Re: [RC] Ride time v. Elapsed Time - Howard Bramhall
Wow! Too bad the electricity didn't go out where Kat lives before she
posted this one. "Only an idiot," "asinine," "have never been,"
"meaningless," now those are words and phrases to get your point across
objectively.
cya,
Howard (who has been to rides where LD hold times are 40 minutes or
longer)
> The ride times are what is listed
in the AERC results not competition times.
> Most 25's have a 20
to 40 minute hold time which gives 5:20 to 5:30 of ride time >
available to finish a ride. My mare could (and has ) walked that.
This
is, in fact, probably one of the problems with your analysis. You
are doing the calculations based on "ride time" rather than total elapsed
time. Only an idiot would think that time spent resting in the middle of an
effort should not be included in any calculations of average
speed.
Unfortunately, the available data from the AERC does not include
enough information to even figure out what average speed actually is, since
they don't report elapsed time.
What you are seeing as regional
differences may actually be a function of differences in average hold times
rather than differences in average speeds.
I have NEVER been to an LD
ride that had 40 minutes of hold (20-30 is the norm around here and I have
been to some with only 15 minutes); wereas most 50 mile rides (except for
multi-days) will have 90-100 minutes of hold with some having as much as
120 minutes. I have never been to a ride where the difference in the
amount of hold time between the LD and the 50 was proportional to the
distance (which is what it would take for the amount of hold time to have
no effect on average speed).
Until you have the data to calculate
average speeds, your analysis of average speeds is meaningless.
And
to anybody who thinks that time spent resting at a hold doesn't count: I
just got done doing a 75 mile Ride & Tie; which took us about 14 1/2
hours elapsed time to complete. Of that time, the horse probably
spent about half of it standing around waiting for her riders to catch up
with her. Our "ride time" (time actually spent moving forward on the
horse) was probably about 7 1/2 hours...however, there is NO WAY the horse
could have sustained that speed (10 mph) on that course, if she hadn't
spent another 7 hours standing around eating, drinking, or resting in the
shade (only once or twice did we tie her in the sun). I KNOW she
spent 3 1/2 hours total standing at the vet checks and the trot
by.
It is long past time that the AERC put a stop to the assinine
practice of removing time spent resting from completion
times....
....because then, some statistical analyses of completion
times might actually be meaningful (although there would still be the
difficulty of the possibility that rides are not really the length they are
reported to be).
