Workout Form Patterns - Documentation

[cody]

Hi,guys and gals,my name is mike canonico,I am not new to the sartin methodology.I attended many seminars with doc and jim,I am new to RDSS.I am trying to find out what the abreviations mean on the work out
section of the program,any help would be welcome.

thanks
Mike

[Hoof 11]

Hey Mike
You will have to wait for bello to get back from Italy, it's a well kept secret that hasn't been explained yet, not to me anyways.

[cody]

Thanks Hoof,will do

Mike

[gandalf380]

I can help with some:

FPD furlong per day
HWL1, HWL2 heavy work load with two different definitions


I use the works tab extensively, especially for first time starters and layoff horses. My understanding is that this was put in at the request of a particular person who uses workout patterns as a handicapping tool.

[cody]

Thanks gandolf

Mike

[Ted Craven]

I am trying to find out what the abreviations mean on the Workout section of the program,any help would be welcome.

thanks
Mike

Mike,

My apologies for delay! I also moved this Thread to the RDSS2 Forum. This Workout Form Pattern section of the program has been undocumented for far too long. Originally a private add-on, it entered the public version a few years ago. It ultimately derived from the works of Ray Taulbot, enhanced by several others. I have been reluctant to document it too much as I have always intended to simplify all the Workout observations and to portray them in a more intuitive visual manner, but never got (or made) the time.

Meanwhile, a number of people have been making good use of it in select circumstances. For example, where there is a question about the fitness of a horse returning from a Layoff, or for First Time Starters, or Foreign Horses - or any circumstance where there is a question about current fitness not otherwise answered by a series of recent actual races (which are always the ultimate measure of current fitness).

One caveat about the reliability of Workout based information at all - it is unreliable! Too much confusion happens in the morning workout sessions at the track: too many horses, ill-identified, darkness!, horses running alone / in company, inside or outside each other, different speeds at different segments of the run, etc, etc. Plus not all workouts are public - some barns have private facilities.

That said, the most useful information in my opinion, is the frequency of works, which indicates a training pattern of regular buildup of stamina or speed (HWL pattern) along with indications of brilliant speed (Workout Speed Ratings of 92 or over).

Cast a wary eye against First Time Starters with brilliant works, plenty of good patterns, good Speed Ratings - compared to other Maidens in the race with actual racing histories! There is no substitute test of ability for the hurly-burly and mental and physical stress (to the horses) of an actual race. That said, when a first timer, especially one let go at a good price (and thus paying a premium against the inevitable frequency of failure which you will experience) - shows workouts as good as or better than some of the actual posted race times of some of its competitors, along with a regular frequency of works, perhaps improving in Speed Rating - these are instances to consider (if you have to or like to play these kinds of races) including such neophytes in your consideration of Contenders today.


Workout Form Patterns are found in the Workout Tab for each horse, and summarized on the Entries Screen for the race, right-hand side.

Allowing for the above caveats, following is a description of the Workout Patterns. At its crudest use, just look for 'more is better', and faster Speed Ratings, especially in longer works (5f+). Pay attention to Workouts with bolded SR of 92+ .

Warning: I will be simplifying and consolidating some of the patterns described below in a future version. And don't worry too much about the 'shades' of patterns (* ! + -) modifiers - there's a bit too much detail in these patterns as is, given how reliable overall the workout data can be.


Workout Form Patterns


FPD - Furlongs Per Day. When there are 2 or more workouts since the last race, and within the past 30 days: count the furlongs worked including the distance of today's race and divide by days since the last race. 1 furlong per day = FPD, less is -FPD, more is +FPD. We're trying to get a coarse idea of how much public work the horse has been doing to return to racing. You can only put so much value in this info - this does not tell us how much private work the horse has done, the ferquency, the speed, the pressure during (e.g. working in company, working inside/outside other horses, etc), the distance, etc. Consult other Workout Patterns for some of these.

5f / 6f - 5 or 6 Furlong Workout. The last workout within 9 days of today's race was either 5 or 6 furlongs, an important endurance distance associated with at least a certain degree of fitness, especially if combined with a good Speed Rating and coming at the end of an evenly spaced series of works (see HWL group). If the last work was within 6 days = +5f or +6f. Consider referring to William Scott's excellent book 'How Will Your Horse Run Today (http://astore.amazon.com/sartinmethodo-20/detail/0897091477)', some of which is now rather outdated, but including his treatise on the 5f workout, beginning on Page 42.

SRW - a Short Recent Work between 2f - 4f within 3 to 5 days of today's race

SW - Super Workout. Depending on distance and recency, a designation for the LAST workout within the past 14 days, run faster than a certain time for each distance.

GW - Gate Workout. Within the past 8 days, a workout from the Gate. Extra credit for more recent gate workouts (* ! + modifiers)

HWL1 - Heavy Workload 1. 3 or more workouts within the last 21 days. +HWL1 for 4 works in 20 days or 3 works in 16 days. -HWL1 for 3 works in 21 days

SAR - Heavy Workload 2. Between 4 and 7 workouts since the last race at *regularly* spaced intervals. Extra credit for more workouts.

SCW - Special Condition Workouts. Comparing workout immediately prior to the last race within 60 days to workout immediately following that last race - the latter workout is faster and may indicate that the last race did not adversely affect the horse. Or, comparing workouts immediately preceding and following the last 2 races with an out of the money finish, the later workout should be faster, perhaps indicating that the previous 2 races also did not adversely affect the horse's condition and it may be ready to offer at least as good an effort today.

PIW - Progressively Improving Workouts. Comparing the past 3 workouts within 75 days (preferrably shorter), each next workout should be run at increasing average speed.

