A Study in Horse Tiredness and Recovery - Paramters

Original article written by Regina Moore posted 10 years 0 weeks ago

The purpose of this study is to primarily determine two things about SIM horses:

1. How tired a horse gets from any specific training, racing, or shipping activity.
2. In light of #1, how long it takes the horse to be completely rested from its degree of tiredness.

A side purpose is to get a feel for how accumulated training, racing, and/or shipping can affect degree of tiredness and degree of recovery. In other words, if a horse isn’t yet fully recovered from a gallop, and he’s given a swim, then how much more tired will he be after the swim, and how much longer will it take him to recover, than if he’d merely had a gallop? Likewise, how will a single long ship across the world affect a horse’s tiredness and recovery, versus a string of modestly long-distance ships, race after race after race?


ENERGY VS FITNESS
When I went searching on the Forum for posts by The Steward that concerned the veterinarian, Dr. Hinede Hacklu, an old post I found reminded me of one very important point.

There’s rest and tiredness, and then there’s fitness.

Here’s something The Steward said in a Forum post from many years ago:

"Fitness is that fine line between too much rest and too little rest. Such as, some horses like to run every 2, 3, or 4 weeks, and if a horse likes to run every 2, then every 4 is a complete disaster for the horse unless you are working it, too.”

And

“Energy is simply how tired the horse is, which doesn't really have to do with fitness; that's more like shipping around and how tired that made the horse, or whether or not the horse bounced back from his last race. THAT IS THE ONLY THING THE VET MEASURES.

And

“If a horse is at its peak energy wise, that means it is very rested, but that has nothing to do with FITNESS.”

Granted, this a bit puzzling, because Dr. Hacklu does have some comments that reference how fit a horse is. Still, I trust the statement that tiredness is the only thing that the veterinarian can advise players about.

The above referenced comments were posted before SIM 4.0, and I suspect that, with rest at farms with amenities, horses desiring 4 weeks between races probably don’t exist anymore. Interesting though that, even back then, The Steward indicated that some horses preferred a mere 2 weeks between races, despite many players insisting that horses needed three weeks between races.

The FAQ on Using the Vet says, in part:

“If the horse just raced, or is shipping too often and racing without rest at the farm, the vet's comment will be dreary. As the horse rests, the comments will get much more glowing, leading up to a "This horse is at it's Peak!" comment that every player desires. Unfortunately, once the horse is at its peak, you only have a short while before it will become too rested and need exercise to reach its peak again.”

So, the vet can tell us where the horse is at, as far as the fatigue, rest, and recovery cycle, but he can’t tell us when the horse is overly-rested, and therefore not as fit as desired. But based upon when a horse reaches his peak (ie, has become fully rested), one should theoretically be able to approximate the window of time of when a horse remains fit, versus when it begins to lose fitness from inactivity.


LEVELS OF FATIGUE AND REST
In order to use a spreadsheet most efficiently to track the vet comments of various horses, I needed to assign numbers to vet comments, since the number would take up considerably less space. I also knew that, just as with most comments in SIM (such as from Mary Weather and the horse whisperer), there are multiple vet comments that mean the same thing.

I assigned a fatigue/rest level to each group of vet comments that were used interchangeably. To establish these levels, I vetted 18 different horses repeatedly, to see which comments meant the same thing. I came across over 25 different comments (there could be more), and established four different levels of fatigue/rest.

This is how I broke them down, using only the part of the comment that specifically refers to the horse’s energy level.

LEVEL 1 – Tired
This horse is tired today, you might want to make sure He rests for a couple of days.
I wouldn't give this horse another workout too soon, okay?
This horse will be tired for the next few days, okay?
This horse must have just had some exercise, a race or a workout maybe?
This horse should be at it's peak in about five or six days if you don't push it too hard this week
I wouldn't recommend another race too soon with this horse.
Take it easy with this horse this week, okay?
I wouldn't push this horse much harder right now.
You might want to take it easy with this horse for a few days now.
This horse could use a short rest, you know?
Time for a quick break for this horse, if you can.
You can ask me again in a few days, but right now this horse needs a rest

LEVEL 2 – Recovering
This horse can run in a few days but I don't think it's at its peak, you know?
This horse should run well but I'd expect a tired horse after the race.
This horse should be okay, but if the race were today, it won't run the best race of its career, okay?
I'd avoid too much shipping with this horse right now, it seems kind of tired.
This horse seems a little sluggish to me.

