Respected commentator Tim Hutchings calls out times from past drug era, says more natural levels now.

Ultra or Die wrote:

I am shocked such stupidity is actually entertained on this site.

Oh really? 47.6 is unbeatable for a woman running 400 without drugs?

Grow up.

rekrunner wrote:

Don't the lack of results also speak for themselves?

Big Ass cohort wrote:

There is an ongoing, multi-center, international study as to whether PED's have a positive effect. For decades, top level athletes have been trying PED's in workouts and competition and have seen and felt improvements that have led them to risk everything to keep using them. The results speak for themselves.

My post could have been clearer.

The top level athletes feel and measure improvements in workouts and competition after they try the dope and decide that the gains in performance and income from the dope are worth the risk of losing their careers. That so many choose dope is the result that speaks for itself. The athletic community is an ongoing laboratory and poll on whether the doping works and the vote is overwhelming for 'yes.'

JonO. wrote:

Big Ass cohort wrote:

There is an ongoing, multi-center, international study as to whether PED's have a positive effect. For decades, top level athletes have been trying PED's in workouts and competition and have seen and felt improvements that have led them to risk everything to keep using them. The results speak for themselves.

People believe in doping? Really, what a profound statement.

What a profoundly superficial reading. Athletes and coaches can numerically measure performance in workouts and competition that provides solid evidence of the effects of pharmacological agents, just as an FDA study would measure the range of motion before and after a proposed drug for arthritis.

It looks replacing one unanswerable question with another, and wishful thinking that such a clear line can be determined. In your example, once we start to understand genes and gene expression better, we might find that the physiological limit is faster than 3:26. This physiological limit might change over time with evolution, and can certainly be different for different populations, not to mention individual variations. Another obstacle lies in questioning some assumptions -- which pharmaceutical aids allow you to exceed which physiological limits?

This makes it sound like the decision is based on a tight feedback loop, and that if the improvements were not immediate and significant that they would immediately stop. Christian Hesch admit he started taking EPO and didn't improve for two years. Often the decision to dope is not made by the athletes themselves, but by someone else in power, without this direct individual performance response feedback. Or the decision to dope is based on future expectation that it will help, rather than a live demonstration.

Big Ass cohort wrote:

rekrunner wrote:

Don't the lack of results also speak for themselves?

My post could have been clearer.

The top level athletes feel and measure improvements in workouts and competition after they try the dope and decide that the gains in performance and income from the dope are worth the risk of losing their careers. That so many choose dope is the result that speaks for itself. The athletic community is an ongoing laboratory and poll on whether the doping works and the vote is overwhelming for 'yes.'

JonO. wrote:

Dope works, full stop wrote:

Jon, you still haven't explained how elites get the job done at twice the rate of the plodders. Clearly they don't overheat.

Your argument was always that an elite uses a fraction less total energy to run a Marathon but you've always dodged how they can possibly do so without somehow doing so at a far higher rate.

I can't believe I read this whole thread and you still haven't moved beyond that silly statement coupled with the endless linking to those same two articles which you feel support your theory.

I did explain it. Quite implicitly and with numbers which you refuted.

On a warm day in a marathon, the elites don't slow down much but the plodders slow down a lot. Being more energy efficient they do exactly what you say. So where does your argument actually lie?

You did not explain it. You overlooked the rate of fuel burning. Plodders CANNOT burn it that fast. They just don't have the VO2 to do that.

We're not talking about warm days. We're just talking straight up ability.

Of course all the doped up times can be beaten by clean athletes. All it will take is people with the genetic gifts that place them at around the same level as the enhanced.

But the current records are not held by those people.

And when those clean people achieve those times they WILL run faster if they take drugs.

But we already know how that works.

Maybe that article talks to the person that might think cross country skiiers have the highest VO2max because they are the 'fittest', and would therefore be the fastest. I am not one of those people. I understand that a skiier is simply using more muscle mass and therefore uptaking more oxygen. You learn this in an undergrad degree. I didn't even study exercise physiology at university.

For the last time, what makes you think an elite athlete running the 1500m or 3000m is anywhere close to being limited by heat?

I fully agree that as the athlete goes faster and faster or runs for longer, heat becomes an issue as it is in the marathon (for the record, I believe EPO to be less useful for the marathon for a number of reasons). The marathon is so long that even glycogen availability is a problem hence athletes refuel. Nike has shown how better refueling and rehydrating can increase marathon performance above what athletes could currently do (notice no heat problems in running 3 minutes faster).

