El Guerrouj 2k WR - Incredible 3:49 Mile pace

Do you?

Tom Cochrane wrote:

how does that work? wrote:

Do you think you know more about oxygen kinetics than Jack Daniels?

Do you?

No. What about you?

rekrunner wrote:

I don't speak of "all athletes" so this crazy notion is not mine.

My notion is this -- the pool of clean sub 3:33 runners is larger than the pool of clean sub-3:30 runners, so a 3 second drug should be expected to greatly increase the number of sub-3:30 runners, by populating them with many sub-3:33 runners.

The pool of clean 3:33 runners should be larger than the pool of clean sub-3:30 guys. However, there will be some 3:33 runners who are doped (how many who knows but probably a significant number from nations with a high doping prevalence). A few that come to mind (participated in either the Olympics or WC) are Bensghir (MAR) 3:33.04, Hachlaf (MAR) 3:33.59 & Driouch (QAT) 3:33.69.

Furthermore, why do you assume that all clean 3:33 runners have doped? I can think of an Olympic gold & silver medalist who's PBs are 3:30; Centro (3:30.40) & Manzano (3:30.98). There's no evidence that either one has doped and both are Olympic medalists without running sub-3:30 in their careers. There are a lot of guys running in 3:30's - some will be doped and some with be clean.

[quote]rekrunner wrote:

We cannot correlate sub-3:30 performances to known doping prevalence (i.e. Russia, Greece, Turkey, Belarus, Ukraine, Spain, Italy, Portugal, France, India, and the middle East).Why not? Which countries do you think most of the doping positives and ABP cases have come from? Take EL G at the top and Lagat & Kiprop as the only 3 athletes to run sub-3:27. Kiprop is a confirmed doper from a nation with a high doping prevalence which leaves Lagat as suspicious. El G is Moroccan - need we say anymore that's he's highly suspicious? (Remember 4 out of the 7 fastest Moroccan 1500 men have been convicted of doping!).

rekrunner wrote:

Given that Britian had Coe, Cram, and Ovett, before EPO, I don't find four from Morroco, over 30 years, all that noteworthy, nor seven all that remarkable.

If Morocco is second, that doesn't make Morocco noteworthy, but the rest of the world even less worthy.

In my initial response to your post, I neglected to mention Aouita though he didn't compete in the EPO-era. However, he's another highly suspicious Moroccan who ran the fastest 1500 pre-1990s in 1985 (3:29.46). Didn't blood transfusions exist in the 80's? If Aouita used transfusions (or other PEDs) then you have a doped sub-3:30 guy from the 80's.

Aragon wrote:

Armstronglivs wrote:

Athletes have choices as to what they may use, and they use what works for them.

All decision making is an ex ante-process where the outcome is not certain but a prediction. There is no menu where to choose a treatment x or y gives with the booat, but an expected boost might be enough rationale to use a certain products/methods if they are difficult to detect.

From purely game theoretical viewpoint, I would use a product that had a 20 % chance of boosting my performance by 1-2 % even if the most likely outcome (80 %) was zero, particularly if I knew my competitors were facing the same option.

Many people buy extra car insurance even if they are likely paying for nothing when they are not wrecking their BMWs.

Your game theoretical viewpoint is an irrelevant analogy. The most likely outcome for dopers is not zero or anything like it. When I, personally, know that a mere anti-inflammatory will have an effect (otherwise I wouldn't bother taking them), a much more potent drug is not going to be neutral in its effects. Dopers aren't gambling when they take drugs; they are transforming themselves. All you have to do is observe the bodybuilders in the gym. Despite what you suggest, the outcome of doping is certain, which is that a given drug will have an effect. That the exact extent of that effect may not be known in advance doesn't make that outcome any less certain. That is why it is a rational decision to dope; it is a chosen action that will produce a very predictable outcome. Hence, doping is endemic throughout sport.

how does that work? wrote:

Tom Cochrane wrote:

Do you?

No. What about you?

No. Have you or Jack done a lab study of EPO users?

Let's make a long post short:

Would you seriously consider using a given doping substance with the 20 % chance of a 1-2 % boost vs. 80 % chance of 0 % boost if the former is the difference in winning a medal and being like 6th or 8th?

