Bill Rodgers asks: Should races have 'altitude born and non-altitude born' divisions?

You're talking about twins, identical ones. Of course there are shared genetic components. That doesn't prove that they are or are not good runners because of those shared genetic components. No one has found a gene that makes you a good distance runner, baseball player, truck driver etc. We have theories as to why some people are so much better at various activities than most everyone else is but they're only theories.

"Genetics" has become for us what Divine Intervention or demonic possession were in the Middle Ages; catchall explanations for things we have no other explanation for. I've read in many places that because the US population is so much bigger than Kenya's or Ethiopia's we have millions of people with the same genes as Kenyans and Ethiopians do. But we don't get the same running performances.

Rojo, there are factors that affect performance that aren't genetics. Talk to one of your athletes that have taken a biochem class. Being at altitude means there is less oxygen, training there makes the chemical bpg bind more to the oxygen, to transmit a higher percent of the oxygen to the tissue. The body gets used to this and when you go to race at sea level, there is more oxygen available, and the body still transmits the higher percent of oxygen to the tissues, getting more oxygen to your muscles and allowing you to run faster. So the effects come from LIVING at a high altitude, not genetics. That means that anybody that trains there for an extended period of time can reap these results. if the advantage is attainable for anyone, then why separate the racers into groups?

I find it rich that Rodgers is bringing up this issue when he also benefitted from circumstance. If the guy was running today, he wouldn't have made a dent, wouldn't have won a single major.

Pluser of posts wrote:

Skuj wrote:

I know I will get crucified for saying this, but this is one of the dumbest threads ever, and if Bill Rogers actually stated all this, then......I can't say it.

Born at altitude or non altitude??? What altitude is the cutoff?

It's not "genetics" either, Rojo, but we will beat that on ad nauseum.

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Studies with Ethiopians living at altitude have already identified those altitude adaptation genes. Do some reading, coach...[/quote]

Cam you provide the link so I can do the reading showing Ethiopians at altitude having different genes to Ethiopians not born at altitude

rojo wrote:

Skuj wrote:

It's not "genetics" either, Rojo, but we will beat that on ad nauseum.

Yeah genes have nothing to do with it. Then why isn't there a single woman the NFL?

Why does Ethiopia suck at the 100 meters? Jamaica at the 10,000 meters?

What does Kenya suck at soccer?

Ima keep saying it until it just dawns on people that it's true. HUNGRY. Most Kenyans and Ethiopians grow up hungry and develop into natural ectomorphs as adults. They are well adapted to using minimal energy.

Westerners by comparison grow up eating well, then start starving themselves into an unnaturally ectomorphic state to become distance runners. Usually they start during their teenage growth phase, when they are tall and rangy, then artificially prolong that phase so that they never fully mature. The difference in skeletal structure is obvious. Big skeletons vs little skeletons in a battle of energy efficiency.

This involves epigenetics, but genetics is irrelevant. Westerners would do just as well if they had the same lifelong caloric restriction, but that will never happen.

Cam you provide the link so I can do the reading showing Ethiopians at altitude having different genes to Ethiopians not born at altitude

Genetics and work ethic are always going to trump environmental factors, and of course of your socio-economic status is such that it prevents travel to races, then it doesn't matter how fast you are.I pasted in links to the articles cited by Epstein. You can probably get enough of a flavor by reading the abstract for free rather than paying to download the full article. The first one is titled, "Effects of high altitude exposure on the lungs of young rats," and states that "After 20–21 days, exposed animals had significantly greater lung volumes and alveolar surface areas than controls." This was at the equivalent of 4200m, which is really high altitude. The second one is entitled, "Enhanced alveolar growth and remodeling in Guinea pigs raised at high altitude," summarizes their findings by saying that "In animals raised at HA for 1 month, lung volume, alveolar surface area and alveolar-capillary blood volume (V(c)) were elevated above LA control values." There was additional adaptation over a 3-6 month time period.So I think there is some merit to what Epstein wrote, but it has to be less important than genetics and would fall under a class of secondary factors that may impact peak performance.http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/0034568771900685http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15848128

