I am racing a horse over 22 miles next year! who do you think will win?

The horse, though it depends on whether or not it is endurance trained. Seems a horse could run 12mph for 2 hrs without much trouble.

The humans have not fielded very good teams to this event. Somebody like Haile Gebreselassie needs to represent us against the horses. He would win for sure.

In the late 1700s a horse called Gimcrack ran a one hour time trial and covered 22 miles.

The best horse over a marathon would smoke a relay team of Geb, Bekele etc.

I had a racehorse that cantered 6 miles in less than 20 minutes and covered 4 miles in less than 8 minutes.

You guys don't have a clue what a horse is capable of.

Captain Oblivious wrote:

I had a racehorse that cantered 6 miles in less than 20 minutes and covered 4 miles in less than 8 minutes.

You should have entered him in the English Grand National. You would be worth millions now! 4.5 mile course and it takes them horses over 12 minutes to complete the course.

A few years ago I was riding my bike on the road in Amish country. I was going about 20 miles an hour and passed a young guy in a buggy. Didn't think much about it until a couple miles down the road the clip-clop seemed to be getting louder. The guy had a big smile on his face as he blew by me. He went about another mile before turning in to the lane to his house.

Horse wins. You don't

Chew on these carrots wrote:

Captain Oblivious wrote:

I had a racehorse that cantered 6 miles in less than 20 minutes and covered 4 miles in less than 8 minutes.

You should have entered him in the English Grand National. You would be worth millions now! 4.5 mile course and it takes them horses over 12 minutes to complete the course.

The English Grand National is over jumps(A Steeplechase) you dummy and the horses that win that are not high earning horses.

The record for that race is also under 9 minutes, not 12 minutes.

Nice, please update us after the race

Captain Oblivious wrote:

In the late 1700s a horse called Gimcrack ran a one hour time trial and covered 22 miles.

The best horse over a marathon would smoke a relay team of Geb, Bekele etc.

I had a racehorse that cantered 6 miles in less than 20 minutes and covered 4 miles in less than 8 minutes.

You guys don't have a clue what a horse is capable of.

The MVHM marathon is cross country over terrain bad for horses. The horses have already been defeated twice and nearly defeated a couple more times. You are wrong, wrong, wrong.

If you lose, just get Salazar to get the horses DQ'd

Men have regularly beaten horses on uphill courses.

Bad Wigins wrote:

Captain Oblivious wrote:

In the late 1700s a horse called Gimcrack ran a one hour time trial and covered 22 miles.

The best horse over a marathon would smoke a relay team of Geb, Bekele etc.

I had a racehorse that cantered 6 miles in less than 20 minutes and covered 4 miles in less than 8 minutes.

You guys don't have a clue what a horse is capable of.

The MVHM marathon is cross country over terrain bad for horses. The horses have already been defeated twice and nearly defeated a couple more times. You are wrong, wrong, wrong.

I am very aware of that but setting up a course borderline dangerous for the animal to slow it down is silly.

Try the event on a level playing field, say the Longchamp racecourse where Craig Virgin won WCC and the humans would be lapped multiple times.

You're also generally seeing really bad horses at these events. Try actually using a long distance bred horse instead of a hack.

Animal rights have also taken away the ability of horses to go all out in these events nowadays.

Try again.

does the horse know it's in a race?

Look at the results from the past. See the best horse times compared to now? That's probably the sign of the vet checks killing the actual ability of the horses.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Man_versus_Horse_Marathon

I did a similar horse/foot race in Montana. The format was gauging your horse's endurance/speed and rest. Both the horse and the man had to cover the entire race distance, you just chose when you hopped on and off your horse to give your horse some rest. That race was over 18 miles, and I ran 12 of them while the horse trotted next to me and my team won by a considerable margin. If I recall, all of the top 3 teams, the runner covered more distance off the horse than on. Now, this race was part of a Native American Pow Wow, and there were some really strong native runners, but most of the horse were not particularly trained to cover distance with any sort of speed. My horse was a roan appaloosa that was primarily used for ranch work and a little bit of trail ridding, but was quite playful and athletic.

From that race, I can offer a few observations:

1. I would have been faster running over 18, than riding the horse over 18, but the horse was faster up some of the climbs than I would have been by myself. The horse just seemed to tire fairly quickly when I was ridding it, but seemed to stay with me with little trouble if I was off it. (I did try to "gain time" on some flats by ridding, but that strategy didn't work). My horse didn't have any specific training for moving at a steady clip over that kind of distance though.

2. Most horses really struggled over the technical stuff that my horse seemed to be faster on. If the trail was a bit more defined and well-traveled, I think all the horses would have been faster over climbs.

3. As the race went on, the horses notably tired. I wouldn't have even ran my horse in retrospect. I thought a few pack/hunting trips of 30+ miles would give me confidence that she'd fair well, but she was exhausted for the last 4 miles and required quite a few stops towards the end.

I think horses can be trained to be quite quick, but if it's just an average horse vs. a fairly well-trained marathoner (sub-2:30), the runner wins every time. If the horse is calloused from fox hunting or just long hard running, it seems like they should be quite quick.

A lot of people think that runners would win over any animal as the distance gets long enough, and that's true to an extent. I don't think anyone would run a horse over 50 miles at a clip that a runner can cover that distance...but I don't think any human would beat a sled dog over any distance regardless of terrain.

Do some more research. I have an article in a British horse magazine that has an Arabian horse cantering a whole Marathon over terrain favoring a horse in 1:48.

A Ranch horse used for working cattle and trail rides is about like a soccer player or Hockey player being asked to do a long run with no training specifically for it.

In the past horses were actually asked to race those longer distances and I wouldn't be surprised if there are records of horses covering 100 miles in less than 10 hours.

Now they go by elapsed time with lengthy vet checks.

It's not man vs horse. It's man vs horse carrying a man.

In a fair race the running man should be requireqd to carry a horse.