Are you asking a question? How do we know it benefits the 2:04 type?
When Canova posted that here, that EPO won't benefit such runners, I asked two exercise physiologists I knew, one being Peter Snell, the other no one would have heard of, what they thought of Canova's claim. Both told me the idea was nonsense. Canova did have a pretty vested interest in convincing people that the Kenyan performances were legitimate.
I don't think so if you put enough synthetic testosterone in human he will die after a while but for natural testo you can't die enough of it. Physiologists don't study the laws of physics. They don't know as deep as Niels Bohr. There is a reason why physiologists couldn't attain to the level of Niels Bohr.
When Canova posted that here, that EPO won't benefit such runners, I asked two exercise physiologists I knew, one being Peter Snell, the other no one would have heard of, what they thought of Canova's claim. Both told me the idea was nonsense. Canova did have a pretty vested interest in convincing people that the Kenyan performances were legitimate.
Canova is one of the biggest stitch-ups that ever frequented these boards.
He played it well though - he was active on the boards relatively early in it's inception and in a time when access to pro training schedules etc was quite limited online, so he garnered a lot of fans with stories of workouts and training.
Of course that built up a platform of legitimacy which he parlayed into that narrative of "They were born at altitude so EPO doesn't work for them anyway, hence why would they take it" - and you are 100% right, considering almost all of his clientele were Kenyan distance runners, he had a massive vested interest in this fantasy that his athletes were clean (which they weren't).
I saw Renato at many meets in my time and always with the same protagonists - The Rosas and Gianni Demadonna. Enough said.
Interesting he mixed with the Rosas and Demadonnas. Maybe then all 3 were clean? Renato is an IAAF lecturer and advisor i dont think he lectures how to dope. Fila was an Italian brand previously. There has to be a value difference between natural and synthetic EPO. Without directed energy attacks, the body makes biocompatible EPO naturally and that is always better than synthetic.
Right now if I wanted to go and "buy" EPO, I can't just walk into a Walgreens or a Rite-Aid and ask for it, ...
I was told a story by an AIU informant of how western athletes training in Kenya would get their hands on EPO, ...
You paint a picture as if the Western athlete who wants EPO would always be foiled by all the systems and roadblocks preventing it.
Where there is a will, there is always a way. Lance Armstrong didn't go to Walgreens. Christian Hesch just went to Mexico and walked back with it. Albuquerque was rumored as a hotbed of EPO abuse, including Eddy Hellebuyck. You can mail order it from China and have it delivered straight to your door, like BBC's Scottish reporter Marc Daly. Or, if you don't have a team doctor, you just need to know somebody who knows somebody who works at a pharmacy or hospital.
Access to EPO is not the barrier you seem to think it is for most athletes in many countries.
Of course that built up a platform of legitimacy which he parlayed into that narrative of "They were born at altitude so EPO doesn't work for them anyway, hence why would they take it" - and you are 100% right, considering almost all of his clientele were Kenyan distance runners, he had a massive vested interest in this fantasy that his athletes were clean (which they weren't).
A question very few ask is, does it work for athletes born and raised at sea-level?
After his success with Sondre Moen, training 8 months at altitude, Canova broadened this statement to say that EPO will not provide additional benefits to any athlete who is highly trained at high altitude.
Right now if I wanted to go and "buy" EPO, I can't just walk into a Walgreens or a Rite-Aid and ask for it, ...
I was told a story by an AIU informant of how western athletes training in Kenya would get their hands on EPO, ...
You paint a picture as if the Western athlete who wants EPO would always be foiled by all the systems and roadblocks preventing it.
Where there is a will, there is always a way. Lance Armstrong didn't go to Walgreens. Christian Hesch just went to Mexico and walked back with it. Albuquerque was rumored as a hotbed of EPO abuse, including Eddy Hellebuyck. You can mail order it from China and have it delivered straight to your door, like BBC's Scottish reporter Marc Daly. Or, if you don't have a team doctor, you just need to know somebody who knows somebody who works at a pharmacy or hospital.
