Re: How many miles ?

[K S Swigart <katswig@deltanet.com>]

On Thu, 28 Jan 1999, Angela C. McGhee wrote:

> Good grief guys.  I made a joke about counting miles walked between feed
> trough and water bucket counting as LSD in one of my stories.  If you
> were going to start training for a marathon, and the book said, "start
> with 1 mile a day" would you start measuring your hallway to see if you
> were already getting it in? 

I would if my hallway were a half a mile long.  It reminds me of a friend
of my dad's who was part of a fitness study:  

Before the study began, they asked all the participants how much exercise
they did each day.

Then had each of them do a 12 minute run.

They could pretty much predict how far each of the participants was going
to be able to go in 12 minutes, based on the amount of daily exercise each
of them did.

Except in two cases:

1)	"Ex" athletes, who used to exercise but no longer did.

2)	And my dad's friend....until he asked them "Oh, unless you count
as excercise the two miles I walk to and from the train station every
day."

Yep, counts as exercise.

The horses out in my pasture cover A LOT of ground in a day...and they are
constantly walking.  No hay for them, they have to forrage for it walk,
graze, walk, graze, run around and play (especially the youngsters who
will actually do 5 or 6 laps ( 1 lap = ~ 1.5 miles) while they are playing
tag).  Run up to the water (1/2 mile) run back out in the field.

And it counts as exercise if a horse in a paddock "fence runs" which is
why such horses are so hard to keep weight on...because they run it all
off.

> O.K., so I throw out my hay at the bottom of my bluffside "pasture", and
> their water is on top.  I'm sure that helps, but I don't write it in my
> conditioning log. By the way, sometimes I just throw a bale of hay over

I dont' write it in my conditioning log either (I wouldn't even if I kept
one), but I am still aware that they are doing it and am aware of the
physical effects it has on the horse (some of them need to be confined
because it is physically too taxing.

But maybe we are talking about different sized "pastures" here.  My
definition of a pasture is probably AT LEAST 3 acres.  Anything smaller
than that is a paddock.

kat
Orange County, Calif.