Rupps mask

Say whatever wrote:

Rupp ran an awesome race. That isn't the issue. The fact is he looked liked a complete tool with that mask on. Plain and simple, a complete tool.

Unfortunately, in my opinion, Rupp's good time means he will likely ware the mask again.

Mr82, the articles posted were from 1979 and 1981, and niether of them addressed the issue at all. In fact the abstracts were so vague that you couldn't tell anything about them.

EIA is a well-known reaction to extreme cold. If there was anything to support the fact that moderate cold was also in play ther would be plenty of studies on this phenomenon, wouldn't there? When we look for studies about masks and EIA then you only see a handful of studies and all of them were about sub frezzing (10-14F or -15 to -20C)

I'm sure that if there is a valid physiological reason for using those masks they would surface in a study.

I tend to believe that it must have been related to an allergy problem that surfced back in Portland coupled with the ignorance of the New York growing (allergy) season.

I think was trying to make a statement of some kind. Who knows what is. He has gotten himself a lot of attention. That could be a reason.

themanontherun wrote:

Just throwing this out there... was Rupp messing with us? I mean, was this actually to prevent a potential asthma attack, or is Galen Rupp actually the greatest troll the running community has ever known?

I just finished watching the race and when I first saw the masked runner I thought that it was some crazed independent looking for a little "face" time. Kind of like those Spira shoed runners a couple years ago. Then I matched the bib name to it and just started cracking up and the sentiment behind the post above immediately crossed my mind. There really could be no other explanation.

I do remember the gas mask from the mid 80's. I even remember a couple of runners shuffling along in them as well.

The absolute fork in the road for US distance running: gas mask or aerobics.

malmo- As a pollen allergy sufferer myself, I can testify that I get symptoms well before the locally accepted "Pollen season". This is an insidious bronchial reaction to a variety of early-season tree pollen types. I imagine that running in an unfamiliar, yet pollen diverse environment (as I imagine Central Park to be, with introduced species), creates a risk of a nonzero pollen level which could easily affect performance by seconds, even tens of seconds per mile. For a professional runner, this risk is unacceptable when it can be averted (as Rupp and ALSal obviously think is possible with the mask). The fact that he waited until leaving the park is corroboration with your guess that the mask is targeted for pollen rather than air temp.

Found a short excerpt from Sports Illustrated Vault. It references an interview from 1981 about Salazar's mask. Apparently it was used by other Oregon athletes during that same period.

The first sentence describes it as a cum-something and then Salazar talks about how it forces you to suck the air in hard. Oxygen is being shoved into your lungs, he adds. Need I say more?

http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/vault/article/magazine/MAG1124307/2/index.htm

Imitation Badass wrote:

Look, this bashing NEEDS to stop. Right now. You're all tough guys raving away about a trivial detail behind your computers, while Rupp is out there getting it done. What next, mocking the size of his member? It probably dangles considerably lower than most of yours! Anyway, just knock it off. Understand? QUIT IT, or else I will physically confront you the next time I see you and then I'll...well, trust me, none of you want that. GET IT? GOT IT? GOOD.

Everyone is praising his performance what people are making fun is that stupid mask.

At last we now Sal's secret:

http://sauljacobson.files.wordpress.com/2010/01/mask.jpg

lol@tards.. wrote:

Checked it wrote:

Prodigy: A two time winner of Footlocker, or a breaker of a previous prodigy like Lindgren or Ryun's records.

Hmm, looks like German doesn't qualify. What's that you say, he broke Jeff Nelson's record? Nelson who? Exactly.

bro, you're talking about high school cross country races? i'm talking about WORLD JUNIOR RECORDS...

Oh? Well, German doesn't have one, just ask the IAAF, no such thing as World Jr. Indoor Records. Please stop spreading the lie.

lafamoto wrote:

Page 5 on a stupid mask from a guy who didn't even win his race. meanwhile, Shalane finished 3rd at world's and what kind of thread does she get. How abobut the top US man for that matter? How come no one wants to talk about Ben True? Al he did was go represent his country in international competition.

The women's competition is lark compared to the men's side.

Ben True? You want to talk about him? Ok, why doesn't he retire, instead of continuing on as 3rd string JV forever?

One thing that hasn't come up is that the increased resistance to air flow might hinder performance, let alone whether there is a benefit to warming and HUMIDIFYING the air (which, as far as I can tell, is the primary reason for wearing the mask - I say this because it's done in some other sports for warm-up periods. Some pro teams do it on long flights, partly to filter air of allergens/germs, but also to humidify the air).