Access to EPO is not the barrier you seem to think it is for most athletes in many countries.
Well said. Currently the main impetus for drug use is Runvana Syndrome, an illness where athletes lose some autonomic, central and peripheral control over time or immediately in a second due to CIA's directed energy attacks. Maybe we should petition CIA to stop all their human rights abuses to stop drug use?
So why would someone choose altitude training if the risks are higher and no competition at altitude is planned? Two main arguments exist:
1.Altitude often offers good training conditions, better weather, and beautiful surroundings, especially in late autumn. New environments can also provide renewed motivation and focus. Camps foster team bonding and provide an environment with meals and fewer distractions, which may enhance training quality. 2.The so-called “altitude effect”: longer stays at altitude can stimulate physiological adaptations due to reduced oxygen saturation. This typically triggers increased production of red blood cells (erythrocytes), leading to higher total hemoglobin mass (Hbmass). Many studies show this improves oxygen transport capacity and endurance performance.
Of course that built up a platform of legitimacy which he parlayed into that narrative of "They were born at altitude so EPO doesn't work for them anyway, hence why would they take it" - and you are 100% right, considering almost all of his clientele were Kenyan distance runners, he had a massive vested interest in this fantasy that his athletes were clean (which they weren't).
A question very few ask is, does it work for athletes born and raised at sea-level?
After his success with Sondre Moen, training 8 months at altitude, Canova broadened this statement to say that EPO will not provide additional benefits to any athlete who is highly trained at high altitude.
You clearly don't mix with the elk of the DoD, Pentagon, NSA, FBI, CIA because you are so indoctrinated to be fixated on the safety of limited public knowledge. What happens if there is infinte non-public or secret knowledge then? You don't have a way to know them.
So why would someone choose altitude training if the risks are higher and no competition at altitude is planned? Two main arguments exist:
1.Altitude often offers good training conditions, better weather, and beautiful surroundings, especially in late autumn. New environments can also provide renewed motivation and focus. Camps foster team bonding and provide an environment with meals and fewer distractions, which may enhance training quality. 2.The so-called “altitude effect”: longer stays at altitude can stimulate physiological adaptations due to reduced oxygen saturation. This typically triggers increased production of red blood cells (erythrocytes), leading to higher total hemoglobin mass (Hbmass). Many studies show this improves oxygen transport capacity and endurance performance.
I don't see anything on air pollution, food pollution and directed HAARP RF infiltration. This website is not good. Beautiful surroundings don't make you run faster. Jack daniels the late said altitude is an illusion hoax, it's actually just the change of scenery placebo. but he is also wrong because top defense scientists at DoD says it's the moment they turn off their directed HAARP transmitters that humans start becoming angels in everything.
You clearly don't mix with the elk of the DoD, Pentagon, NSA, FBI, CIA because you are so indoctrinated to be fixated on the safety of limited public knowledge. What happens if there is infinte non-public or secret knowledge then? You don't have a way to know them.
If I have no way of knowing them, then I cannot be influenced by such non-public or secret knowledge. It effectively doesn't exist. When robust information becomes public and no longer a secret, I will consider it in context, and adapt my ideas as necessary to accomodate it.
Meanwhile, we have decades of performance data for sea-level and altitude based athletes alike, in the public domain.
I don't see anything on air pollution, food pollution and directed HAARP RF infiltration. This website is not good. Beautiful surroundings don't make you run faster. Jack daniels the late said altitude is an illusion hoax, it's actually just the change of scenery placebo. but he is also wrong because top defense scientists at DoD says it's the moment they turn off their directed HAARP transmitters that humans start becoming angels in everything.
Those were your ideas. I supplemented your post with "two main arguments". It may be possible that both altitude and EPO are powerful placebos, especially with those with weaker minds that have been holding them back from realizing their true physical potential.