LEVEL 3 – Almost Recovered
I'd go one more day without exercise, but this horse should be okay tomorrow. Maybe a walk around the shedrow might help?
This horse should be fine tomorrow, check back with me then if you'd like.

LEVEL 4 – Rested
If you aren't planning on racing any time soon you might want to give this horse a little bit of exercise elsewhere.
This horse isn't even tired!
Look how dappled and happy this horse looks! You're good to go!
You've got yourself a sharp horse here!
This horse is at its peak, it would seem, energy wise, so go ahead and race it!
It's the perfect time for a race or some other exercise!
This horse isn't even a little bit tired.
This horse is ready to race!


THE STUDY HORSES
I’ve got two main groups of horses – yearlings in training and racehorses. In the training group, I’ve got some Appaloosas and some Thoroughbreds. In the racing group, I’m using Paints, Trotters, Arabians, and Thoroughbreds, in various distance categories Also, in the racing group, I’ve got some old guys, to see how older horses might have different results than younger horses.

In both groups, I’m doing my usual routine with some of the horses, and vetting every day until they’re fully rested. Others in each group, I’m intentionally giving them a lot more exercise than normal, and vetting them after each activity, and at least once a day, to see how they’re affected.


COST OF VETTING
Each vetting costs $500 for new players, $750 for juniors, and $1000 for everyone else. No matter what level of player you are, this can get very expensive, and sometimes just plain isn’t financially feasible.

Even though I have plenty of money, I’ve resisted vetting much, because I don’t like increasing each horse’s financial break-even point that much more, and plus my horses have historically been quite healthy. In the name of doing this study, I decided to spend however much it takes to figure out fatigue and rest. Since training opened February 24th, I’ve already spent nearly 200k on this project. I think it could very well reach seven figures by the time we get to Week 16, unless I’m content to conclude it before then.

One option to the cost of vetting is to jog a horse. While I’ve identified four levels of vetting, jogging has three levels, in that Mary Weather will give you one of three comments after the jog. The horse is either tired (you get scolded for jogging it), still recovering (“sleepy”), or rested (“is ready for more work or a race”). So, jogging can be viewed as cheap vet service. However, if the horse is heavily fatigued, it’s probably possible to injure it from a jog, so jogging could be detrimental in such a case. Also, if you’re jogging to make sure the horse is rested enough to do a timed workout, the FAQ on Training Your Horse warns that galloping or jogging a horse before a timed workout will affect the workout time. (You may not care about the time – only that the horse gets the exercise of a timed work. But if you’re using workouts to figure out equipment, then jogging the same day as a workout is a bad idea.)

The FAQ on Using the Vet suggests, “Use the vet to get a feel for how long it takes a specific horse to recover from travel or a race, and then you won't have to use it as often.” I’m hoping this series of articles will assist players in feeling they don’t need to use the vet as often, while still making more informed decisions about racing and exercising their horses.


FUTURE ARTICLES
Subsequent articles in this series will focus on patterns I’m seeing in tired/rest cycles in my horses, and preliminary conclusions I’m coming up with. Since I don’t know specifically what I’ll be talking about in each article, I don’t how they’ll be structured or if they’ll follow a logical sequence. I might jump around a lot from topic to topic.

What I do know is that I’ll be referring to horses in terms of the Level of fatigue or rest, as I’ve established by the four vet categories, above. So, if you’re going to follow along in these articles, it’ll be helpful to become familiar with the terms I’m using:
Level 1 – tired
Level 2 – recovering
Level 3 – almost recovered
Level 4 – rested

Also, know that when I reference horses shipping, I’ll be referring to the ship by how much it costs, rather than how many miles it is. It’s much easier to know the cost just by looking at my transactions. The cost should be relative to the distance, so the effect of tiredness from a more costly ship than a less costly ship should be the same difference as for the equivalent distances in miles.

Hopefully, by the time I’ve finished this series, I and any readers will know a lot more about how their horses get tired, and how they rest, and will be able to make more confident decisions about future activities for their horses.

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