"The dopers have ruined training theory"

I don't understand if the title of this thread is "The doper ruined TRAINING THEORY" or "the dopers ruined TRAINING theory"

Cubism Cubed wrote:

I don't understand if the title of this thread is "The doper ruined TRAINING THEORY" or "the dopers ruined TRAINING theory"

The dopers have ruined the theory of training

Who is Roberto?Your summary of the 1993 Conconi study mentions measured affects of EPO on several blood parameters. Did Conconi translate, correlate, or otherwise quantify these measured blood changes to improved performance? Did increased hematocrit and VO2max actually result in better performances? Renato's anecdotes mention subjects in the study whose blood parameters presumably improved, yet this did not translate into better performances. This data must be accounted for in any final conclusion.The Italian subjects in Conconi's study:Did any run less than 2:10 in the marathon?Less than 1:01 in the half?Less than 27:30 in the 10K?Less than 13:10 in the 5K?Seems like Antibo is the best candidate for "top" athlete, but barely qualifies as a second-tier "WEAK" athlete today.The question remains unaddressed by any study: "if these "elite" athletes have the right mentality, and have received the right volume and intensity of training, would EPO help further?" Measuring hematocrit and VO2max, and time to exhaustion at 80% of VO2max in a short timeframe doesn't address that question. Measuring the times of athletes that run 9:00 and 10:00 for 3K doesn't answer that question. Training load is a major variable which hasn't been controlled in any study.I mention this question because this is the main conclusion people like "coach..." draw: e.g. EPO leads to 20 second improvements for 10K...You mention Cathal Lombard. You attribute a 3:00 improvement to EPO. The fact that he knew he took EPO changed his mentality, and his training load. Assuming "coach..." is correct, changing mentality and training load, without EPO, should at least be able to account for 2:40 of that improvement.

Neil wrote:

Roberto, your original argument was that there is no scientific data on EPO administration in elite athletes. I (and Insider42195) simply wanted to point out that Conconi et al. carried out extensive research on this subject. Most of this data was unpublished (for obvious reasons) but we can clearly see a statistically significant effect in the data that was published.

I think he was referring to Renato and confused him with Roberto.

Now Renato claims that EPO in cycling works because it helps to recover during big tours (Giro, Tour, Vuelta) but the list Conconi provided is made also by top guys who won classics or 1-day races.

Gianni Bugno won 2 WC in 1991 and 1992 (just one year before the study was presented!); I suppose the effort in this kind of races is similar to a marathon.

Maurizio Fondriest in 1988 won unexpectedly the WC after having been 2nd at the Milano-Sanremo out of the blue. He later won Milano-Sanremo, Flèche Walonne and was 4th in Atlanta in the TT.

The same holds true for Rolf Sorensen who was 2nd in Atlanta and won Liege-Bastogne-Liege and Flanders. Search for Stephen Roche if you want someone able to win both tours and classics.

Going to nordic skii, whose effort is simalr to marathon Maurizio De Zolt was a 10-20th guy at the beginning of his career, then (coincidence) he started winning in 1985 exactly when Conconi finalized his methodologies. The same holds true for Manuela di Centa who started as a 10-15th athlete and then started winning in late 80s culminating with the golds in Lillehammer.

It doesn't make any sense to compare a guy who ran in the late 80s early 90s like Antibo to guys today; he was one of the top 5000-10000 guys in the world.

Alberto Cova who was one of the first to admit using transfusions was surely a top guy and was able to beat other dopers. For instance, take Athens EC in 1982 were he won over DDR Schildhauer and FIN Vainio (later disqualified). You can claim it was a coincidence, as Renato claims, but it's really hard to believe.

By the way, I'm not saying that Renato's athletes or top runners in Kenya are dopers. To be a good doper you need a well functioning organization Armstrong-style (or BALCO, Fuentes, Conconi, DRR etc...) behind you and I seriously doubt there is something like that in Kenya today, given the state of the Country. For instance I'm less confident regarding Salazar group today or Mammoth Lakes group some years ago.