Do you have any data from these "top defense scientists at DoD" that I could review and consider, in its proper context?
Wasn’t Canova emphatically repeating on this forum that EPO doesn’t even benefit the elite 2:04 marathoner types?
Maybe he's right. Who says it does?
Who says it benefits any athlete, including the 3:04 marathoner, or the 4:04 marathoner, when already highly trained at altitude?
Based on what performance data?
We must have gone round about this before. You're never going to be able to get the kind of performance data you're asking about here when you're dealing with something people are doing secretively. Take a group or a thousand distance runners and give them EPO or some such thing, another thousand getting nothing, and a control group of about a thousand who don'tknow if they're getting EPO or some such thing or not, have them all race, and compare results from each group, and you could get performace data. You probably don't need a thousand per group. But you can't do that sort of study with any numbers so you're left with observation and inference.
A reasonable thing to ask is if PEDs don't work why do some athletes take them knowing their careers will be ended or substantially interrupted if they're caught? Why spend money buying PEDs that do nothing? Why take a drug that can if overused or improperly used put your life and health at risk? There seems to be sufficient "performance data" to convince some athletes to use EPO despite the risks.
That said, I expect there are athletes for whom EPO may not improve performance. If my wife gets a headache she'll take a Tylenol and the headache will be gone in half an hour. I'd probably need a whole bottle of Tyenol to get rid of a headache. People respond differently to drugs. I don't see why EPO should be any different.
We must have gone round about this before. You're never going to be able to get the kind of performance data you're asking about here when you're dealing with something people are doing secretively. Take a group or a thousand distance runners and give them EPO or some such thing, another thousand getting nothing, and a control group of about a thousand who don'tknow if they're getting EPO or some such thing or not, have them all race, and compare results from each group, and you could get performace data. You probably don't need a thousand per group. But you can't do that sort of study with any numbers so you're left with observation and inference.
A reasonable thing to ask is if PEDs don't work why do some athletes take them knowing their careers will be ended or substantially interrupted if they're caught? Why spend money buying PEDs that do nothing? Why take a drug that can if overused or improperly used put your life and health at risk? There seems to be sufficient "performance data" to convince some athletes to use EPO despite the risks.
That said, I expect there are athletes for whom EPO may not improve performance. If my wife gets a headache she'll take a Tylenol and the headache will be gone in half an hour. I'd probably need a whole bottle of Tyenol to get rid of a headache. People respond differently to drugs. I don't see why EPO should be any different.
I heard you shouldn't take Tylenol.
These might seem like reasonable questions, but what are the answers. In the case of this athlete, according to the video "... he just heard of so many athletes that were taking this. Didn't know what it was and just thought let me get my hands on some of it. I'll be able to run a little bit quicker."
This athlete took it on pure faith alone, without any knowledge -- probably thinking like most, "if athletes are willing to take the risk, it must work", or "if WADA bans it, it must work". I wonder if that describes most, if not all, athletes/coaches/agents/pharmacists/doctors/etc.
The kind of performance data I'm looking for is "any". A reasonable question is why make claims that a benefit exists, when there is no data showing any benefit. It's like the emperors clothes. In four decades of studies, no one has studied the marathon -- this includes your two Ex. Phys PhDs.
I thought it was reasonable to look at nearly three decades of marathon performances, especially for sea-level athletes who theoretically should benefit more, surprised to find that, while there were many fast East Africans, there were so few non-Africans and North Africans running faster than Steve Jones and Carlos Lopes, and then by about a minute, to a minute and a half at best. Similar story for the women, compared to Ingrid Kristiansen, at most 3 minutes faster, except for Paula.
We must have gone round about this before. You're never going to be able to get the kind of performance data you're asking about here when you're dealing with something people are doing secretively. Take a group or a thousand distance runners and give them EPO or some such thing, another thousand getting nothing, and a control group of about a thousand who don'tknow if they're getting EPO or some such thing or not, have them all race, and compare results from each group, and you could get performace data. You probably don't need a thousand per group. But you can't do that sort of study with any numbers so you're left with observation and inference.