TCW - Turf Course Work. For a horse's first Turf race, its last workout is on Turf.


Adjunct to Workout Patterns themselves are the Workout Rank and the Workout Speed Rating.

WR - Work Rank. A computation based on the average percentile of a horse's workout rank for all workouts in a day (when at least 5 workouts recorded that day), plus furlongs worked and raced - over the past 30 days. A measure of its fitness.

SR - Speed Rating. A rating of workout time, based on a parallel time chart equating times for different workout distances. Speed Ratings of 92+ may indicate the horse is extremely fit and sharp, especially if the workout distance is 5f or longer.


** ** ** **

[Hoof 11]

Thanks Uncle Ted, workouts are a big part of my handicapping and ive been patiently waiting for this explanation. Now if i could just get back the Tandems i will be a happy camper.

I hope your holiday was a good experience, and i imagine you ate some good food and recharged your batteries, glad to see your back.

[Dallas4lr]

[QUOTE=Hoof 11;84350]Thanks Uncle Ted, workouts are a big part of my handicapping and ive been patiently waiting for this explanation. Now if i could just get back the Tandems i will be a happy camper.QUOTE]


i agree, i sorely miss the the tandems, i really really really hope you plan on adding it to rdss2.

[big49010]

Hi all,

I am new to Pace and Cap, but not new to the subject. I have been reviewing many of your items, and one subject that has me clueless at times are work outs. I have been looking at some of your discussions and wondered where I might find this time chart you are speaking of for horses who run over a 92? I also wondered if there is a track to track adjustment anywere?

Thanks keep up the good work here.

[Ted Craven]

Hi Big, and welcome!

The Workout Speed Rating parallel time chart follows. For each distance, the time shown (in whole second) represents a Workout Speed Rating of 100. Thus, the number of ratings points less than 100 represents the number of fifth seconds slower than the reference time for each distance. For off-tracks, or gate works, or works around 'dogs', add 5 points.

The 92 point marker is a rating representing a significantly fast workout time at each distance: the horse is fit, so much the better if at 5 furlongs or longer, and recently.


Furl-
ongs Seconds
3.... 35
4 .... 46
5 .... 59
6 .... 72
7 .... 85
8 .... 98
Please be aware, as I have stressed (and as have many others), that so many things are a crap shoot with measuring workout final time that it is probably the least reliable bit of info of the various workout measurements.

More important is the frequency and distance of workouts (or even the presence of any) between races. The other Workout Factors seek to measure more of these aspects of fitness or preparedness for today's race than absolute measures of speed.

* * * * *


Re 'Track-to-track' adjustments, if you refer to such adjustments for workout tracks (and training tracks) there are none.

If you refer to 'Track-to-track' adjustments for races (pacelines), I invite you to use the website's Google Site Search tool (Menu bar, left side) to search PaceandCap.com for many discussions about that (e.g. search 'inter-track variants').

In short, TrackMaster provides a proprietary adjustment number for each paceline, which is not displayed in readouts, but which we convert to time (in RDSS and TrackMaster-fed older DOS programs) then apply to the final time and the internal race segments to attempt to equalize the times run on different tracks, surfaces and distances (i.e.taking into account different surfaces, circumferences and turn layouts, typical wetness or dryness, etc). This is not the Daily Track variant, which is stated separately.

All variants (ITV and DTV) are also imprecise, and subject to change each year. Alas (or perhaps, thankfully!) imprecision is our inevitable companion. It confuses people, and sometimes creates apparent pace and speed scenarios which aren't really there. We're only trying to reduce the confusion the best we can ... :)

Hope that helps. If you want to discuss Inter-track-variants further, could you start a separate thread, thanks.

[Segwin]

Saw a workout today with the abbreviation !SAR. Anyone know what this means?

[Appy]

Did that workout occur during the Saratoga meet?

[Segwin]

No Appy, it was from PRX Nov 26, Race 2


36259

[Ted Craven]

Saw a workout today with the abbreviation !SAR. Anyone know what this means?

Terry,

SAR is just a renaming of HWL2, which was introduced in that last 1 or 2 updates. I also updated the Workout Pattern Abbreviations above. SAR is in honour of Dr Sartin who suggested a similar pattern long ago (in Pace Makes the Race) as one indicating very good conditioning in the prep for today's race. Study the number, frequency and regular intervals of the works since that last race.

Ted

[Segwin]

Thank you Sir.

[Bill V.]

Ted changed the HW2 to SAR as requested by me in Dr Sartins honor
The old HW2! seemed to fit what Doc recommended in Pace Makes The Race
original version - pg. 138 - The Numbers Game

What Howard recommends from Pace Makes The Race is a workout
of about 55 seconds per furlong ( 12 seconds ) and spaced 8 days apart
He writes about a work out that can be too fast too soon.
How a velocity faster than 55 FPS has the same negative effect as a horse
that faces a too fast second call.

His basic rule is 12 seconds per furlong spaced 8 days apart. as an ideal work out pace.

36252

[Bill V.]

Terry

Just as a side the horse runs the race, I do see that the trainer E Allard
has not had a 7 furlong winner at Parx in 2013

The trainer of the winner of this race is C. Landicini
who with today's win has 5 wins with horses going 7 furlongs .

Bill

[Segwin]

Thanks very much Bill - great information.

With regards to the horse her last race was 159 days but I was giving the horse a second glance due to the good works. I decided against it because of the long layoff and that she was moving up in class where she doesn't belong. I think she ran 6th.

[Ted Craven]

Note: further discussion on this PRX Nov 26 Race 2 (not related to Workouts, but to paceline selection using Adjusted Speed Ratings) continues here: http://paceandcap.com/forums/showthread.php?t=9520

Ted