But I'm 99% sure EPO and doping in general WOULD improve performances in marathon and has been used by someone (e.g. Maroccans).

Here you go: Of course it works. You'd have to be retarded to think it didn't. Increasing time to exhaustion sounds like a good plan to me.

http://www.runnersworld.com/general-interest/how-does-epo-work

Yes and no, in the sense that the study you are linking isn’t done on professional athletes, and Renato was pointing out this fact.

But on the other hand, the work of Conconi on top athletes seems to show something important in these regards.

First of all , thanks to Renato Canova to share his knowledge in training here on the forum as always.

His training theory is what we believe makes a runner improve.Hard work,moderate work, recovery, everything mixed perfectly in a delicate wonderful balance that makes weeks after weeks , months after months, year after year builds the condition of an athlet to his maximum potential.

Doping has nothing to do with this and I feel sorry when everytime a great coach like Renato Canova should explain this.

Anyway I dont think at all that doping has ruined training

theory.

Training theory is and will always be with all possible evolutions in the future, what is need to build the condition

of an athlet.

With the application of training theory and no doping you can have an olympic champion.

With doping and no training theory and no hard work you dont go anywhere.

With training theory + doping yes maybe a world record and an olympic champion but also a cheater.

So training theory is always there and the most important thing to build an athlet .

No currently elite athlete would subject himself to an EPO or doping study in which the results would be made public. This would void all of their contracts, results, and credibility. They can get the same result (doping for performance) from a BALCO type entity or coach or manager or doctor who guarantees not to release their name.

Sure, the effect of doping decreases as you get higher on the athletic food chain. But that does not mean that doping is ineffective.

At the level of a World/Olympic Finalist, the difference between 1st and 8th place is usually a small single digit percentage. Doping very likely can make that difference. Ex, a 27:00 vs a 27:30 = 1.8%.

It does not work in elites? Ridiculous. Others have mentioned names of Olympic medalists who were caught. Dopers are like cockroaches. When you turn on the light, you'll see a few scurrying away, but there are hundreds that you don't see (ie. catch with testing).

Marathon times are a clear indicator that doping is rampant. When Khalid Khannouchi won London in 2002 2:05:38, it was a WR. Now he is #74 on the all time list. He was nearly unbeatable then and now he'd barely make a living, just over 10 years later. Human performance does not work like that. If it seems unnatural, it probably is.

Yes! You beat me to it.

Jones sold a lot of machines, though.

I think you didn't understand what Renato said about cycling and recovery.What I understood:- Given two athletes the same, and doping one, the main difference from doping is in reducing recovery time- This allows increasing frequency of intense sessions (e.g. from 2-3x to 4-5x a week)- Renato asks: are we sure this increase in frequency helps in (running) endurance events?- Athletics doesn't have competitions where recovery (during the race) is a fundamental factor (determining who wins the race). That is, the grand tours doesn't reward the strongest and the fastest, but the one who is strongest and fastest, on average, for three weeks. In grand tours, the ability to recover quickly during the event helps determine the winner. This is not true for the 10K or the marathon.It's true that cycling has one day championships, but that doesn't contradict that athletics doesn't have any multi-day races. (A better contradiction would be ultra-marathons. "Ultras" do have multi day events where recovery during the event might factor).We shouldn't compare cycling and cross-country skiing to running, especially from a recovery point of view. Marathons take months to recover. I never heard the same requirement for a one day cycling championship, or cross-country skiing.With respect to the Conconi study, did he control for training, and did he measure performance improvements? Seems like he only measured blood levels. I didn't see the study, therefore I asked questions from those who did. I'm trying to get how someone like "coach..." says EPO is worth 20 seconds for a 27:00 10K runner.I agree that it makes little sense to compare athletes from the 90's, to the athletes of today. While it is understandable to call both "elite" or "top", we cannot pretend these athletes are comparable, at least from a training point of view. Training for endurance has changed greatly from 1990 to 2000, and again from 2000 to 2010. The Italians of 1990 did not train like the Kenyans and Ethiopians do today.

