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Susan, endurance riders should print this post out, enlarge it about 3x so they can read it at 20 paces, and post it on the inside door of their trailer tack area. 

 

Bottom line, fill the gas tank on Thursday, think stomach stretching (beet pulp, forages, whatever) to keep that hindgut working, and think water, water, water. 

 

Heidi

* Also, my comments are
*directed at what I presume to be hydrated horses. If they are suffering
*from significant dehydration or lack of gut fill, you're right, they
*have more serious problems.

I think fluid-deficient horses are more common than most riders think at
rides, thus my long history of jumping up and down over the issue.  There's
good data that over an average fifty-mile course, the average horse will
finish 5% dehydrated, which is 2% more than the point at will cellular
metabolism is adversely affected.  

Add to that virtually any other monkey wrenches---high humidity, high temps,
inadequate drinking or water supply, whatever---and it is such a tiny step
for the horse to become 8-10% dehydrated, to the point of needing treatment
or at the very least getting pulled.  It's been my personal feeling for
years that repeated bouts of sub-clinical acute renal insult eventually add
up to chronic renal failure in endurance horses, and those are the top
performers that blow the doors off the competition for a year or two, then
fall over dead 'without warning' at an LD.  I think just because we let
these horses finish a course and say he's fit to continue (for today)
doesn't necessarily mean we haven't sometimes, maybe even often, caused some
slight, irreparable damage that will eventually catch up with the horse.

So I have no argument that a fit and well-hydrated horse will do better with
some intelligently applied carbohydrate supplementation through the day.  My
argument is that fewer horses than we may think out there really are
well-hydrated, and that it's a serious enough issue to virtually eclipse the
issue of energy balance.

*I don't think a hydrated, gut-filled horse with depleted glycogen
*reserves can go very far, if at all.

Sure they can, they do it all the time, because a horse stuffed with fiber
is rarely a seriously glycogen depleted horse.  VFAs still provide a
boatload of energy, even if you did have to fill up the gas tank last
Thursday instead of at vet check 1.  I pulled a helluva lot of blood samples
of horses at 100 mile rides and very rarely found glucose levels I would
have called 'depleted', except in a very, very few front runners that were
IMO being pushed too hard.  I published some studies hypothesizing that the
higher rate of metabolic failure in thin horses was related to a negative
energy balance---what TI would have called a catabolic state.  Fatter horses
did better across the board, not because the additional fat added anything
during the ride, but was an indicator of whether or not that horse was
getting enough fuel to start with full glycogen gas tanks.  But the only
horses I ever saw that I would have considered 'glycogen-depleted' based on
their chem panels started out the ride that way, and no amount of
manipulation during the ride seemed to make a damn bit of difference.

Just my own personal soapbox.  Glad you had a good time at Swanton---it's
certainly a spectacularly beautiful area.  Hope you found the bakery selling
hot, fresh artichoke bread.

Also hope to see you at Git'Er Done---Tammy says I'm not allowed to vet it,
I have to ride this time <g>.  So I'll be actually up on a horse riding my
Karahty daughter for a change.  She'll be the one with her face in a pan of
sloppy beet pulp :-).

Susan Garlinghouse, blahblahblah


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 Subscribe/Unsubscribe http://www.endurance.net/ridecamp/logon.asp

 Ride Long and Ride Safe!!

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