive races occur.

First requirement: a sound, happy, healthy, reasonably athletic horse.

Second requirement: an intelligent rider, dedicatedd to the sport, who will 
take the time, and the thought, and the money, to get the job done.

Prime Directive: Preserve and Enhance. That is, before you can achieve anything 
in the way of conditioning, you MUST preserve the raw material--preserve the 
health of the horse.

See how fast we can get down to 1 or 2 percent?

First Goal: gradually build an equine athlete that can deliver a minimum of 100 
"honest work" miles a week. Not paddock time, not round pen work, warmups don't 
count--genuine work. For MIddle East purposes, most of this will be taken at 
canter/lope/gallop.

Getting there:

The Law of Progressive Loading is applied. Simple law: this Monday, the healthy 
equine athlete in training can do just a little more than it did last Monday. 
Building to 100 miles per week is a step by step process of consitently and 
gradually upgrading daily mileage output. The horse should be exercising, under 
saddle, 6 days a week. At the end of the process he will be averaging 17 miles 
per day.

Starting with a horse that is doing zero miles a day, and is not suffering from 
growing pains or any other problem, such an animal may be able to add 1/2 mile 
to it's daily mileage once a week. That is, if this Monday the horse can lope 2 
miles, every day, then next Monday the horse should be able to lope 2 1/2 miles 
every day. So, starting from zero, a minimum of 34 weeks will be necessary to 
build to 100 miles per week.

HOWEVER, the Law of the Big Picture takes over the game at about 4 miles a day. 
that is, once you start doing serious work in volume, stuff happens. And at 4 
miles a day, every day, you might just be seeing some of that "stuff". The Big 
Picture demans that early in the conditioning process you set up your 
monitoring routines. While it is hard to seriously hurt a horse going slowly, 
minor problems almost always lead to major problems--you have to catch any and 
all problems as soon as they appear, even before they appear, and intervene. 
And the Big Picture Law suggests that there are 100s of ways to cripple a horse 
and you must know them and avoid them.

For example, you must maintain or gain body weight throughout the conditioning 
process. If you don't then your athlete is in a catabolic state and working 
tissues are losing strength throughout the body. Starving a horse during the 
conditioning process to get rid of "baby fat" is plain stupid.

Shoeing, too, is critical. The efficient biomechanics, and the safety of the 
working horse, begin with the feet. A balanced foot, in good health, properly 
shod, with sufficient mass, is an absolute necessity, and should be present by 
the time the 4 miles a day milestone is reached.

You should, obvoously, know how fast, how far, and at what heartrate your horse 
is working--and write it down in a daily training diary. This aspect, too, 
should be in place before 4 miles a day is reached.

Physical exams should be conducted daily, with any swelling or other problem 
taken care of by diagnosing, determining the cause, eliminating the cause, 
rehabbing, then moving foward along the conditioning path. An infrared 
thermometer, like those made by Raytek (about $100 for the little one) can be 
very useful in these daily early morning exams. For more detail, see my 
infrared thermography ebook.

All signs of exercise intolerance, including behavioral, should be caught, 
heeded, diagnosed, the cause eliminated, the problem healed--before going on. 
thus, the Big Picture Law can, and will, dramatically interfere with that 
projected 34 weeks to 100 miles per week. If your athlete has no problems, and 
has never had any problems, then it's extremely likely that he's going nowhere 
in terms of increased fitness and/or you're simply not paying attention.

Rate of Acquisition: Some horses get fitter faster than others. In fact, each 
horse is going to have its individual rate of acquisition and its own threshold 
of exercise intolerance. It's very easy to go too far, or too fast, too soon 
with an athlete that has a good rate of acuisition--you sail right into that 
stone wall with no hint of trouble. so no matter what the rate of acquisition, 
the first law, Progressive Loading, has to be obeyed--incremental, step by step 
increases in distance or speed (never both at the same time)is the LAW.

Where Rate of Acuisition comes in handy is in the damping of enthusiasm side of 
the coin. the individual horse may just not be able to keep up with the rest of 
the horses in the stable--for now. In fact, it might take the horse with a low 
rate of acquisition an extra year to reach competitive fitness for a 100. So be 
it.

Again, the 34 weeks becomes a little more remote, since only 2 of 20 
bred-for-sport horses have exceptional Rate of Acquisition. Probably has to do 
with hormone release and subsequent altered gene expression with exercise. No 
one really knows, but some have it and some don't. About half of the horses 
bred-for-sport are completely useless as competitive athletes. You use ROA as a 
culling tool if you're smart. Just think of the hours you're putting in on a 
horse that's going nowhere, eh? Cut your losses early. Fall in love with your 
horse early and you may have to start a petting zoo later on.

At any rate, you can start taking Efficiency Scores (ES) and Rate of 
Acquisition (ROA)readings at about the 4 miles a day milepost.

Speed. Every step the horse takes that you're calling "conditioning" must be 
measured for speed and recorded in the daily log. the very best race riders 
often have no idea how fast their horses are moving. You must, at all times. A 
marked course, or a GPS is, then, a necessity. A GPS/HR device is ideal, 
because every step MUST be heartrated, too.

But when talking about bringing on speed in the exercise gameplan, it is, for 
the most part, the last component to be introduced and it must be brought on 
just as gradually as distance. Still you have to start someplace, at some 
speed, and that speed will likely be the speed at which HR is the lowest for 
the gait. that is, the most efficient speed for the horse. If you trot too 
fast, for example, you'll get heartrate responses higher than you would if you 
were gallpong or loping--big mistake unless your horse is going to race at the 
trot.

In the beginning, it doesn't matter what the absolute HR is--the HR can be all 
over the place in unfit and/or unprofessional horses. With every workout, the 
HR won't even settle to a genuine working HR for at least 2 1/2 miles of 
gallop. Still, in the beginning, while building LSD, foundation miles, or 
whatever you want to call them, you work at the speed most comfortable for the 
horse at that gait--and that usually tracks with lowest HR for the gait. 
Remember, though, that the canter is a different gait than the gallop. Nearly 
as different as the canter is from the trot. The Law of Specificity has to be 
obeyed too.

The Law of Specificity of Exercise demands that, by the end of the conditioning 
process, the great bulk of the exercise must be at the gait, and near, or 
faster than, the speeds of competition. Specificity means more than that. Same 
terrain, same shoeing, same nutritional support, same weather. But for our 
purposes right now, consider specifity to mean "gait of competition". If we're 
training for Middle East competition, then the gait of competition is 
canter/gallop and very little trot--if you want to win. and that's the gait at 
which, from the very beginning, conditioning miles should be taken.

Let's take a break. You can ask questions if you wish, but take it easy on them 
or I'll never get to Part 2.

ti








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