Salazar alludes to this resistance issue when he says that their mask forced you to breathe harder. That's because the increased resistance makes the work of breathing more difficult. If you've ever done a VO2max test, you'll know that the resistance through the tubes and mask is pretty unpleasant.

There are some studies where helium has been added to the mixture of the inspired air to try to reduce the work of breathing. We did a couple of those, but they were inconclusive, probably because the work of breathing is not limiting in a healthy population doing maximal exercise. In people with COPD (obstructive pulmonary disease), there is evidence that helium breathing can improve performance:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16439720

(there are some other studies on this too).

However, in healthy individuals, I've not seen a study showing this for maximal exercise (or anything like it takes to run a 60min half).

Rather, I suspect the opposite. That wearing a mask is at best doing nothing, but at worst increasing breathing resistance. Does that offset a POTENTIAL advantage from warming the air? Who knows? There is probably an advantage to humidifying the air, but it's largely perceptual - it's not as though the body fails to warm air effectively at 35 F. But perceptually, it might make a difference, so Rupp was "managing his perceptions" (to use a euphemism).

It does look funny though. I'm all for natural, no gimmick running myself. Breathe-right strips are hard enough to have to discredit to people who want to know if they work...

Ross

Don't confuse him for his rival...

http://images.wikia.com/mk/images/7/71/Classic_Sub-Zero.gif

Say whatever wrote:

Rupp ran an awesome race. That isn't the issue. The fact is he looked liked a complete tool with that mask on. Plain and simple, a complete tool.

word.

with arm warmers too?

american distance runners make me embarrassed to be an american distance runner. all the superfluous clothing they put on for a race, something people from poorer places would never consider. a face mask for above freezing weather?? arm warms instead of a long sleeve shirt ?? it is embarrassing.

Allergy season is not a month away in New York. I live in the Manhattan and am an allergy sufferer - the last few weeks have been terrible, I saw my allergist last week who said that allergy season started two weeks ago and they've had a ton of complaints.

thirty-two wrote:

Never again mention German and Rupp in the same sentence. German hasn't done anything to earn the title 'prodigy'.

I don't understand how Rupp falling, getting back up, and then proceeding to push the pace makes him a pussy? Please elaborate.

Out-of-Wedlock-Danny wrote:

but now with his fall, he has a built in excuse as to why he didn't go 59mins.

sigh..between he and german. our two biggest prodigies are pussies.

allergy new yorker wrote:

Allergy season is not a month away in New York. I live in the Manhattan and am an allergy sufferer - the last few weeks have been terrible, I saw my allergist last week who said that allergy season started two weeks ago and they've had a ton of complaints.

Nothing is blooming in New York yet, so what can you be allergic to? Last year was one of the earliest pollen seasons ever but that didn't hit until early April, about 2-3 weeks earlier than normal.

I remember when folks laughed at Greg Lemond when he came out in his historic final time trial with his souped-up bike with the aero bars and disk wheel - and we know how that turned out - as the winner. I also remember when Alberto Salazar ran the world cc champs in tights and got 4th - he was also ridiculed. Who cares what Galen wears? - those that have a serious problem with this - especially without knowing why first - are the ones with the real issues...

mwwwin wrote:

I remember when folks laughed at Greg Lemond when he came out in his historic final time trial with his souped-up bike with the aero bars and disk wheel -

People laughed at him? I don't remember this.

mwwwin wrote:

I also remember when Alberto Salazar ran the world cc champs in tights and got 4th - he was also ridiculed. .

He was? You're making shit up.

Making shit up to bolster an opinion is lame.

Living on the east coast, I can attest to having two days of semi-warm air come through and all my peers and I agreed the air was strangely more difficult to breathe than it had been the last several weeks.

You can be one of two coaches. Say your athlete looks worried about the air temperature, allergies, breathing, or whatever along those lines. You can be a no nonsense coach that ignores his athletes and tell him to suck it up. Or you can be the coach who listens to his athletes, and whether or not it works, puts ten cents of cloth over a guy's mouth so he'll stop worrying about it and just go run his race. If Rupp is my athlete and he feels better on the line wearing it, then I'm all for it.

would the mask then help in running on indoor tracks, which are notoriously dry?

it is hard to ignore the mask. does he have to make himself look completely ridiculous and make it embarrassing to be a part of the sport? and what's worse is that this was clearly a thought out angle of alberto's to gain yet another minuscule, theoretical advantage over the competition.

that being said, this was a great and expected performance, maybe a prelude to an Olympic trials marathon next year? I'd prefer to see him continuing on the track but he'll run 2:08 or better right out of the box, in my bet.