Did Solinsky state that he regularly uses artificial altitude? If so, does this explain much of the US "resurgence"

jjjjjj wrote:

I also recalled that Ritz set no American records while living at altitude for a period of something like six or eight years in Boulder, CO. So, something else happened in Oregon and St. Moritz.

You're correct. Ritz trained like a marathoner, flailed but built an enormous base, then chnged coaches and moved into Salazar's altitude house (12,000') while sharpening at sea level. St. Moritz was a brief stop over in Europe to keep some of the benefits derived from the artificial elevation of the house.

He benefited from the longer, threshold training as a base, the new, improved sherpa living, and the sharpening, iron pellets, etc that Salazar has and probably used. Turns a 13:05 guy into a 12:56 guy. The ethics of the situation are up to you guys to debate.

To be fair, Ritz DID have some truly stellar performances while based at altitude; it just seemed that he couldn't stay healthy for prolonged periods of time. His 8:11 two-mile was shockingly good, and I believe came shortly after he moved back to Eugene but still trained under Hudson.

Regarding his giant jump, when was the last time he had run a serious 5k prior to his sub-13? For a few years, he was hurt or doing that "hide in from everyone, train for the marathon" thing that seems to be in vogue.

I think Ritz's sub-13 5k was more a function of 1) finally focusing on the track and 2) doing some of the down and dirty fast stuff that he hadn't needed to do as a marathoner. I'm not saying the altitude tent meant nothing, but there were other factors than just "he improved 20 seconds in one race."

I believe his 8:11 and 13:16 were not too dissimilar in terms of conversion, though various tables say differently. Agree on the inability to train consistently, which, of course, is where the alter-G comes in, but I think he already had access to it. I fully expected Ritz to put in a 13:05ish type performance, but never the 12:56. I'm simply saying I, for one, greet it with a modicum of skepticism that it was aided and abetted by technology that not all distance runners around the globe have access to.

Nonetheless, I hope he focuses on the track this spring and re-evaluates his Olympic options, because, even though he may not be capable of a medal at the shorter distances, I think the same is true of the marathon, which just gets deeper and deeper.

dsrunner has the day off wrote:

Stache, you're wrong.

So, I'm just wrong. Just like that, huh? Wrong about what, because iirc I made three points.

To your point about moderate vs. high mileage and to the other poster that addressed the obsession with high mileage on letsrun, I never suggested that kids SHOULD be running 100mpw. But look at what happened in the 90s in high schools across the country and in recreational running, too. The ideal was "less is more" and "no junk miles" whatever the hell that means. We were running 30-40 mpw in my high school and friends at other schools who I raced against were in awe of that number. I'm not kidding. I was friends with two multi-State champions and neither ran more than 50 mpw ever. It was also widely believed among my limited 17-year-old's scope of people that you HAD to take a couple months off after a season to "refresh your legs" otherwise you would "burn out forever."

I never suggested that all kids should be aiming for those 1000 mile summers or 100 mpw. I did however, suggest that kids are no longer afraid of seeing what they are capable of; that kids are routinely training at greater mileage than back in the 90s and that they are WAAAYYYYY more consistent about that training than most of us ever were back in the 90s. This MORE resembles what was happening back in the 70s and early 80s.

Aw come on. We all know the improvements are a direct result of PEDs.

An Engineer wrote:

I have trouble agreeing that altitude tents are akin to doping (as some people seem to believe).

If they are, then what about running on a treadmill in a heated gym in Minnesota in February? Isn't that the same kind of thing, a human creation to modify one location's atmosphere to act like another's, in order to improve performance?

I agree with some of your points, especially the above one about training on a treadmill in a heated gym (changing one's environment artificially via technology to improve performance). HOWEVER..... there is a difference between your example and artificial altitude houses/tents. With artificial altitude, one passively breathes in an artificial/"synthetic" substance (air), and this creates EPO production. This is different than an artificial training environment. This could be considered more closely to resemble taking a man-made substance (in this case artificial air) to enhance performance. Sure, one can say, "but altitude exists in nature." Well, EPO exists in nature, so why is injecting it, or some other substance that promotes EPO production, much different?

And yes one could also argue that having air conditioning could help one recover better than not having it. So I completely agree that there are gray areas that we are discussing here. I do think that artificially changing the air we breathe in order to directly stimulate EPO production is way out on the limb of what can be considered "doping." Taking out one's own blood, and then later putting it back in, doesn't seem that much more unnatural to me creating and then breathing in a synthetic air.

A fine line indeed.

Having an altitude tent is potentially advantageous beyond living at a particular altitude not because it is artificial but because it can simulate a higher altitude than you could do good training at. So, the sleep high, train low advantage almost requires something artificial.

In general, though, I don't think that the tents are as beneficial as living and training at high altitude, because you don't spend the same time there and it is not nearly as hard to train at sea level. And millions of Americans live at medium altitude, roughly 13 million live in the Rocky Mountain states, and overall, population above 1500 meters altitude in the world is South Temperate: 1.23 million, South Tropical 6.3 million, North temperate 13.6 million,North tropical 17.8 million (mostly Mexico City, I think). (33 percent of the world's population live within 100m of sea level. Uh Oh!). So, there are more than a million people at sufficient altitude in each world region to get altitude benefits for running. But it takes a culture and training above and beyond the altitude to get the great runners, and Ethiopia and Kenya have those. The U.S. has sufficient altitude population to dominate (and others could move within the U.S. to altitude), but it does not. However, many of our best runners do come from altitude.

