RE: [RC] Percentage body weight (was: Dainty horses) - David LeBlancEd said: I will absolutely agree that heavy weight riders have more trouble with horses going lame.? This, not getting the cardiovascular conditioning absolutely right (think Tom Ivers' teachings), is my personal speed limit.? It is also the reason that I perfer to ride on technical, hilly rides.? This slows everyone down and negates a portion of the advantage of Feather Weights. ---------------------------- Let's look at the sample for the study - it was 100 mile horses competing at Tevis, which is point to point and mostly downhill. That could have a lot to do with the results. The findings may not hold very well for return to camp rides, or shorter rides. What also skews the results is that a tired horse often gets pulled lame, and isn't lame once rested. I'd bet that lameness is much more strongly a function of going too fast for conditions, where "too fast" is indeed a function of weight. Maybe we could get Mike Maul or Truman to do a quick and dirty 'study' and look at incidence of lameness pull by distance and weight division for a year or two - let's see what a big data set has to say with lots of different rides factored in. Seems like those hot shoes first or bust riders don't tend to be very large, or have great completion rates, either. I wouldn't be surprised if there were a correlation - greater stress on everything for the heavier riders - but you can't prove it very well with one highly skewed sample. =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- 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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