A reasonable thing to ask is if PEDs don't work why do some athletes take them knowing their careers will be ended or substantially interrupted if they're caught? Why spend money buying PEDs that do nothing? Why take a drug that can if overused or improperly used put your life and health at risk? There seems to be sufficient "performance data" to convince some athletes to use EPO despite the risks.
That said, I expect there are athletes for whom EPO may not improve performance. If my wife gets a headache she'll take a Tylenol and the headache will be gone in half an hour. I'd probably need a whole bottle of Tyenol to get rid of a headache. People respond differently to drugs. I don't see why EPO should be any different.
I heard you shouldn't take Tylenol.
These might seem like reasonable questions, but what are the answers. In the case of this athlete, according to the video "... he just heard of so many athletes that were taking this. Didn't know what it was and just thought let me get my hands on some of it. I'll be able to run a little bit quicker."
This athlete took it on pure faith alone, without any knowledge -- probably thinking like most, "if athletes are willing to take the risk, it must work", or "if WADA bans it, it must work". I wonder if that describes most, if not all, athletes/coaches/agents/pharmacists/doctors/etc.
The kind of performance data I'm looking for is "any". A reasonable question is why make claims that a benefit exists, when there is no data showing any benefit. It's like the emperors clothes. In four decades of studies, no one has studied the marathon -- this includes your two Ex. Phys PhDs.
I thought it was reasonable to look at nearly three decades of marathon performances, especially for sea-level athletes who theoretically should benefit more, surprised to find that, while there were many fast East Africans, there were so few non-Africans and North Africans running faster than Steve Jones and Carlos Lopes, and then by about a minute, to a minute and a half at best. Similar story for the women, compared to Ingrid Kristiansen, at most 3 minutes faster, except for Paula.
How do you propose getting "any" performance data? I just don't see any way to validate or invalidate claims of a benefit performance given by a substance when we usually don't know if performers are using it or not.
Why do we think training at altitude improves distance running performances? Because we know it increases red blood cell count which increases a body's oxygen flow and that should improve endurance. But in the 70s when distance runners were migrating to Boulder for altitude training the best marathon group in the country was training around Boston.
It's the same with EPO. What we know it does seems like it should help endurance athletes. The high number of fast East Africans getting caught using it suggests this to be the case. But we don't know what those athletes would have done were they not using it. For all we know some of them might have been faster without it. I just cannot imagine how one would go about getting these performance data you're talking about. You'd need control group studies.
I don't bother with Tylenol much because it does me no good as a rule and my wife doesn't bother with it much because she rarely gets headaches.
How do you propose getting "any" performance data? I just don't see any way to validate or invalidate claims of a benefit performance given by a substance when we usually don't know if performers are using it or not.
Why do we think training at altitude improves distance running performances? Because we know it increases red blood cell count which increases a body's oxygen flow and that should improve endurance. But in the 70s when distance runners were migrating to Boulder for altitude training the best marathon group in the country was training around Boston.
It's the same with EPO. What we know it does seems like it should help endurance athletes. The high number of fast East Africans getting caught using it suggests this to be the case. But we don't know what those athletes would have done were they not using it. For all we know some of them might have been faster without it. I just cannot imagine how one would go about getting these performance data you're talking about. You'd need control group studies.
I don't bother with Tylenol much because it does me no good as a rule and my wife doesn't bother with it much because she rarely gets headaches.
Then why was it Boston Billy himself that extolled the benefits the altitude athletes had over the sea level athletes?
How do you propose getting "any" performance data? I just don't see any way to validate or invalidate claims of a benefit performance given by a substance when we usually don't know if performers are using it or not.
Why do we think training at altitude improves distance running performances? Because we know it increases red blood cell count which increases a body's oxygen flow and that should improve endurance. But in the 70s when distance runners were migrating to Boulder for altitude training the best marathon group in the country was training around Boston.