D1 Bro wrote:

Rojo, there are factors that affect performance that aren't genetics. Talk to one of your athletes that have taken a biochem class. Being at altitude means there is less oxygen, training there makes the chemical bpg bind more to the oxygen, to transmit a higher percent of the oxygen to the tissue. The body gets used to this and when you go to race at sea level, there is more oxygen available, and the body still transmits the higher percent of oxygen to the tissues, getting more oxygen to your muscles and allowing you to run faster. So the effects come from LIVING at a high altitude, not genetics. That means that anybody that trains there for an extended period of time can reap these results. if the advantage is attainable for anyone, then why separate the racers into groups?

ukathleticscoach wrote:

Studies with Ethiopians living at altitude have already identified those altitude adaptation genes. Do some reading, coach...

Cam you provide the link so I can do the reading showing Ethiopians at altitude having different genes to Ethiopians not born at altitude[/quote]

There is one link below but you can also use GOOGLE to locate many more. I don't think you have tried this though.

Running Formula reader wrote:

enquiring minds wrote:

What altitudes were these guys' places of birth?

Matsumura was born in Osaka (average elevation 24m).

Maeda was born in this small coast town in Western Japan (average elevation 56m).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shiroishi,_Saga

Szost was born in this city. Elevation 590m.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Krynica-Zdr%C3%B3j

Thanks for spending the time looking all that up. So in other words, none of them, least of all the fastest, was born at sea level.

Jeff Wigand wrote:

once upon a time in America wrote:

I'm a little surprised that no one has mentioned Tony Sandoval, who was born and raised in the New Mexico mountains. He was probably the most talented US marathoner ever.

How could he be more talented than Ryan Hall?

Running 2:14 off 35 miles/week is one clue.

It certainly suggests it. It would seem a staggering coincidence that multiple pairs of people with identical DNA are both remarkable at the same physical niche and the root cause have nothing to do with their identical DNA.

There are certain physical characteristics that make someone predisposed to be good at distance running: ratio of FT to ST muscle fibers, innate number and size of mitochondria, innate hemoglobin and myoglobin levels, the elasticity of their cardiovascular system, etc. Their limits are defined by their DNA.

Find that, please, because I think it's absolutely wrong. Nowhere on Earth can compete with Africa for genetic variety. You have to remember, that a fraction of the original human population left Africa and from there, went on to populate Europe, Asia, the Pacific and the Americas.

And we're not talking about "Kenyans and Ethiopians." We're talking about a handful of tribes which produce the vast majority of successful runners in the world. These genetic markers that make people more adept to running won't be out in full force for every Kalenjin or Tigray, but they are there in a far greater frequency than you can find in any populace outside of Africa.

it'scalledscience wrote:

Cam you provide the link so I can do the reading showing Ethiopians at altitude having different genes to Ethiopians not born at altitude

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3516565/

Thank,s that's interesting but there is nothing there which identifies a difference in genetics or DNA between the groups. There is a lot of talk of phenotypes, strong signals in genes (what does that even mean?) and haemoglibin variation but nothing listing an actual gentic difference. The only way to prove it would be to take an altitude born and supposed bred for 5k years native then bring them up at lower altitude and test their blood alue then do the reverse with a none altitude native. I consider the first part of this test to have been done in practical terms because there must be tens of thousands of high altitude people who have moved away or are the same genetically but below or just the high altitude level - but they do not become elite athletes

People claim that Mo Farah is gentically the same as people of those areas despite the fact he is obviously Somalian and if he is advantaged where are all the other elite athletes like him living in Somalia or around the world. He has caught up with the altitude born athlete by spending extensive time there. Paula Radcliffe is an even better example

The tribes who lived in these areas were semi nomadic and there is no evidence that the exact same families in a tribe have lived there for several thousands of years. Just because people have lived there for thousands of years does noit prove thay never left or that different group have come and gone

I just saw an interesting documentary on why the Kenyans are such good runners (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PTQVHZU4WzE). It is a bit long but I feel very informative.