Solinsky does do the compression socks.

Fair points all, but the "house" provides the ability to stay at extreme altitudes much longer than just sleeping and napping there. Plus, sleeping nine to ten hours and napping for two in the tent is quite a bit of time there.

Agree on the demographics, but most people who live and train at altitude don't have the benefit of training every day at sea level. Add in the the alter-G, the iron pellets, and God-knows what else, and you are pushing the envelope perhaps. Solinsky was pretty much stagnating for awhile too, relative to his peers, stuck at 13:12 and above.

No doubt harder training and a durable physique have helped, but the one-year performance improvement was jaw-dropping. Pretty sure he was wearing the compression socks before, but perhaps not?

Paula doesn't use an altitude tent. Although you can google as many hypoxic training websites you wish that say otherwise. They would say that wouldn't they?

Altitude tents don't even boost RBC counts anyway, however it is easy to manipulate the figures to make it look like they do.

Paula doesn't use an altitude tent. Although you can google as many hypoxic training websites you wish that say otherwise. They would say that wouldn't they?

Altitude tents don't even boost RBC counts anyway, however it is easy to manipulate the figures to make it look like they do.

Sir Lance-alot,

If I could chime in here as well, I feel the same as An Engineer. The air is artificially modified, but it is using a stimulus on the body to evoke a natural response. In this case, the body is being deprived oxygen, to evoke adaptations to absorb more efficiently.

If there was an injection of a foreign substance that was artificially synthesized to force a change in the body, that would definitely be a PED. Here, the artificially produced result is the lower the concentration of oxygen. Removing a chemical.

If it was found that removing carbs from the diet caused one to utilize their metabolism more efficiently, would it be cheating to stop taking in as much carbs? I see no difference here.

Ed

It's definitely the altitude. No wait, it's the altitude tents. No wait, it's the compression socks. No wait, it's because he doesn't shave before his hard workouts, and this boosts testosterone. No wait it's.........

I think the only proper solution to circumvent the "concerns" then is to form running camps at the top of Mt. Whitney for sleep/living and then driving down to Death Valley below sea level to train. Of course, this wouldn't work in the summer, but summer is for base building anyway.

Mt. Lemmon/Tucson is another possibility or Wejo's approach of sleeping in his car near Mt. Humphrey and then driving to Phoenix for track sessions. Of course, he didn't do this every day, but he was the forefather of all of this really. Perhaps he should be collecting royalties from Nike, Nike OTC, and the maker of the tents.

Sagarin wrote:

hyperbole wrote:

Sir you are actually the Queen of letsrun hyperbole.

And for the umpteeth time, Paula didn't use an altitude tent.

What's umpteeth? Do you even know what hyperbole means? Perhaps all Lance is suggesting is that perfomance improvements have been somewhat hyperbolic in recent years, which can be likely be attributed to harder training/higher mileage, stints at elevation, and, perhaps (shudder), the use of an altitude house/tent to live like a sherpa while training fast at sea level... And potentially it is the latter capable of turning a 13:05 guy into a 12:55 guy. Not an unreasonable opinion and certainly worthy of inquiry.

Do you know what hyperbole means? Surely you are aware of the obsession many people have with the concepts of blood boosting? It is this obsession which fuels idiot threads like these.

My very last post was hyperbole guy. Surprised you missed the sarcasm and had to ask.

You're not saying it was the altitude tents, but really you are saying it was the altitude tents.

So of course I'm going to jump on you.

I'm sure most athletes would agree with the blood boosting concept, just like cyclists do. But you have to realize that cyclists are crazy and will believe any old shit, such as the idea that elevating the legs after a hard race improves recovery.

If you took EPO, how much would it improve your performance? A few seconds in a 5000m race probably, and how much of that would be a psychological boost?

hyperbole wrote:

If you took EPO, how much would it improve your performance? A few seconds in a 5000m race probably, and how much of that would be a psychological boost?

Speaking of hyperbole, why don't you ask Eddy Hellybuck and Cathal Lombard (sp?) how much they think EPO was worth?

hyperbole wrote:

Paula doesn't use an altitude tent. Although you can google as many hypoxic training websites you wish that say otherwise. They would say that wouldn't they?

You are quite stubborn, huh? Firstly, the article is NOT from a "hypoxic training website", but from active.com, and was written by a well known sports writer from the International Herald Tribune, a well respected source. So you are saying he completely fabricated ALL of these quotes from Paula??

On use of hypoxic tents-

"It's obviously not as comfortable as a double bed," said the British track star Paula Radcliffe.

"I don't really agree with the IOC investigation into it," said Radcliffe, a silver medalist in the 10,000 meters at 1999 world track and field championships.

"All the altitude tent does is stimulate the body to cope with conditions that can be found naturally. If you say an altitude tent is unfair, you have to ban people living at altitude. The only argument against the tents is cost. Not everybody can afford them. But then you get into the whole argument of whether athletes can wear more expensive shoes than others."

But Radcliffe feels no burden about having used an altitude tent on occasion, most recently for several days before she won the world cross-country title in March.

So she has CERTAINLY used them in the past. I am sure she downplays it because she too doesn't want that to be the focus of people when looking at her success, and it probably shouldn't be. But there is no doubt she has used them, no matter how many times you tell me "no."