ridecamp@endurance.net: training logbooks analyzing

training logbooks analyzing

Niccolai Murphy (niccom@aerostructures.com)
Tue, 04 Feb 1997 07:44:25 -0800

>From: Frank Mechelhoff <fmechelh@c-s-k.de>
>I have a question here for those of you who use logbooks in
>training: What are you doing with the collected data? Do you
>analyze it somehow, and if yes, in which kind?
>....Snip....

Ah ha an OC personality. I collect date, Max HR, recoveries (time to 120
and 60), distance, route, total time, stuff that I noticed needed work
(eg. stuff that may need ring work like flying lead changes), unusual
stuff of any kind, any hint of lameness or offness of any kind. Also
kept are, shoeing, vetting, worming and nutrition details.

The data is kept in a book and eventually entered into a spreadsheet and
is only used for near term planning. The mind plays tricks with you,
especially when you have several horses. If I know so and so hasn't been
riden for a week and the last ride was a gentle session in the ring, I
know today will not be a balls out run over the hills. It also helps
predict failures, if stumbling occurred in the last ride and the last
shoeing was four weeks ago, I watch for a loose one, if not I watch for
a weak tendon and so forth (it's hard to remember two days and two
horses later which foot the old codger was tripping on).

It also helps keep me straight about what we did last time out. I might
remember it as a perfect blast out on the hills on a cool evening, but
in fact it was a hot sweaty ride down a rock filled valley with a dose
of electrolytes required at the end and young Z was off his feed a bit
afterwards and so on.

Each ride is planned only sketchily as far as what I want to achieve and
where we are going, but the plan often changes one way or another
according to whether things are going better or worse than expected, but
the data from the last two or three rides helps put the sketch together.
Always have a quick look before I go.

Data older than a few rides isn't often very helpful, but it does help
occasionally with things like stumbling or an unexplained reccuring
lamness. I go back and look for common denominators and have tracked
stuff like lameness down to shoeing. "Why lookit here old H went
slightly lame one week after every shoeing", must talk to the ferrier,
and so forth.

-- 
Nicco Murphy  Aerostructures Inc.  F/A-18 Group, San Diego,
(619)545-3333

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