More from another "sub 2:00 plan" smarty pants... Pitsiladis:
As a doctoral student, Pitsiladis experimented with giving runners a pint of heavy cream as a prerace meal. The idea was to use fat and help delay the depletion of carbohydrates, the body’s main fuel source during high-intensity exercise.
But Pitsiladis had come to believe that a two-hour marathon might be best achieved by bombarding the system with glucose.
For instance, Owen Anderson, a consultant to the Sub2 Project who coached elite Kenyan road runners in Michigan, gave his athletes eight to 10 ounces of a sports drink about 10 minutes before a race to get accustomed to a bloated feeling. (They drank more during competition.) To further get accustomed to an uncomfortable feeling in the stomach, the runners sometimes practiced by eating ugali, a Kenyan porridge, or cabbage before training.
“My runners can eat a Sichuan Chinese dinner before they run,†Anderson said jokingly.
Against convention, Pitsiladis theorized that the second half of a two-hour marathon would be run faster, not slower, than the first half. As runners burn fuel and become lighter during a race, he said, they should become more economical, needing less oxygen to maintain a certain speed.
When runners drank, Pitsiladis believed, they could shave precious seconds by squeezing fluid from a bag instead of opening a bottle, as elite runners do on the course. And perhaps, he said, they needed to drink little or nothing in the second half of a two-hour marathon.
Pitsiladis called Ross Tucker an “armchair professor†and felt he could help allay suspicions about drug use.
The number of athletes using banned substances at the higher levels of marathon running is probably “very high,†Pitsiladis conceded. But if anyone can help curb doping, he said, he can.
“I want to beat those on drugs,†Pitsiladis said, adding: “I want to say, in a sense, yes, drugs have been taken, but not by my athletes, and I’ve just smashed the two-hour barrier without them. It breaks the argument ‘I’m going to use drugs because it works more than science.’â€
Jos Hermens, a Dutch Olympian in 1976 and a manager for a number of the world’s top marathon runners, who is helping to fund the Sub2 Project.
Pitsiladis said, adding: “We know genes are important. We just don’t know which ones they are.â€
At one point, his genetics research was sponsored by an Indian restaurant in Glasgow.
The Dead Sea might also be a place to experiment further with satellite technology, which Pitsiladis had tested at the Dubai Marathon in the United Arab Emirates, measuring the ground temperature of each section of the course in real time. He recently obtained 30 small thermometers that runners could swallow to record their temperatures throughout a race.
“I want to be able to link the land temperature to the body temperature,†Pitsiladis said. “What effect does it have?â€
Information could be relayed to a runner, he said, perhaps by someone following on a motorcycle who could advise, “Around the corner, it’s cool, so push it more,†or, “It’s hotter; slow down.â€
All of these ideas are speculative. But they speak to Pitsiladis’s pursuit of innovation and his refusal to surrender to orthodoxy.
“Yannis is very good at questioning the common wisdom,†said Barry Fudge, a former doctoral student of his who is the head of endurance for the British track and field federation. “At this juncture, most people would be like, ‘No, no, no, you’ve got to be crazy.’ Well, Yannis is crazy enough to do it.â€
Oh boy. Fred. We have to get this nutcase away from Bekele as soon as possible. Please contact the authorities before the Manchester 10k race that is coming up and maybe we can stop him in time.