“Where the Rubber Meets the Road”
By Tom Domanski
| The birds are routing, they’ve been introduced to the training crates. It’s time to start road training. Road training has several purposes. First is to teach the birds their surrounding area. Most programs call for you to start road training in the direction that you will be racing from. The second purpose it to condition them. Like a weight lifter doesn’t start bench pressing 300 lbs but starts at a lightweight and over time builds to a higher weight this is how were are going to training our birds. First train them approximately 1 mile from the loft. This may be difficult depending on where you live to find a decent release site that is free of wires, trees, buildings, fences etc. You want to find a place that is free of most of these obstacles. Sometimes a large parking lot like a shopping mall early in the morning is a great place if their are not people and cars around. Give them at least three tosses where they are heading straight home. Also do not release them after they have eaten as food is about the only motivator for getting home at this time. After they have made at least three successfu tosses you can move them out to 3 miles, 5 miles, 10 miles, 20 miles, 40 miles, etc. Do not jump to the next distance until they have made three successful tosses at each training location. This is what I call THE CONFIDENCE METHOD. The goal here is to develop confidence in the birds. Also in doing this you are getting them slowly conditioned for each jump in distance. After 40 or 50 miles that they are training well, they are ready for the 100 mile races. |