This is a big BS. Shaheen won 28 following competitions of steeple from 2002 till 2006 without never losing, bettered the WR, had 8 of the best 10 performances all time, and NEVER got some supplement, also legal.

Other things :

I continue to read the example of Chatal Lombard. It's true that he improved with EPO, but nobody can really believe that an athlete, using professional approach before and after EPO, can mobe from 30' till 27'30".

I repeat again : everybody speaks about the EPO effects, nobody speaks about the training-effects (may be because is very much more difficult).

Without going in some particular (I don't know anything about Lombard), I can tranquilly say he doubled his training after getting EPO, and THAT was the reason of his improvement.

Somebody can say that EPO was the reason because he doubled his training. And I can confirm : EPO was the PSYCHOLOGICAL reason because he accepted to double his training, BUT THE FACT IS THAT BEFORE EPO HE NEVER TRIED, THINKING IT WAS NOT POSSIBLE TO TRAIN SO HARD.

For comparing the improvements of medium athletes with EPO with the improvement of top athletes clean (as all the WR holder in long distances), you need to compare their training, so can finally appreciate the enormous differences there are in quantity and intensity.

Somebody of you, EPO addicted, really knows which physiological changes a top, well structured training can provoke ?

If you don't know, please don't speak about doping only, because you don't have any real knowledge about methodology and its effects.

Finally, speaking about cyclism : no, cyclism has nothing to do with Marathon. For winning a "classic" lasting one day only, cyclists need to have very high LACTIC ability.

During a race lasting 5-7 hours, there are continuous change of speed, and of situation (protected inside the Group going at 100 HR, escaping alone going at 180 with 15 mml of lactate, then rcovering again inside the Group, then fighting aginst wind, then launching some attack at 60 km of speed with sudde 15 mml again... and so and so), whilw in the Marathon the best performances come from some even pace, when runners have all their competition near the level of Threshold, never going in lactic area).

Many continue to compare these two sports, that have totally different requirements.

Endurance (like Strength) is not something with one target only, and different types of endurance require different physiological intervention and different physiological adaptations.

But, of course, it's very much more simple to speak, ALWAYS, of doping....

Sorry Renato, but I can’t agree on this. While it’s true that there are some athletes that are so mentally strong to be able to train at a certain level (e.g. Stephen Cherono who was so tough to live in a shelter during training instead of his villa), this isn’t true for everybody and weak characters could have high improvements from EPO. Of course EPO is mainly about the training part and not about racing where people are generally caught using stimulants or steroids (e.g. Landis in TdF 2006).

Finally, speaking about cyclism : no, cyclism has nothing to do with Marathon. For winning a "classic" lasting one day only, cyclists need to have very high LACTIC ability.

During a race lasting 5-7 hours, there are continuous change of speed, and of situation (protected inside the Group going at 100 HR, escaping alone going at 180 with 15 mml of lactate, then rcovering again inside the Group, then fighting aginst wind, then launching some attack at 60 km of speed with sudde 15 mml again... and so and so), whilw in the Marathon the best performances come from some even pace, when runners have all their competition near the level of Threshold, never going in lactic area).

Sorry Renato, I generally agree with 99% of what you say but not about this. You are exactly how cycling was in the 80s. Since the 90s and the widespread of EPO it isn’t anymore 4hrs at 100BPM then 1hr with 1minute at 180BPM and 5minutes at 150BPM. Here you can see for instance Moreno Moser during Frankfurt where he had to do two segments of 1h04' and 44’ at more than 170 BPM which is an effort similar to a marathon:

1-

2-http://intern.srm.de/images/stories/moserfilefour.gif

Here Thomson @Flanders more than 3hrs over 160bpm:

Chris Sorensen, basically all the last 3hrs (except short descents) steadily over 160bpm:

There are many other cycling segments online and you can see they generally spend 1hr30-2hr at 1.5-2.0 mmol which is an effort not so distant to marathon.

But cyclists, if want to win something, needs in any case the ability to go, for more long time, at high level of lactate, and this is something we don't need for Marathon runners.

