Workouts

[DaveEdwards]

Hello all,

I've tried a quick search of the site, but couldn't find what I was looking for. I'm looking for information on what constitutes a fast work. Not to identify winners, but potential underperformance as per Tom Brohamer's Layoff, Class Drop, Fast Works angle.

Any guidance to a thread that already has this or thoughts on the times considered to be fast per each workout category would be very much appreciated.

Going to try to post my first ever screen capture now which demonstrates the point well. This horse finished last by the way.

I can see the bold highlighting for the works which obviously means something, so I took that as an indicator that this horse was vulnerable.

Thanks.

[Hoof 11]

The baby blue highlighting means workouts since the horse last raced.

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 Consider referring to William Scott's excellent book 'How Will Your Horse Run Today', some of which is now rather outdated, but including his treatise on the 5f workout, beginning on Page 42.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

HWL2 - 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.

I will post more thoughts on the matter when i have the chance, my typing still sucks.

[Bill V.]

Hi Hoof

Ted added the SAR workout. The SAR workout or Sartin was a request I made while reading the original hardbound Pace Makes The Race.
In the advanced concepts , Doc writes about workouts, He advice's to look for
evenly spaced workouts, 1 workout every 7-8 days and at a time of not much more or less than 12 seconds per furlong, He warns about trainers who work their horses too fast,

Here is an example of a SAR workout pattern

[Hoof 11]

Hey Bill, how goes?

The bold highlight simply indicates a work 5F or longer, it has nothing to do with vulnerability.

From my perspective...

Workout intervals is the key factor in my opinion, generally you want to see a work every 7 days or so, when you see a major layoff or disruption in workouts, there was an issue with said horse. The horse you posted had a 41 day interval on April 1, that either means the horse had an issue or was shipped from GLP to PID.

The times that a horse puts up should be taken with a grain of salt, it’s not an exact science in the morning. The clockers at the track are doing this by hand, and more often than not the times are handed over by the horses trainer, and they don’t always want to show that they have a “live one”, especially claiming horses. When a trainer sends out a horse in the morning, he is simply conditioning the horse, the time that a horse puts up isn’t always that important, this is where we go back to intervals. I like to see one quick work from a horse, regardless if it’s his/her last work or it’s first work, i want to see some speed at some point during it’s conditioning.

Some horses are “morning horses”, they train like a champ in the morning and lay an egg in the afternoon.

Fast Works

6F = 1:13 or less

5F = 1:00 or less

4F = :48 or less

3F = :36 or less

2F = :24 or less

The horse you posted had one good work in my opinion (last work), the others were nothing to get excited about. The horse is a habitual fader, and hasn’t proven himself at said distance. He might have run well early, but i would wager that he gave way in the stretch.

[Bill V.]

Hey Hoof

Things could never be better, thank you and I hope things are well for you too

You are probably correct about horse 7, with out checking the charts. I believe the 6 also was a SAR in that Woodbine race.
Please don't get me started with early faders LOL . I just got my blood pressure back down, My doctor asked if I have been stressed lately, I should have said sign up for Pace and Cap and google search Early horses, Best of last three comparable, and Validator mode
OH my !

Anyway, Your examples are a treasure

Here is a horse from Belmont race 8 Saturday, This is a horse / race which we were discussing in the selections area RE. horse
#2

It was coming off a long layoff, It has a class advantage, and now that I have RDSS2 up and running again I see it was the only SAR workout horse in the race It won and paid $11.00

[Hoof 11]

Originally Posted by Bill V.

You are probably correct about horse 7, with out checking the charts. I believe the 6 also was a SAR in that Woodbine race.

I was actually referring to the horse Dave Edwards posted, but after looking at Chief Chato, he is a fader as well. His works were outstanding leading up to race day, but i found one interesting point about the horse, he can only win on a fast surface judging by the DTV. You are correct about the 6 horse, he was the only other SAR horse in the field, with the ability to close from just off the pace on a slow surface.

The Tepata at Woodbine is a painfully slow surface, and they have resorted to rolling the surface after the morning workouts to try and tighten it up with only a slight improvement.

[DaveEdwards]

Thanks Hoof & Bill V,

Brilliant stuff, I've ended up with more than I was hoping!
I own both books mentioned & will be checking out both sections. Actually my PMTR is missing a few pages (I wondered why it was so cheap on Amazon!), but the chapter indicated is intact.

Hoof, you are right about the horse at PID, it was treading water around the 2nd turn and started going backwards entering the stretch. On top of being a short runner and (what I felt) was the potential workout issue it was also trying to keep pace with an E sprinter going into this route. Essentially, everything that could have been wrong was. Not sure how it went off at 6/5.

Thanks for all the extra info in this thread both. All copied & pasted ready for reference!

[Bill V.]

The SAR workout pattern idea, comes from Doc's write up in Pace Makes The Race in the chapter "The Numbers Game" page 138 and 139

I mistakenly posted that it was in the advanced concept chapter

[gandalf380]

i have found that in general a SCW indicator on workouts is a strong indicator of a sharp effort. I have also found that a strong 5f work is also a strong positive indicator.

[DaveEdwards]

I have those pages!