Re: some interesting facts

[David LeBlanc <dleblanc@mindspring.com>]

At 09:43 PM 6/6/00 -0600, Celia Krall wrote:
>My question, ti's condescension aside, is what are your perceptions of what
>is fast and what is slow, in mph?

I'm not sure that I can answer that directly, but for the rides I was
comparing, here's some numbers - for LD rides, the median (1/2 were slower,
1/2 were faster) _winning_ ride speed was 8.47 MPH.  For endurance rides of
less than 100 miles, the median winning ride speed was 9.42 MPH.  If you
can't manage 4.6 MPH, then you don't complete, so that's too slow.

In both cases, the standard deviation was about 2 MPH, and that means that
99% of the winning ride speeds were +/- 4 MPH off the average (not quite
exactly the same as the median, but in this case very close), and about 60%
were within 2 MPH of the average.  The maximum speeds in both cases were
very close to 15 MPH, so that's really fast.

This is an important point, as someone pointed out to me offline - when
judging the condition of a horse, a better rule than placing in a ride is
what pace the horse can handle over what distance. Beware of using ride
times to determine this - many rides are not accurately measured.

I'd also point out that fast is a relative term.  For example, in this
year's Stookey Stampede, you can get the actual ride times for both LD and
endurance riders at the PNER page.  There was a 30 and a 60, the 60 was
just twice the 30 on the same course (I was there, finished last in the
60).  If you took the winning 30 mile rider and doubled her time, then
looked to see where she would have placed in the 60 at the same pace, she
would have been 23rd!  The 10th place 30 mile rider would have placed 34th
in the 60 using the same method. So what might seem like a very fast LD
ride can often end up being a very conservative, middle of the pack
endurance ride.  Note that this comparison is actually unrealistic, since
the LD horse won't do twice the distance at the exact same rate, so real
results would put them even further back into the pack.  Considering that
this scenario is very common, some of the criticisms of the faster LD
riders puzzle me, but perhaps those opinions are based on perceptions and
not real analysis of hundreds of rides.

Hope this helps.


David LeBlanc
dleblanc@mindspring.com