Re: heart rates & recovery

["Code-Co, Byron Harward" <byron@code-co.com>]

>The "plateau" that I typically see is more of a recovery end stage--which is
>why it concerns me when horses "hang" at a number like 68 or 64. <Snip>

>the Australian horses fairly consistently continued to recover on into the
>40's after meeting criteria, whereas ours did not.  I am happy to report that
>ours DO, given different ride strategies and asked for lower overall
>recoveries.  <Snip>
>Heidi Smith, DVM

Plateau heart rate during a recovery. (More 2-rat research:)

  On all my training rides done over the last 5 years, I record my horses
pulse each 60 seconds until I fell they have fully recovered. Most of these
recorded recoveries are for my main horse, Tzadik. I have a few others for
2 other horses. I keep the recovery records in several little notebooks I
made for this purpose so I could compare rides, times of year,
temperatures, during-the-ride working heart rates and HR recovery profiles.
Beside recording the every minute rates, I watch the HR monitor for the
whole recovery time.

I have found on my horse that I almost can't get off the horse fast enough
to watch him drop from the working rate down to the 90's (I only consider
it a training ride if the working rate is at least 130 for 30 minutes and I
try not to maintain a working pulse over 160. I also do the recovery
starting with a dead stop from the working rate - no "walking out" or
"down-hill approach" to the stopping place in a training ride for us.) 

After he is in the 90's I have noticed that he usually "plateaus" at some
rate between 85 (hither on a ride I conclude is over-done) and 72 (most
recoveries show the longest time at any pulse around 72 BPM). Once he
starts to drop down into the 60's, his rate keeps doping fast until it is
in the low 50's. 

These plateaus are not extraordinarily long after a training ride. The
whole recovery for this horse has never taken longer than 12 minutes (usual
time 2-4 minutes). But I notice that there is always some heart rate that
he stays at for 2-3 times longer than any other rate. And, 64 (the usual
criteria rate at Utah rides) is a rate that he drops through in a hurry
once he passes the higher plateau rate.

I have no clue if this is useful information, I just thought that maybe not
too many riders had several years written records of recovery times to
identify plateaus.

Byron Harward and Tzadik