But please show me ANY evidence that heat is the limiting issue in the 1500m today, as you claimed.

I'm sure if one was running at 3:15 pace maybe heat becomes a problem, but at the paces athletes can run the biggest problem is aerobic output, rising blood pH level and other fatigue mechanisms such as accumulation of calcium around muscle fibres.

I fail to see how training improves the ability of the body to remove heat. I can tell you all about how training improves the body's ability to utilise and take in oxygen. INCLUDING increasing the number of erythrocytes in the blood!

What happened re your "So I think it's best to ignore him." bit? Years of observing loonies on LR has taught me that engaging only encourages them, ignore them and they go away, otherwise it's like arguing with flat earthers, etc.

Forrest Gump for the trees wrote:

JonO. wrote:

I did explain it. Quite implicitly and with numbers which you refuted.

On a warm day in a marathon, the elites don't slow down much but the plodders slow down a lot. Being more energy efficient they do exactly what you say. So where does your argument actually lie?

You did not explain it. You overlooked the rate of fuel burning. Plodders CANNOT burn it that fast. They just don't have the VO2 to do that.

We're not talking about warm days. We're just talking straight up ability.

Yes in many cases. But the amount of people with the necessary genetics is huge. And back to my point of recent years that the top riders in the Tour de France would not break 20 minutes for 5k without training; it's biomechanical efficiency that makes them so good at cycling and so bad at running and vice versa for runners. As a runner and a biker myself I know how much training is needed to make big improvements.

There will come a time a few years from now when Bekele can't break 20 for 5k either, but his oxygen uptake will still be the same, just as mine is pretty much the same as it was 30 years ago.

Big Ass cohort wrote:

JonO. wrote:

People believe in doping? Really, what a profound statement.

What a profoundly superficial reading. Athletes and coaches can numerically measure performance in workouts and competition that provides solid evidence of the effects of pharmacological agents, just as an FDA study would measure the range of motion before and after a proposed drug for arthritis.

No, you're reading is superficial. Mine is reasonable and rational. Athletes and coaches can't numerically measure performance in relation to doping, only in relation to other performances.

What happens is that as they go through a doping protocol and train towards a peak of performance, they improve anyway. You can make the same superficial claim about just about anything you think is a 'performance enhancer'.

Look at the phases of a 47.6 400m race for a woman or more specifically Marita Koch's abilty; what part of her 100, 200 or 400 races are in your opinion, not possible without drugs?

There is no part that is not possible without drugs, it just comes down to the fact that you have been told to believe in doping so many times that you have no other frame of reference.

Well here's what you are missing; superior biomechanical efficiency means that more power is achieved for the same effort.

And a correct (not a mythological) bioenergetic model will show you that the human body doesn't produce superhuman levels of energy output.

Problem is: People love to mythologize.

As I keep telling you, your reading comprehension is poor. I didn't say heat production was THE LIMITITIN FACTOR in a 1500. But you keep arguing the same point.

It is one of the factors. And if you are really bothered enough, you will note that I am saying that better biomechnanical efficiency is what allows us to keep improving. Read my first post on this thread. You keep going off track.

And no, please don't try to inform me of your physiological dogma. I've heard and read it over and over for 40 years. It's dogma. We don't improve aerobic capacity etc as the dogma states. Read the links I gave you carefully like I told you. Take a few months to let it sink in. Just arguing the same points over and over is getting you nowhere but right back where you started. You have to learn this stuff if you want to progress in knowledge of what is going on in the body when we run and race. That's why I used the handle 'it's 2018 not 1998' so many people are stuck in the past and not learning real physiology, Exercise physiologists included.

This didn't age well. July 24, 2018: "there hasn't even been a single sub-13 in this year yet". 5 weeks later: Number of sub-13s in August 31, 2018, Brussels: 8 1 year later: Number of sub-13s in June 2019: 8, including Mo Ahmed of CANADA Updated Best times per year: 2019: 12:52.98 2018: 12:43.02

casual obsever wrote:

...

In addition, there hasn't even been a single sub-13 in this year yet.

Best times per year in this decase (I posted something like that last last week...):

2018: 13:01.09

2017: 12:55.23

2016: 12:59.29

2015: 12:53.98 [Diack's reign ended]

2014: 12:54.83 [the IAAF bribery scandal broke]

2013: 12:51.34

2012: 12:46.81

2011: 12:53.11

(I hope I didn't overlook anything)

Last decade, over 14 years ago, we saw a 12:37, literally unthinkable nowadays, despite the fancy super shoes and Monaco track and alter-G treadmill etc.