XC speed and hot weather?

nope, they don't. short sleeves for riders is as good as it gets, well, afaik anyway.
fwiw i did the longest, hardest xc i've ever done in the hottest conditions i've ever experienced. (35 degrees with zero breeze. everyone keeling over with heatstroke and sunstroke). full 'chase at old 3*/4* speed (590 mpm?) + 10+ min xc at 3* speed. no misting fans at the end. horses mostly fine, only 1 dehydrated that i heard of. although, washed mine off and cooled her thoroughly, walked her for ages, put away. checked 1/2 hour later - she'd broken out in a sweat again... so, we cooled her again for about an hour. so, i'd say the only thing is to allow extra time (and ice and water) for more serious cooling down procedures.
 
Looks like lots of cooling then, we have a spray hose on the box and a reasonable sized water tank so we should be ok.
I'd best hunt out the icebox too, though before now I've ended up pinching the ice to cool me down!
The temps on Wednesday are typically the highest all week...I hope we can find somewhere to park in the shade, the times are well apart though, Jack finishes completely before Chocolate starts, which makes life so much easier , but Jack will be XC'ing at the middle of the day, which is likely to be the hottest...
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In 2003 during the couple of days when temps in Wiltshire were approx 33 degrees I had dressage at 12 noon and XC at 2pm at West Wilts.

Their murky dirty water has never looked tempting before or since, but halfway round the XC I could have jumped in.

Sienna was indifferent to the temp. had an extra careful sluicing down but that was about it.
 
was fairly hot at the weekend, but seemed very hot when competing, my horse was v sweaty which is very unusual. try and park in shade and take plenty of water for both you and horse. make sure you walk the horse off well after the XC especially, and done just box up and go home, make sure they chill out, cool down before going home again.
bt really make sure you have enough water and really walk her off and sponge her down.
 
If it's really hot I'm not going to stonar. The ground will be hard, the flies will be bad and I really cant cope with the strong heat we're having. Luckily my horse doesnt really need the run.
 
I hate the heat being fair skinned and hope they allow them to dispense with jackets as in BD for the dressage, wearing tweed in 28 is going to be unbearable.
I have a portable fan I plug into the lorry which blows over the horses when travelling and I keep the living part door open which makes for a through breeze if you open the driver's window too, but it's whether we can park in any shade when we arrive.
Both horses stand still if you spray them even if sitting on top at the time, so perhaps giving them a good mist now and then might make them feel cooler, we've been laughing at them allowing C to spray them with fly spray out hacking, it sure works from a small pocket sized bottle!
I hope they do something to help the ground, or it will be like concrete.....
 
If you do spray them with water make sure you scrape it off again. The water takes away heat from the body so if you leave it on it wont help cooling!
 
teddyt you've confused me with that post, the presence of water cools the surface temperature of the body via the latent heat of evaporation. I would assume it is not as effective as sweating at cooling the core temperature as producing sweat also dissipates more energy.

unless you mean apply water and scrape off before applying more water??????????
 
ester, teddyt is right the worst thing to do is throw on lots of water then not scrape as the water acts heats up pretty quickly then acts as an insulating layer slowing down heat loss. That's why you need to wash, scrape, walk, wash, scrape, walk etc etc THat way the cold water (ice water, ideally) helps cool the body temp, then you scrape it off, bit of evaporation, then you start again...
 
There is a really good video on Horse Hero explaining about this with Richard Waygood. Look under CIC2* training.
 
No they dont change the speed, theres not much point as everyone will be in the same boat, its just like they dont change it if its really wet etc.

I agree with TableDancer - I dont leave water on the horse, I scrape it off.
 
Interestingly enough, ice cold water isnt actually good for cooling core temperature- it cools the skin which is where the temperature receptors are. If the skin detects it's too cold then the body will actively heat itself up.
Therefore water with the chill taken off is best as it allows evaporation without cooling the skin to a level where the body believes it's cold.
 
There's probably two ways of looking at ice water cooling (as with everything horsey?!), I can see what Boss is saying, but also (if I can remember back to my physics/chemistry days!), the cooler the water is, the bigger the difference in temperature between hot (horse) and cold (water) and so the more energy is required to "neutralise" the two temperatures and the faster the rate of cooling will be.

So a bigger temperature difference will cool quicker, but I guess there's a point of cold water where it's too cold? Not sure really. Also, very chilled water wouldn't be good for the muscles I wouldn't think?

Agree it's important to scrape off the water as once it's warmed up to body temp, there's no temp gradient to remove heat from the horse, that's why you need to slosh, scrape & repeat as many times as you can!
 
That's an interesting point Boss - I'm just going on the bigger, hot events I've been at where they've always had ice in the water provided at the finish. However, I guess as it's always been a very hot day it's more a question of not letting the water get too hot than actually it being ice cold iyswim
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