Of course if we speak about a "fuga" (when some athletes escape in a small Group, and they have to push hard for many minutes) that part of race is similar as a Marathon effort. But it's a fact that in cyclism there is an alternance of efforts, also at even speed, depending on many other factors (for example, at the same speed, when you go to lead the Group you can go at 180/190 HR, and after you stay for 4'/5' in the Group at the same speed, and you can lower your HR at 150).

During a congress about high altitude training, I was one of the speakers, another was the Italian Head Coach of our Olympic cyclists, Antonio Fusi, who won several medals with the competition of 100 km (tempo) for teams (4 cyclists per team).

He prepared in altitude the "chronomen" in Livigno (1800m), because the perfection in changing the positions was one of the secrets of a good performance. The cyslists, at a speed faster than 50 km/h, had to stay in front for 30", and after had to learn how to go at the end of the team in right way. This means everybody had 30" of max effort in front, and 1'30" at the same speed, behind another cyclist.

He showed the HR of these cyclists, who in 1'30" at the same speed were able to reduce their HR from 190 to 165/170, only for the big difference they had to face about the resistance of the air.

With the increase of the speed, we have to change completely every parameter, and these two sports are not really comparable.

At least, another important factor is that, in cyclism, EPO was only the base for the real doping : GH and other steroids, used for increasing strength and specific resistance.

If you are a runner, for increasing your speed you need to enhance the ability to transport oxygen, but especially the ability to extract it from the atmosphere. You don't need to increase your muscle strength, since everybody has a big margin between his max speed and the speed of the race (in the case of Marathon, for athletes running at 3' per km = 18" every 100m, we can easily suppose they can run 100m in 12", that is 150% of the speed of the race. When we have in cyclism an average of 45 km of speed for a race lasting 5 hours, which means 1'20" per km = 8" every 100m, if we want to apply the same ratio, we need to suppose all these athletes can be able to go at their max speed using 5"33, that is the speed of the best sprinters on track, so obviously not possible), while in cyclism the most important factor of improvement is to be able to use one tooth more, at the same frequency. This means the main doping is for increasing STRENGTH, maintaining the same endurance.

About the first part of your post, I can agree with you that, for athletes not so mentally strong, EPO can give a different self confidence pushing them to do in training what never they tried to do before. But this is exactly the reason because ALL the WR holder in long distances are clean : because nobody IF NOT MENTAL STRONG can become a WR holder, or an Olympic Champion, or a winner of a Major, since the mental strength is the most important quality for this type of event.

I’m still not totally convinced. For instance, if you want to win a mountain stage you need to be able to spend about 1hr at threshold power wattage, and in the EPO era there were many cases of cyclists attacking at the beginning of the climb while today it’s more common to see attacks in the last 3-4kms. Not to talk about “epic” stages by the dopers Chiappucci at Sestriere 1992 and Landis at Morzine 2006.

Quite interesting regarding 100k team TT and pretty impressive effort: basically 2hrs around threshold with peaks over threshold, like a marathon run as a fartlek.

Anyway, what about individual TT with about 1hr at threshold effort? Not a marathon but again very similar to half marathon or 10k.

Regarding the use of GH and steroids it is widespread among sprinters and chronomen (e.g. Tony Martin, André Greipel etc..) which clearly show hypertrophy (http://lowcadence.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/andre.jpg) on the legs but I doubt regarding climbers which really can’t add weight and end up like this guy who was the best climber at the tour after having done blood treatments in Mexico :

Not sure about this analogy. In the end you shouldn’t consider speed exactly because of the fact that the limiting factor becomes air resistance which grows with a power of 2 as speed increases; so the focus must be on power expressed.

For instance during the pavé stage in Arenberg Nibali managed to have an average wattage of 240W with the last two hours at 320W and he is able of peaks over 600W, so he is able to express 200% of his threshold wattage which is in line with the example of yours for running.

Renato Canova wrote:

I continue to read the example of Chatal Lombard. It's true that he improved with EPO, but nobody can really believe that an athlete, using professional approach before and after EPO, can mobe from 30' till 27'30".