If you do not have time to watch it, here is my summary: The main goal was to find out why the Kenyans are so much better that the rest of the world, and the researchers did this through comparing many aspects of the Kenyans against those of a similar group of Danish subjects. This included activity as children, diet, born/living at altitude as well as physiological attributes such as ratio of slow to fast twitch fibers, leg length, height, etc. They studied both the elite and untrained from the two countries. Nothing seemed to explain why the Kenyans had such an advantage, until...

SPOILER ALERT: The only attribute that had a strong correlation to running fast was volume, and therefore weight, of the lower limbs. If your calves and feet are smaller, you will be much more efficient, and therefore faster, than someone with exactly the same aerobic capacity but with heavier legs. As it turns out, the Kenyans and Ethiopians have a high concentration of this body type, but they do not have a monopoly. So, theoretically, anyone from any nationality could achieve the same results given the same "genetics". You cannot train your calves thinner, you have to be born with it otherwise the best you can be is a very fast donkey but never a racehorse (to paraphrase a quote from the end of the documentary).

Of course even if someone has the right physiology, he also needs the right desire and the right atmosphere to promote the quest for superiority. And the Kenyans have a lot of that.

One of the best images of the documentary was the Danish runner who moistened his heart rate strap by rubbing it in the snow and putting it on his chest.

It's amazing the denial a person can summon when they don't want to believe something.

Keep looking for ALL the studies you can find. Read them. Try to understand them before you dismiss them.

So why aren't Tibetans good runners (the article talks about the genetic variation in Tibetans)? Answer: Because you have to look at a lot of other factors as well.

Genetics matter. All great runners are genetic freaks. There are group-wide genetic differences.

But . . .

It is very difficult to explain athletic performance based on group-wide genetic differences. The first problem is that there are many genetic traits that lead to distance running success (see last chapter of David Epstein's book). The second problem is that, as this article shows, you have to be very precise about the group you are talking about--this article is about particular members of a particular ethnic group in Ethiopia. So you can't talk about "Africans" or even "Ethiopians." You have to be very particular. Unfortunately, most people are not that particular. The third problem is that there are a lot of other factors that matter much more than genetics. The highlander Ethiopians are generally poor farmers. That is a much simple explanation of their genetic success than anything else.

Also, can people please stop citing the Danish/Kenyan article. It has been thoroughly discredited.

The business of Africa's great genetic diversity always comes up in these discussions. But we're not talking about all of Africa and its genes here. We're talking about the gene pools of two countries and really about only a fraction of the gene pool in those two countries. So it does make sense that a country of over 300 million people would have as many if not more people with those genetic variations as those small sub groups do. There is a book called "The Gene Myth." I know that's one of the places I read that.The authors spend a chapter on Kenyan runners.

It's important here to distinguish between saying that people can inherit genes which give them physical characteristics that predispose them to success at certain kinds of activities and saying that some people have genes which make them successful at those activities. E.g., if a guy has genes that have him standing five feet tall and weighing 90 pounds as a full grown adult he's been given physical characteristics which greatly increase his chances of being a successful jockey while another guy with genes that make him two feet taller and 150 pounds heavier has characteristics that greatly increase his chances of being a successful basketball player. Neither has much of a chance of being good at what the other is good at but those characteristics alone don't mean that either one actually will be good at horse riding or basketball.

Kenyans are soccer mad but there's more money to be made running. Ask a Kenyan about what they think of Wayne Rooney.

Gary just so you know and I imagine you already do you are a bit of douche bag. Why did you put "the reason" in quotes. Cant you read? I never said any of it was "the reason" but it is a multiple factored issue and you simply cannot randomly dismiss the other factors that come into play. How can the fact that there is a pool of thousands of young boys and girls who by the age of 16 have already logged upwards of 5 to 10 thousand miles not be included in the discussion. At altitude or not - it still warrants consideration.