Cam Levins Addresses Doping Allegations, Says He Takes Asthma Medication for Adult Onset Asthma

Montesquieu wrote:

Runner "A" runs 27:27.96 in 2012, finishing in 55.7, while in college. That same year he runs 13:18.29. He joins some running group. Now, three years later he has run 20 seconds faster in the former (and is currently 151st all time), and 3 seconds faster in the latter. He still does not hold the Canadian record in the 5000. He states he now has asthma and takes a med for it. "He's a lying SOB." "He's clearly doping." "He's faking it." "It's the devil Salazar at work." Runner "B" runs 3:38.33 in 2009; 3:38.53 in 2010; 3:38.11 in 2011; nothing in 2012; 3:36.34 in 2013; 3:38.10 in 2014; and now 3:32.97. " . . ." " . . . " Hilarious, really. But in terms of understanding such phenomena as the Salem Witch Trials, priceless. And for whatever it's worth, Jim Ryun had a terrible case of exercise induced asthma. See the link below.

http://pennstatehershey.adam.com/content.aspx?productId=28&pid=28&gid=000124

Hi, Dr. Diski! Your repeated witch hunt reference gave you away.

You're really going to compare very well-founded and numerous allegations about Salazar to the Salem Witch Trials? I give you credit though, it's much more creative than the usual comparison to a certain 20th-century German regime.

Sorry, above should have said, I should have been running 35.

DontFeedTheTroll wrote:

Absolutely. That's why I hate people who take water during marathons. Hey, if you can't run it with assistance then just don't do it. Ibuprofen? More like "Ibu-amateur-fen". Perhaps you should just back off if your widdle muscles can't handle the pain. Oh, and what is it with those fancy running shoes? Need the support? Wimp. Run barefoot or just get out of the way and let some folks with a little chest hair take over.

In a strange way you are right. This seems to be the ethos of the original Olympic games in ancient Greece - competing with no clothes or shoes etc. I think that if T and F went in this direction it would become much more entertaining in a Japanese TV game-show type of way.

Montesquieu wrote:

Runner "A" runs 27:27.96 in 2012, finishing in 55.7, while in college. That same year he runs 13:18.29. He joins some running group. Now, three years later he has run 20 seconds faster in the former (and is currently 151st all time), and 3 seconds faster in the latter. He still does not hold the Canadian record in the 5000. He states he now has asthma and takes a med for it. "He's a lying SOB." "He's clearly doping." "He's faking it." "It's the devil Salazar at work." Runner "B" runs 3:38.33 in 2009; 3:38.53 in 2010; 3:38.11 in 2011; nothing in 2012; 3:36.34 in 2013; 3:38.10 in 2014; and now 3:32.97. " . . ." " . . . " Hilarious, really. But in terms of understanding such phenomena as the Salem Witch Trials, priceless. And for whatever it's worth, Jim Ryun had a terrible case of exercise induced asthma. See the link below.

http://pennstatehershey.adam.com/content.aspx?productId=28&pid=28&gid=000124

Not to mention Jagers immense improvement in the 15. Gotta be asthma meds, or testoboost.

What about golden boy A. Wheating, from 2008 - 2010 goes from 3:38 to 3:30. Gotta be peds.

And the difference between water, running shoes, Ibuprofen and an inhaler for asthma is that for the inhaler you need a...(hint: it rhymes with subscription)

HRE wrote:

And the difference between water, running shoes, Ibuprofen and an inhaler for asthma is that for the inhaler you need a...(hint: it rhymes with subscription)

There are over the counter inhalers for asthma...and you were saying???

Actually not wrote:

[quote]HRE wrote:

And the difference between water, running shoes, Ibuprofen and an inhaler for asthma is that for the inhaler you need a...(hint: it rhymes with subscription)[/quote

There are over the counter inhalers for asthma...and you were saying???

From what I've read here we're not discussing over the counter inhalers but yes, I know such things exist.

This is wild speculation on my part but I doubt the use of asthma medication by elite runners has anything to do with improving performance through increased lung capacity. (There is little to no link between lung capacity and running performance)

http://www.runnersworld.com/race-training/owners-manual-i-cant-catch-my-breath

More cynically, I would imagine the TUE for steroid inhalers(prednisone/cortisone) or other treatment is about providing an approved cover for the use of old school cortisone injections and possibly other steroids in case a drug test comes back positive.

