Uma Musume: From Being Knocked Ten Meters Away

Chapter 529 I Want to Hire You
"Shuzi, you..."

Staring intently at Alice, Yasui Makoto's voice was filled with disbelief and urgency:

Are you sure you're not joking?

After questioning him, without waiting for an answer, he stood up from his chair, rushed to the whiteboard, and grabbed the document that Alice had just photographed.

"I've tried all sorts of special training methods, core strength, explosive power training, reaction speed exercises..."

"But Xiao Bei's finishing touch level hasn't shown any significant improvement, so how come he suddenly has an opportunity?"

He spoke hurriedly, his brows furrowed. He glanced unconsciously at the sea view outside the window, then his brows furrowed even more, and he slapped his forehead.

"Could it be... because of the training camp environment?"

"The weather by the sea, the condition of the venue... these factors are more suitable for training the last foot?"

"If that's the case, then we should have come here sooner..."

As he spoke, a hint of frustration crept into his voice:
"That was my oversight..."

Yasui really spoke too fast, and Alice opened her mouth several times but couldn't get a word in edgewise. Kita Genko and the others also looked like they wanted to say something but hesitated.

Hearing his self-reproach, Beibu Xuanju's expression quickened, and he hurriedly said:
"Ah Zhen, you can't say that. Last year's training camp was only held in the mountains because of my insistence, so how can you blame yourself?"
"Besides, the training back then was very effective, and afterwards... didn't I still win the match?"

“This…” Yasui Makoto hesitated.

"Alright, alright, you two stop arguing about who's to blame."

Finally finding a moment of respite, Alice shrugged and spread her hands with an amused expression, looking at Yasui Makoto:
"Besides, you have to wait until I finish speaking."

As she spoke, she walked to the table, picked up a marker, returned to the whiteboard, wrote the words "last foot" and then drew a circle around them.

"It's actually very simple, Yasui. You're just blinded by your own involvement this time."

"Do you think that what allowed Xiao Bei to improve was the environment? The venue? Or luck?"
"Indeed, this factor is part of my analysis."

"But the real key is yourself."

She turned her head, her gaze landing on Yasui Makoto, and said with certainty:

"Or rather, the special training methods you invented, especially the chase training that you can personally participate in."

"The training method I invented?" Yasui Makoto was completely stunned.

Seeing his incredulous expression, a smile appeared on Alice's face.

In an instant, her expression turned serious again, and she quickly drew curves on the whiteboard, explaining as she drew:
"Look, this is Xiao Bei's last-foot data curve for various competitions over the past six months."

"Normally, the muscle fiber type and nerve reflex speed of racehorse girls will tend to stabilize after being normalized, and their final performance should also enter a plateau period."

"But Xiao Bei is different."

"You should know very well that she has extraordinary physical strength and endurance."

"But you can't do the kind of analysis I do, and you don't have all the medical technology—of course, you were the one who reminded me of the fluorescent labeling method, and I don't deny that."

"In short, based on my conclusions, Xiao Bei's muscle glycogen reserve efficiency actually has a 15% potential for improvement after long-distance races."

"Although the base value of fast muscle fiber recruitment is not high, the explosive power decay rate under extreme conditions is 8 percentage points lower than the average."

She paused, then pressed the tip of her pen heavily against the inflection point of the curve:

"That's the key."

"The various training sessions, special training, competitions, and high-intensity training during the retreat all combined to cause an abnormal change in the speed of her phosphagen system recovery."

"This is not a coincidence; I have observed the same fluctuation pattern for three consecutive weeks."

“If a targeted training program can be designed, such as combining hypoxic environment simulation with explosive power-specific stimulation, theoretically it could improve her last-step time by 0.1 to 0.3 seconds.” As she said this, she suddenly turned around and stared intently at Yasui Makoto.

“You’re the trainer, you should know better than me what those fractions of a second mean.”

Yasui Makoto was speechless, not only because he regretted his previous oversight, but also because he was excited by the improvement proposed by Alice.

Just as the other party said, he was indeed blinded by his own involvement.

Indeed, as the trainer of Northern Black Horse, he was definitely the person who knew his racehorse best.

However, precisely because of this understanding, he unconsciously became accustomed to the training and competition strategy of maximizing his strengths and minimizing his weaknesses, focusing all his attention on how to transform his existing advantages in endurance and physical fitness into speed.

In addition, his attempts to improve speed all ended in failure. To avoid risks such as injury, he gave up exploring this area and gradually ignored it.

But compared to this regret, there was more excitement.

Visually, the outcome of the racehorse girls is quite obvious.

The difference in length is 2.5 meters, which can be seen even if you stand in the last row of the audience.

But that seemingly long difference is only about 0.1 seconds, given the speed of racehorses, especially their final sprint speed.

In hundreds of competitions, the distance between first and second place is less than 1 meter, which translates to an even shorter time.

Especially in a match like G1.

To put it dramatically, the 0.1 to 0.3-second improvement that Alice mentioned is an insurmountable chasm, an insurmountable gap, a distance between heaven and hell in top-level competitions.

Meanwhile, Alice's analysis wasn't over yet:
"The most obvious proof of my argument is the competition between Xiao Bei and Good Opera."

Relying on her memory, she quickly wrote and drew on the whiteboard, producing several sets of contrasting curves in just a few breaths:

"Judging from the fluorescent marker data, Xiao Bei's burst of speed after the final bend was very interesting."

"Look here..."

She pointed to a red zigzag line that suddenly rose on the whiteboard:

"The muscle fiber activity reached 89% during the final acceleration, which is close to her physiological limit."

"But the key is not the numbers themselves, but the timing of the breakout."

"Usually, the peak stride frequency of long-distance female racehorses occurs at 70% of the race distance, but this time Xiaobei managed to push it down to 85%."

"This rhythm adjustment, which is far above average, indicates that her neural reflex system has been able to adapt to unconventional instructions."

"And then there's the fluctuation of blood oxygen saturation in the mid-discrete area and the muscle endurance curve, these..."

"Wait a minute, Suko... no, Dr. Suko."

Suddenly, somewhat rudely, Yasui Makoto, who had been keeping his head down, abruptly looked up, interrupting Alice:

"Dr. Suko, and Senior Yamato, I... have a favor to ask."

During the training camp, everyone spent every day together, and the way they addressed each other had become much more casual.

Apart from Genko in the north and Apricot Megami, Yasui Makoto, Elisei Soko, and Yamato Akame generally address each other by their first names.

Hearing him change his form of address, Alice and Yamato Akaki exchanged a surprised glance.

"An unreasonable request...?"

Looking at Yasui Makoto, Eriko asked in confusion:
"Why are you suddenly being so polite... Well, never mind, why don't you tell me first?"

Yasui Makoto bowed slightly and said solemnly:
"After the training camp ends, I would like to formally hire you to join my team as medical staff and data analysts. Is that alright?"

(End of this chapter)