Without going in some particular (I don't know anything about Lombard), I can tranquilly say he doubled his training after getting EPO, and THAT was the reason of his improvement.

Somebody can say that EPO was the reason because he doubled his training. And I can confirm : EPO was the PSYCHOLOGICAL reason because he accepted to double his training, BUT THE FACT IS THAT BEFORE EPO HE NEVER TRIED, THINKING IT WAS NOT POSSIBLE TO TRAIN SO HARD.

You will continue to read about Lombard because he was an interesting case. He was already training very hard for so many years running 100 miles per week with stays at altitude in Kenya. Then finally in his late 20s he made a big break through and yes he improved by almost 3 minutes over 10k in a little over 18 months despite this being difficult for you to accept.

Although you say "tranquilly" that he doubled his training with EPO, in fact the opposite is true:

From the article:

"2003 - Lombard's breakthrough year, which he attributed it to joining up with Joe Doonan, the experienced former coach of Catherina McKiernan and completely changing his training regime. Over the season he lowered his 5000m best by over a minute - from 14:23 minutes to 13.19 - and won the national 5000m title. Credited this to halving his heavy mileage (100 miles a week) in favour of more speed work, bounding and stretching."

As you can see, he in fact reduced his training volume and increased its intensity with sprint work and drills having also spent some time training at Font Roumeu with Gabriella Szabo (the athlete who was stopped by French border police with her car chock-full of EPO:

) .

There is no simple easy answer to this EPO debate. You can claim that athletes will not improve much through taking EPO but as with one type of training, different athletes will likely respond differently to EPO. In some cases the performance improvement could be quite marked whereas in other cases maybe not so much.

People on here hate Lagat's training because it just destroys their "more mileage all the time" mantra.

They can't accept that some athletes are supremely talented and "just doing more" is a colossal waste of time and effort.

I read the HS prs vs Mileage thread and I was amazed. Kids running 70mpw and running 16 min or slower 5ks. What a waste of time.

Wouldn't you feel like a complete sucker if you were running 70 or 80 mile weeks and some joker was running 30 and totally kicking your @ss?

ataglance wrote:

People on here hate Lagat's training because it just destroys their "more mileage all the time" mantra.

They can't accept that some athletes are supremely talented and "just doing more" is a colossal waste of time and effort.

I read the HS prs vs Mileage thread and I was amazed. Kids running 70mpw and running 16 min or slower 5ks. What a waste of time.

Wouldn't you feel like a complete sucker if you were running 70 or 80 mile weeks and some joker was running 30 and totally kicking your @ss?

Lagat can run low mileage because he ran a lot in the past and he constructed a huge aerobic base when young which, contrary to what Lydiard thought, doesn’t need to be rebuilt every year. Of course, IMHO, also EPO plays a role here.

Thinking that the same recipe works with young athletes is foolish and it’s a sure way to have fast kids which have already stopped running by 25. Sorry but high mileage is still needed, and could be avoided only when the athlete is really mature.

I don't know anything about Lombard, I repeat. But what you write is not correct : following what it's written in the article (I NEVER consider a proof what is written in some article, when a journalist tries to explain the training of some athlete, since I saw too many stupidities about training of Champions, and in one article it's not possible to explain the FULL PLAN, lasting several years and several months during every year, with different elements and different periods : it's like to try to explain in a short article the theory of relativity to people not knowing physics and matematics), the journalist speaks about a reduction of the volume (which incidentally was not so high : 100 miles per week are the mileage of a normal athlete, but are also the mileage of a top champion when there is in this mileage 40-50% of specific intensity, something clearly Lombard didn't use), but at the same time the increase of every type of speed.

Because it's absolutely not possible that EPO can give one minute of advantage in 5000m, if the athlete has already good training, the answer is only one : the previous training of Lombard was at the lebvel of some amateur, without any idea of specific preparation.

Remember that there is a big difference between TRAINING and RUNNING. Lombard never trained, only ran, of sure without any methodological clue.