On a side note, I am going to call BS on Levins' claim that he ran 190 miles a week post college. That would be 30 miles a day Mon thru Sat. and 10 miles on Sunday. GMAFB. Even if you could do it for one week there is just no way anyone maintains that volume for even a 12 week training cycle.

I've read the stories about Gerry Lindgren's training and his 200 mile weeks and midnight runs. Still, Levins just seemed full of it when talking about his training and asthma coming on due to running at night in Utah. The desert Southwest is where many people with asthma go to get away from pollen/ urban pollution and other asthma inducing factors.

That whole interview just reeked of evasion.

do you guys no the percentage of elite distance runners on EIA meds? probably close to 90 percent...why keep harping on this shit!

Take a look at the top cyclists in the Tour de France over the next few weeks then take a look at some of the top distance guys. Something is happening to allow people who are clearly way below a safe weight to have the power, strength and recovery to train at the level they are without getting sick. It may well be a combination of prescription grey area meds but my bet would be GW1516 or aicar

Here's the thing for me, I don't know how cynical this is. Many people have posted here about their troubles with asthma. I don't doubt that for some it's a real problem, Bob Schul had bad asthma and has said if the '64 Games had been lots of places other than Tokyo at that time of year the pollen would have bad enough to set off his asthma and he wouldn't have come close to winning the 5,000. So sure, there's someone here and someone else there who has a problem and really needs medicine for asthma, a thyroid, etc. Levins may well be one of those people and Rupp could be another.

It's the sheer number of young, supposedly healthy, people taking so many medicines that seems questionable. Of the people I know personally well enough to know if they're taking medicines, I know of one taking thyroid meds and no adults taking medicine for asthma who were not taking them as kids. I've coached well over a hundred kids on various baseball and basketball teams as my kids were growing up. I've gotten to know dozens of their teammates from their high school and college cross country and track teams and fewer than a half dozen of them had asthma bad enough to require prescription medicine.

I can think of two possible explanations for the high incidence of medicine taking among top level distance runners and neither is very pretty. One is your "cynical" idea that it's possible to use a complex mix of legal drugs to cover up traces of illegal ones. The other is that many of these athletes cannot hold up under their training, are breaking down and are drugging themselves as a way of covering up the breakdown. I suppose this isn't an either/or kind of thing though.

Good heavens! "Montesquieu" is password protected. It is the handle I use. I am not the other poster. I liked his point, so I used the example in question as a kind of homage to him. And I think the point fits because of the inane claims one finds on this thread. He's a member of NOP--he must be cheating. He's a member of NOP--he doesn't have asthma; it's a charade to game the system. He's a member of NOP--you can tell in the interview that he's lying. But my deeper point is that when you have a college guy who ran 27:27 finishing with a 55 last 400, and three years later he runs 20 seconds faster, and he's only improved a few seconds in the 5000, how in the world does this suggest duplicity and doping???? That he's a member of NOP. Does that mean everyone who runs/ran for them is on something prohibited? How about Jordan Hasay, whose PRs are worse than Emily Sisson's, and whose 5000 PR is not within ten seconds of Aisling Cuffe? How about Luke Puskedra? Oh, there's a Chinese wall and it's only certain NOP runners, e.g., Rupp? But if that's the claim, on what possible basis does one accuse Levins.

Here's my experience, which supports the idea that you can get adult onset asthma, and that location can matter (such as moving to Oregon).

I grew up and started running in high school in San Jose, which has relatively good air quality. I went to college in Los Angeles, where I ran on my own and trained a lot, first for cycling, then 80-140 miles per week of running. Air quality was I didn't have asthma then. I moved back to San Jose after college in 1991 and still didn't have asthma.

In the mid to late 90s, I don't remember exactly when, but I was in my mid to late 20s, I developed exercise induced asthma while living in San Jose. I didn't increase my mileage. I hadn't moved recently. There is never really cold air there. It wasn't correlated with seasonal conditions or air quality readings as far as I could tell. I. struggled with it for at least a couple of years. I went to the doctor only once, and was prescribed Azmacort. The Azmacort didn't help the asthma much that I could tell, so I only used one or two inhalers at most. It didn't improve my performance - I wasn't racing at the time anyway. I should have gone back to the doctor to try a different inhaler, but I accepted and lived with it for then.

