workouts?

I’m curious how a horse is working out finalfurlong.org/viewhorse.php?horse=3291 I didn’t work him out on the 19th or most of the other days listed. Now he’s injured and has F energy for weeks. Now I know why.

If the previous owner had him on a training schedule I think it doesn’t delete automatically, the new owner has to delete the schedule.

you may find it useful to look at his past racing history. I see he has been very busy since he hit the racetrack. he has had 13 races this year alone, and many of these very close together e.g

8 march - santa anita 6.5f Turf Allowance for 3yo, $40,000
Place: 6th Track: Good

12 march - Gulfstream 9.5f Dirt Gr. 1 Florida Derby for 3yo, $1,000,000
Place: 10th Track: Fast

  15 march - gulfstream7.5f Dirt Gr. 3 Swale Stakes for 3yo, $150,000
Place: 10th Track: Good Time: .955

  2 april Santa Anita 8f Dirt Gr. 1 Santa Anita Derby for 3yo, $750,000
Place: 4th Track: Wet

this is a lot of racing and travelling in less than one month. they are mostly high class races as well and he has shown no real aptitude yet for stakes races.
although our horses are just collections of 0s and 1s in a computer programme, Shanthi has done her best to make them behave as though they were real. They have fitness and energy scores that are meaningful as well as natural energy ( I always think of it as enthusiasm!) Natural energy as I’m sure you know, is lost whenever horses are away from their home farm. and the more they race the more they lose. your horse has probably close to zero natural energy and well into minus figures for energy. this state makes injury much more likely as you know. I don’t think overheating is a major injury (perhaps others can say more about that?)  I hope you don’t mind me saying so but your horse needs a decent rest at home where he will recover the quickest. He is well bred and shows some potential at allowance level. Dont knock these as almost all my horses are allowance level and, for example, my starter horse Smoke Dance is now a champion and has earned nearly $250,000 all in allowance races. If you want to send me a PM I may be able to lease you a horse while HunterandDylans gets his energy and enthusiasm back

Penny

Yes he has, but that isn’t what bothered or concerned me. look at his work out schedule. I did one on the 15th but then there is a double workout for him on the same day. The 5th, 7th, 8th 10th workouts I never did. along with the 19th.

I did check the schedule when I first got him and there was none that was visible to me. But it must of been there.

I have noticed the occasional ‘double workout’ on a few myself. Is this intentional?

I don’t think it is.  I’m very nervous about the automatically generated workouts.  I had my 2yo filly break a leg at a walk thanks to a “double” workout.  For me, personally, I won’t use the auto work outs until the bugs are all fixed.  Getting and keeping up my horses’ fitness is not worth their legs.

Scheduling auto workouts is hard because horses change everyday and you can over work them leading to injuries.

I only work a horse if he/she is ready to run and there is no race available for a week or longer. Then I will manually work them. Knock on wood, I haven’t had a horse get injured yet.

My mom, Brenda of Triple M, is the same way. She also has no auto works on her horses and no injuries.

I know there are some on here who swear by it and thinks it’s awesome.  But they are people who have played this for awhile and have a good understanding of how it works. 

Shanti, are the FF horses on auto works?

FF horses are never worked out.

The double workouts is a bug, and will be fixed, but I don’t know when.

i also noticed a difference on  my page when the energy / fitness says for example A/B when i look on the entered page it might say A/C or even A/F is it a bug that makes it that big a change from my page to the entrants page?

ps. most of my horses race at the track they are at, i donut do a lot of shipping , and only get jogged/canter once a week, oh and occasionally spend a few weeks at home if they seem tired.