It's the same with EPO. What we know it does seems like it should help endurance athletes. The high number of fast East Africans getting caught using it suggests this to be the case. But we don't know what those athletes would have done were they not using it. For all we know some of them might have been faster without it. I just cannot imagine how one would go about getting these performance data you're talking about. You'd need control group studies.
I don't bother with Tylenol much because it does me no good as a rule and my wife doesn't bother with it much because she rarely gets headaches.
Then why was it Boston Billy himself that extolled the benefits the altitude athletes had over the sea level athletes?
I don't know. I suppose it could be because he believed it. But if we're looking for "performance data" what actually happened in races is closer to that than someone's comment.
Just to play devils advocate - I know he might have been talking nonsense about EPO for whatever reason, but does Canova actually have a history of coaching dopers?
Only person whom I can think of off the top of my head is Wilson Kipsang, and his missed tests were years after they had parted ways . Kipsang also seemed to have serious alcohol problems when this occurred.
No it's a fair question but it ultimately an impossible one to answer.
As I said earlier, it's almost impossible to catch athletes in Kenya unless they are on the AIU watchlist which usually means they have active informants watching them, letting testers know when to spring OOC tests on them etc. Case in point Ruth C - she ran 2.09.56 on drugs and wasn't caught building up to the performance or at the Chicago Marathon. It was only after this absurd performance was she being monitored which led to her being caught.
I will always think of Saif Saaeed-Shaheen as his blueprint runner. Of course that is Stephen Cherono before he sold his soul to Qatar, who were on a crusade to be relevant in track and field at all costs. Some of the workouts Renato claimed for him were ABSURD. One I will never forget one he posted was 4x1600m in the morning in 4.02,4.01,4.01 and 3.56 coming back in the afternoon and running 6 x300 in under 36 with 60 seconds rest - something like this. Point was, hard to imagine anything was off the table in Qatar and with no AIU around, out of competition testing was basically a joke especially in certain countries (Jamaica, Spain, Qatar, Kenya, Ethiopia, South Africa are really bad ones that spring immediately to mind).
I don't know what he's doing now, but Renatos hey-day as a coach was well before the AIU came around, and guess what else coincided with no AIU - decades of Kenyan dominance in certain events and at the worst, mass relevance in all distance events that seems like an eternity ago now (also refer to Gressiers comments in Tokyo to back that up).
How do you propose getting "any" performance data? I just don't see any way to validate or invalidate claims of a benefit performance given by a substance when we usually don't know if performers are using it or not.
Why do we think training at altitude improves distance running performances? Because we know it increases red blood cell count which increases a body's oxygen flow and that should improve endurance. But in the 70s when distance runners were migrating to Boulder for altitude training the best marathon group in the country was training around Boston.
It's the same with EPO. What we know it does seems like it should help endurance athletes. The high number of fast East Africans getting caught using it suggests this to be the case. But we don't know what those athletes would have done were they not using it. For all we know some of them might have been faster without it. I just cannot imagine how one would go about getting these performance data you're talking about. You'd need control group studies.
I don't bother with Tylenol much because it does me no good as a rule and my wife doesn't bother with it much because she rarely gets headaches.
I don't see the lack of data or inability to collect data as the main problem.
The problem I see is more fundamental: making a claim that something exists while lacking evidence and observations of its existence, and treating that as a well established and uncontestable fact, rather than baseless hypothesis, speculation, rumor, myth, wives tale, etc. that is widely believed.
I don't necessarily require data from double-blinded controlled group studies. Ethically, we can also look for correlations in real world performances, in populations with known doping, compared to populations with low suspicion, to confirm or suggest that a benefit exists, realizing correlation is not causation, but it is better than what we have to date.
