heart rate - fit to continue criteria

["Steph Teeter" <steph@endurance.net>]

My first response to Ti's statement that heart rate
is not the best criteria was a gut level 'of course 
it is, we've been using it for year' . But I think
there's something to it (disclaimer: no science here,
just observation and opinion).

I do think that heart rate - recovery, CRI, is one
of our best tools to detect horses that are NOT fit
to continue-  horses that are working beyond their
cardiovascular ability, horses in pain or distress, etc.

But, what about the horses that recover normally, have
reasonable CRI's and then crash, or hit the wall? There 
are lots of  these cases out there. And I've seen horses 
that met the recovery criteria just fine, but were *tired* - 
dull eyes, lack of impulsion, etc. 

I realize recovery is just one of the parameters
we use - gait, attitude, hydration,etc also come into play.
But these other parameters are mostly 'eyeball',
and the skill/experience of the ride vet plays a
large part in catching horses that are in trouble,
or will soon be.

So - hypothetically speaking here - is there some other
*measureable* criteria that would give a better indication
of the horse's fitness to continue? Seems we can rule
out blood glucose, since it doesn't present a predictable
snapshot of muscle glycogen levels.  What about the
level of muscle glycogen itself? Muscle enzymes?

Again - this is purely hypothetical - I am not advocating
taking blood or muscle tissue samples at vet checks!

But, very often a horse will get into serious trouble,
and the vets didn't see it coming. Everything 'looked'
ok. 

So Tom, Beth, Sarah, Heidi, etc -  if we *could* look deeper, 
what do you think we should we be looking at.

Steph

(this feels like a very dangerous post ... please please
please don't take this out of context or think that in
any way I'm into 'riding by chemistry'. I'm just curious)


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