In 1999, I moved to Alaska and I soon realized that my asthma had gone away as soon as the move happened. In visits to CA in the past 16 years, either to San Jose or Orange County, I have no issues with asthma, but I'm not there for more than 1 or 2 weeks at a time. I can't pin-point what in the environment in San Jose might have caused/induced my asthma (seemingly not correlated with season/pollen or measured air quality as listed in the newspaper that I could figure out without deeper analysis), but I still think it was still something in the environment.

Just try it ya wimps! wrote:

We don't know if Cam is on a standard blue rescue inhaler which has immediate bronco dilatory effect, or red preventive anti-inflamatory steroid inhaler (Flovent, Pulmicort, Alvesco etc) which has no impact on bronchial flow, and can actually make it worse for 30-60 mins

I'm being pedantic here, but you've either got the colors reversed or it differs by region. My Albuterol rescue inhaler is red, and has been for the last 5 years at least. I've seen LABA (Long Acting Beta Agonist) preventative inhalers (Dulera) that are blue.

Just noting this so people don't assume that every red inhaler is full of steroids.

Montesquieu wrote:

Runner "A" runs 27:27.96 in 2012, finishing in 55.7, while in college. That same year he runs 13:18.29. He joins some running group. Now, three years later he has run 20 seconds faster in the former (and is currently 151st all time), and 3 seconds faster in the latter. He still does not hold the Canadian record in the 5000. He states he now has asthma and takes a med for it. "He's a lying SOB." "He's clearly doping." "He's faking it." "It's the devil Salazar at work." Runner "B" runs 3:38.33 in 2009; 3:38.53 in 2010; 3:38.11 in 2011; nothing in 2012; 3:36.34 in 2013; 3:38.10 in 2014; and now 3:32.97. " . . ." " . . . " Hilarious, really. But in terms of understanding such phenomena as the Salem Witch Trials, priceless. And for whatever it's worth, Jim Ryun had a terrible case of exercise induced asthma. See the link below.

http://pennstatehershey.adam.com/content.aspx?productId=28&pid=28&gid=000124

If it makes you feel better, I can tell you that Jager is probably doped too, as are pretty much all the top Nike running groups, just like all the top cyclists were. But this thread isn't about him.

Just try it ya wimps! wrote:

Not to mention Jagers immense improvement in the 15. Gotta be asthma meds, or testoboost.

What about golden boy A. Wheating, from 2008 - 2010 goes from 3:38 to 3:30. Gotta be peds.

Hmmmm, what's common to all three athletes being discussed?

Where did anyone on the thread say that asthma can't develop in adulthood? Your example is unnecessary. We believe you.

It is far, far more common for it to develop in childhood though, and even then it's in only a minority of the population. So we're questioning why all these runners with no asthma history suddenly develop it when they start running with Salazar. Oh, and former NOP runners and coaches have alleged that he games the asthma test to get his athletes prescriptions.

Diski wrote:

As a physician, I see many active people with adult onset asthma. It is common and some researchers regard it to be close to an epidemic. I don't think Salazar is a nice man, but if his actions are going to be brought into the light, it's not going to be done by creating a witch hunt atmosphere where claims such as yours are constantly thrown out. It is very likely that Levins suffers from the problem, and it is also highly doubtful that any medical intervention related to it helped him set a Canadian 10k record.

So clearly Cam did not want to discuss his inhaler use and became uncomfortable, but that doesn't mean he doesn't have asthma. I had no idea I had exercise induced asthma throughout college. I thought I just had anxiety issues during tough races, causing shortness of breath. Until I spent some time back on the east coast and was able to breath so much easier and run further and faster. My coach was aware of the issue but asthma didn't occur to him either because it only seemed to happen late in race when I was really pushing myself. Was Alberto just doing his job in IDing the issue? And honestly, I probably would've failed an asthma test if I hadn't run hard prior to the test (like Alberto seems to have suggested).

aaaaaaaaah cheater