We can certainly ask the same questions about high altitude -- something I recommend, because it is legal, but don't take for granted as providing significant gains -- and we can speculate if the extra red blood cells result in faster marathons, or whether any perceived or alleged improvement is due to a combination of other factors like placebo, better weather, fewer distractions, dedicated training, etc.
Regarding "high number of fast East Africans getting caught", note that leaked IAAF blood data from 2001-2012 showed that suspicious blood data, as a percentage, from Kenyans and Ethiopians was below the world average, and by August 2018, only 16 Kenyans had been caught doping with EPO. Note also that virtually 100% of Kenyan/Ethiopian/East African athletes have been exposed to high altitude since birth -- something that could confound any suggestion that EPO was the reason for their fast performance.
You have a lot more tolerance for wading through these discussions than I do. I do not see that we're making a claim for something existing while lacking evidence or observations of its existence when we're talking about EPO and distance running and while we may not have an established fact it's a real reach to call it baseless speculation and all those other things.
You have a lot more tolerance for wading through these discussions than I do. I do not see that we're making a claim for something existing while lacking evidence or observations of its existence when we're talking about EPO and distance running and while we may not have an established fact it's a real reach to call it baseless speculation and all those other things.
As a former distance runner, I have a lot of endurance, naturally.
What evidence or observation or basis of the existence of a benefit from EPO for the marathon do you see then? There must be some tangible reason that people started saying it in the first place, besides Lance Armstrong and Conconi/Ferrari. I know you can't go back to Peter, but maybe you still have contact with the other Ex Phys PhD and can ask specifically what is the tangible basis for "expert" estimates of "up to 3%", or 3-4 minute benefits (if not more) in the marathon?
Otherwise, despite looking really hard, I do not see the evidence or observations or the bases of any alleged benefit of EPO specifically for the marathon (not to mention my doubts about other shorter distance events we were not talking about). I only see rationalizations like you have given, such as "why would athletes take risks for nothing?" and the speculation that extra RBC delivers extra O2 to the muscles, which should theoretically result in better endurance performances.
The few blood doping studies that exist that include distance running have used time trials ranging from 3K to 10K, race distances with higher intensity than the marathon. I have yet to see one for the marathon. Even then, there are several notable issues with the studies, such as lacking a control group, not controlling the initial state of training, nor the efforts of the time trials -- causing me to doubt the existence of a benefit for the study subjects. The studies also looked at improvement during the short term course of the study, as a substitute for the long term benefit of training and racing with versus without EPO. Such studies don't mimic training and racing enough to be representative.
The rationalization of red blood cells delivering more oxygen to the muscles makes sense theoretically for events near VO2max efforts, where an increased VO2max hypothetically brings more performance. But the marathon is run at lower intensity, and there are other factors that inhibit marathon performance such as increased body temperature and energy management and muscle damage during the race. Similarly, studies that measure "time to exhaustion" on a stationary treadmill or bicycle for 20-30 minutes suggesting improved endurance, do not represent what happens in a 2-hour race.
But even ignoring these issues, I don't see the proof in the pudding, i.e., the evidence suggesting a significant benefit exists, in the historical performances of top sea-level athletes, since the pre-EPO performances of Steve Jones, Carlos Lopes and Ingrid Kristiansen. When I started a thread on that, I received a tangled web of additional speculation that maybe the pre-EPO performances were the product of blood doping, or alternatively, that the top sea-level athletes don't take EPO, only the Africans do, or the real athletes moved to soccer.
I would expect if the myths were all true, we should have seen comparable performance improvements across the board, like we see today with the supershoes. Instead we see a bunch of contradictory scenarios like Russia (high blood doping suspicion) not outperforming Japan (low blood doping suspicion), with the sole exception of Liliya Shobukhova, taking cocktails of drugs, but still running 3 minutes slower than the world record.
Since this thread is about Kenyans getting EPO, I also don't see any evidence of a Kenyan doping problem until around the 2011-2012 timeframe. This includes the unofficial blood data leak dating back to 2001.