I get up on say Wednesday and do a fast 6 to 8 miles (about 10 to 12 miles
per hour) before work.
Then one day on the weekend I do a 25 to 30 mile trail ride broken into two
segments. There is a resturant in a small town about 15 miles accross a
state forest that is a nice stopping place. I can water the horse and tie
her up to rest and I have breakface. I use the basic "speed play" system
used by human distance runners on this ride. That is a mixture of walking,
trotting and galloping - always keeping an eye on my HRM to monitor
recovery rates. The workout that I have found to work best for my horse
(results in fastest recovery) is a reps of say two mile gallops (trotting
where the footing or overhanging limbs make galloping a litte dicey)
followed by 3 to 5 minutes of fast walking walking for recovery. I try to
use hills on the gallops so I can get the heart rate up without a lot of
speed. I tend to train galloping up hills and walking down hills where
possible.
Since I started using this routine, we have done 4 100's -three top 10, won
a 50, two second place finishes in 50's. One of these second place
finishes was a sub four hour 50 which Misty also was best condition. So
this seems to work well for Misty. Now Misty is a long legged 16-2 hand
walking horse with a 5 to 6 mph walk and a very fast and very smooth
gallop. So training her to recover quickly from long gallops at a fast
walk or slow trot allows me to use her speed.
On the other hand my new horse (a seven year old, 16 hand Arab) has a trot
to kill for (long, low, smooth and fast) and not much of a canter. So I
will have to play around with a training method until I find one that is
best for him. I have started off with long stretches of a medium trot -
like 6 to 10 miles of a continuous easy medium trot followed by some
walking and another stretch of trotting. I will probably do this for up to
six months to a year of training (twice a week). Then I will have to
teach him to canter correctly (a problem with a horse taught a "show ring
canter" instead of a long low gallop).
After this I will evaluate the horse and modify his training based on where
he is, which probably means at this point build speed by using some reps of
fast gallops. The theory here is to teach the fast twitch highly oxygenated
(fast twitch HO) muscles to produce powerd and act more like fast twitch
low oxygenated (fast twitch LO) muscles. In human distance runners this
type of work produces significant increases in speed. The same should be
true for horses.
I think it depends on the horse and his strengths and weakness. The
training should strengthen his weaknesses and take maximum advantage of his
strengths. This takes a lot of time of just plain riding to understand the
horse and then time to develop the horse.
Sorry to ramble on
Truman
-------------------- Original Post ----------------------
>Thanks for the responses to my request for info on your training
>regimens. I do have access to the usual publications and their many
>excellent articles on training & conditioning the CTR/endurance horse. What
>I'm looking for is anecdotal, i.e. personal, in nature. I'd like to
>combine the vast array of good information on what we "should do" with what
>we "can do", and the relative success (and yes, even the failures) of
>different
>programs.
>So, if you have a story to tell, something you would like to share, I am
>very much interested in hearing from you.
>
>Diane, Miss B, Mr. T & Kasey @ Safehaven
>nelsonde@ttown.apci.com
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The race is not always to the swift, but to those that keep running.
Truman and Mystic "The Horse from HELL" Storm
and Danson "The Demon in Training" Flame
prevatt@lds.loral.com - Sarasota, Florida
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