If the answer is "yes" or you can imagine it being "yes" for many people, you give up your entire argument.

Doping isn't a mystery category in decision making. The worth of legal supplement business is like 100 billion in the US with many (most?) of the products having next-to-no benefit. By your own logic, for these consumers, wasting their money is also a "chosen action that will produce a very predictable outcome".

I agree only that doping is a rational decision and some methods likely effective for most of the elite athletes and very effectice for some.

For reasons above, I don't see the widespread use alone as a convincing argument.

Tom Cochrane wrote:

Mehdi Baala is the guy from France.

When I said "28 out of 32 athletes are of African origin", I included Baala as French Algerian as part of that 28.

I don't. As you can see I don't say "all", nor assume "all". This is the second time you accused me of saying "all".

Because to correlate, you need two sets of data, and one of the sets cannot be empty.

Is he suspicious? You should say "IMO", because not everyone shares that opinion.

In a recent poll, 43% of letsrunners believed he was clean.

Did I claim the decision was non-rational recently in this thread?

I thought I said we should take athlete anecdotes with caution because their experiment of one is not blinded nor controlled, and any observed effect can be placebo effect, and/or other confounding factors.

Am I unable to support it? I just showed you two studies, one of which was a meta-study referencing more studies, calling the decision to dope irrational and not well-informed. When I'm able to quote several others, these are not just my ideas, but also ideas shared by experts in the field.

Can you be more specific? Which conclusions have I formed with insufficient evidence? I think I would call them opinions, and not conclusions. If you were able to provide contradictory evidence, I could consider it.

Your efforts to go off on a decision to dope tangent are typical of someone dodging.

Regardless of decision, the bottom line is that after the decision is made, the dope starts working for almost every athlete.

You might as well go off talking about ' "the decision to train".

To answer your question, I would seriously consider doping if I knew that it was a certainty that doping would in any way improve my performance. If the odds were as long as you suggest then doping would not be the problem today. Your question contains a false assumption that the effects of doping are uncertain: if an aspirin will have an effect there is no question that any designated ped will do the same, if it is aimed at affecting parameters of strength, speed and stamina - or simply acting as a stimulant, as even coffee does.

While we agree that doping is a rationally informed decision, we differ if you think that it is largely a speculative decision by the athlete involved - and it isn't only widespread use alone that shows that is wrong. Prevalence merely confirms what has been demonstrated beyond argument now, that choosing to dope is to effect improvement in performance - just as training does. The only relevant question is by how much.

You resort to argument by authority - as you so often do - by relying on your selective "experts". The only way you can maintain an argument that a decision to dope is not a rational decision is if you can show that doping does not affect or improve performance. You can't - and neither can your so-called experts. The evidence is that it does - and that is why athletes dope and have done so throughout the history of sport, so that today elite and professional sport wouldn't exist without it.

You also fail to address the point that for an athlete how is a decision to dope not a rational decision while you don't make the same argument for anything else they choose to do to improve performance, chiefly training and nutrition?

Do athletes approach training or nutrition merely as a "belief" that it will help them, rather than knowledge, and that is only "faith" that supports that belief and not fact?

Training and nutrition are like doping in the respect that they aid performance (and in the case of training and nutrition are necessary to it) but the exact extent cannot be quantified and will vary for each athlete.

Tom Cochrane wrote:

Your efforts to go off on a decision to dope tangent are typical of someone dodging.

Regardless of decision, the bottom line is that after the decision is made, the dope starts working for almost every athlete.

You might as well go off talking about ' "the decision to train".

I guess you meant that for Armstronglivs -- he is the one attempting to argue that the decision is rational -- an argument that doesn't really matter.

I don't depend on deciding the motivation of athletes to dope for any of my ideas, but always assumed significant prevalence is widespread and goes to the top, and contrasted that to significant performance NOT being widespread but narrowly confined to athletes originating from selected regions of Africa, e.g. the Frenchmen you noted is Algerian, and similarly the best Americans are overwhelmingly Kenyan, Eritrean, Somalian, Sudanese, Moroccan, etc..

Furthermore, why do you assume that all clean 3:33 runners have doped?

Rekrunner's views don't make any sense. He will say that we have no reason to believe that caught dopers like Kiprop doped at any point other than the brief 48 hour timeframe their positive related to.

At the same time, he assumes in his pseudo-statistical analysises that either everybody dopes all the time or nobody dopes ever.

I actually once pointed out here that the distribution of Kenyan 1500 times was very different to other countries, with a much greater percentage in the top elite 3:30 area. This suggested to me that many more fringe elite Kenyan milers were resorting to the juice to get to that next level than in other countries.

Rekrunner rubbished it of course. Now he's using practically the same argument, only in a ridiculous form by supposing ALL fringe elite runners EVERYWHERE take EPO, to 'prove' again that EPO doesn't work.

Armstronglivs wrote:

To answer your question, I would seriously consider doping if I knew that it was a certainty that doping would in any way improve my performance... blaa blaa blaa

Was that "yes" or "no" to my specific question?

To be clear, by definition, a 1 % chance of getting no benefit would make you not to use a product that would by 99 % certainty cut your 10k time by 5 minutes.

Armstronglivs wrote:

While we agree that doping is a rationally informed decision, we differ if you think that it is largely a speculative decision by the athlete involved - and it isn't only widespread use alone that shows that is wrong

As all decision making, I think it is fully a speculative decision with predicted costs, upsides and downsides derived from what is known about the doping substance/method in question (with an enormous amount of what is not known). I actually do believe that the prevalence of use, anecdotes and scientific literature is proof enough that most athletes get more than a negligible boost from some of the banned methods/substances such as blood doping (endurance) and steroids (resistance/speed).

Because there is little downside (except financial cost) in many doping items that have been difficult to detect, I don't consider the prevalence as such a good independent evidence that all or even most users get a significant benefit.

Placebo injections have improved performance by 1.2 % in some tests ("placebo may have improved performance by both reducing perception of effort and increasing potential motivation"). In addition, performance is a result of many long (exercise) and short term (day-to-day variance, illness) physiological factors as well as competition strategy, draft, mood etc. Therefore from the viewpoint of an athlete, it can be difficult to attribute the contribution from any substance to any given performance or erroneously believe that a given boost was a result of the substance, and continue to use these methods.

The link is more evident in some instances, e.g. steroids and bodybuilding and metamphetamines and 50k cross-country skiing.

You appeal to no authority -- that seems worse. If you take me out of the equation, you are arguing against the half dozen names I produced. If I take your name away, no one else is making your argument.

You said irrationality was baseless -- apparently experts find enough basis to investigate the irrationality.

Arguing "irrationality" seems off point.

I don't generally argue "irrationality", except when explicitly asked to explain "why?", and then I say "belief".

My main idea is that prevalence is evidence of belief, not proof of effect. Beliefs can be rational.

You said I had to prove "no effect" definitively to maintain this idea. By the same token you cannot maintain "rationality" until you prove "effect" definitively. You seem to do it backwards -- asserting that prevalence proves effect and therefore rationality.

Why would I address that point? Deciding to dope, and break the rules, is not the same as deciding to train and nutrition. It's entering another world of cheating, lies, deception, and secrecy. For most people, except the truly pathological, this involves a whirlwind of emotions.

But I'm wondering, do athletes NOT believe in training and nutrition, yet do it anyway? Beliefs can be rational as well as irrational.

Athletes can be a useful source of inside information, but they are not impartial observers, and they are not scientists making controlled observations.

Why does everyone keep using words like "everybody" and "all" and "everywhere"? I use non-absolute words like "many" and "significant number" and "widespread".

My ideas make absolute sense once you put your prejudices to the side.

Regarding Kiprop, I do not say "no reason to believe", but that it is a "belief".

My "closer look" at performance made no conclusions about which athletes were doped. In the introduction, I assumed widespread prevalence, for the sake of argument, and explicitly qualified it as "up to 57%" -- the recent figure from the Pan Arab Games. I think that global prevalence, while widespread and significant, is much more modest, with many countries likely close to 0%.

We both noted Kenyan's superior Kenyan performances, in terms of both quality and quantity, but performance alone doesn't explain cause of performance. Your suggestion of the cause is just a suggestion.

My ideas about widespread doping come from official sources like WADA's reports and IAAF studies.