I have noticed when I enter horses in races their energy almost always drops a lot and quickly as shown on the page “you have x horses entered to run on “date”” I only enter them when their energy is A but they often start the race with C energy and even D- which is when I withdraw them. Thought it was only me!
As another point, can anyone tell me how to get fitness above D? I have tried recently to do some manual training to improve fitness - what happens is fitness will go up to C after a 2/3 sessions, and energy will drop from A or B to F. By the time energy is back up to C or B fitness is back to D or F. I have been round this circuit several times since the begining of the year and can find no way out. I virtually ignore fitness now or my horses would never race at all. I find that it seems to make little difference what the fitness level is with most horses as long as it is not F. I have an average number of winners despite entering most of them with D fitness.
Other players comments will be very interesting so please let me know what you find yourselves  :slight_smile:

I tend to only workout my horses when they are A energy and that’s mostly so I can check their NE and their likes/dislikes. I’ve started to ignore the Fitness level as well. As long as it’s not F I’m happy with it. When I buy some horses I find they end to be B/C fitness but that always has a downside. I bought a filly with A/A energy and fitness but she had been worked out constantly and had three injuries in three months. So my philosophy is being more concerned about energy and NE then fitness. I have consistent horses with low fitness so it all seems to work out  ;D

My horses seemed to do slightly better when they had higher fitness (I went through about a month long stretch where I tried to get them at C+ fitness before I raced them), but in general they mostly seem to do fine with high E and NE.  I’m sure fitness plays a role somewhere, I’m just not sure where :wink:.

Here’s something for you!!! As you all know I own “Spock” who has won some important races this year. I tried to get his fitness up to that “C+”  level before he started his racing this year, but that didn’t happen. So he started the year that way. He has raced 8 times this year and  2 times where he has only had 2 weeks between races including the last 2 of the “Belmont” and the “Queen’s Plate”. His fitness level has finally moved to a “D”. I don’t get it but that is the way it is so far. He will be at home until 2 weeks before the “Prince of Wales Stakes” and I fully expect he will be back at an “F” for his fitness. If I can ever get him to an a “B or C” in fitness he’ll be a monster. I hope I can get him to that level for the Breeders Crown as I’ve paid the supplemental fee and he’’’ need all the advantages when he tackles the big boys in the Classic!!!

Well my 3yo First Taken injured his left front leg when I manually worked him out. This wasn’t long after I claimed him, and he’s been a loser since. I’m pretty sure I gave him enough time to recover…that, and he had a growth spurt, going from 16.3hh to 17.2. I suppose he’ll be my Midnight Lute, except he consistently finishes last in his races. I’m going to chalk it up to age for now.

I work my horses when their energy’s high and their designated race is at least a week away, but I also pay attention to how fast they usually recover from it. My heavy horses recover really slow, and my freak horse is usually fit and ready to run in seven days. I work him out a lot because he just as that much energy. I haven’t tested his NE limits yet, though; I ship him home every three races, but it’s not at all intentional.

The ones that piss me off are those with dropping fitness levels who aren’t recovering enough energy for me to properly work them out. I don’t know if it’s just them or if it’s their NE but it really ticks me off.

I have to say I very rarely do workouts anymore. Almost nothing will get the fitness level above D for any of my horses. If it does, energy goes right down and by the time it comes back up fitness is back at D or E. Workouts use NE and I can’t aford to waste this valuable comodity on work-outs. I still get an average strike rate with my horses so I don’t worry too much about it. This seems to be a problem many stables have. If anyone has worked out how to get high levels of both I’d be very interested to know. Not the secret of how to do it - I wouldn’t expect anyone to give away their edge, but it would be interesting to know that it was possible.

I’ve gotten a few of mine to keep both levels at A, some horses get fit very quickly and hold their fitness easily. Others take forever to gain fitness because they don’t recover as quickly.

Keep in mind that some horses, even in FF, just aren’t cut out for racing.  If a simple 1 mile canter takes 30% of your horse’s energy (which isn’t really possible unless it’s an extremely unfit horse that has really low NE and regains energy like a snail, but as an example), he’ll never stay fit and have energy.  Likewise, an actual race will probably take 200% of his energy, forcing him to rest a lot longer to get back his energy.  That sort of horse should probably just be retired, unless he’s awesome/talented enough that he can run 3 times a year and make megabucks doing so.

You’re talking about Ghostzapper, aren’t you?

I wasn’t talking about anyone specific, but Ghostzapper would fit that profile. :wink: