'Doping in Kenya is completely out of control'

Ha! Lol, are you really subscribing the "plyometrc" story? That's classic, wrecky is off the charts this time perhaps you're the real Joe Biden!

I'm subscribing to a better training story. Training has been known and proven to work for centuries.

What's off the charts is alleging a 10% gain came from EPO. Even the most faithful researchers, when they fail to exercise recommended caution, only dare to speculate the gains are up to 3%, based on a small sample of 32-34 minute 10K runners, in a study that said this may or may not apply to elite performers/performances.

It would be easier for me to subscribe to the EPO story if there were any evidence of a trend suggesting a correlation among populations known to have taken EPO.

La-la-la! I can't hear you!

Schumacher in the Karamasheva CAS hearing stated for the record that one (1) minute can be improved in the 10,000m with EPO use.

Ramzi shaved off 14 seconds from his 1500 time in about 2 yrs when we went on the gear (3:44/2002 - 3:30/2004).

google.com

Why Rashid Ramzi's sudden rise always stuck in the craw, writes Steve Cram

https://www.theguardian.com/profile/stevecram

Steve Cram: Rashid Ramzi came from nowhere to Olympic 1500m champion with suspicious speed and has now tested positive for drugs

Open link

Lance Armstrong said EPO is a "ten percenter." He characterizes EPO = "high-octane doping" while anabolics, testosterone, GH, corticosteroids, etc = "low-octane doping."

Don't you think LA knows a thing or two about doping? 😉

Round and round and round we go.

You put your faith in people. I don't care what people say. I put my faith in their data.

What is the basis, for Schumacher's speculative opinion? Margin of error? Applicability? Limitations?

What is an accurate reference for Ramzi's "clean" potential, eliminating confounders, for comparison? (Hint: not 3:44). Like Lombard, Ramzi also changed his training.

Lance says ten percent of what? What did he measure, and under which controlled conditions?

Data on this topic are going to be pretty shaky as far as drawing conclusions because you cannot run studies with control and experimental groups. In fact it's pretty near impossible to find athletes using illegal PEDs to make any sorts of comparisons to ones not using them. If I had started using some sort or sorts of illegal PEDs after years of being stuck at a particular performance level and suddenly was getting results well beyond anything I'd done I might very well explain my improvement by saying I'd changed my training whether I actually had or not. If in fact I had changed my training it would muddle the picture in terms of what I'd believe about effective training for me and maybe that would appease my conscience a bit because I could tell myself it was mostly the changed training and not the PEDs responsible. But for all I'd know if I'd kept my old training and added something like EPO I might have run even faster.

Do you remember Marathon and Beyond? They used to have an Ask the Experts column in each issue where they'd ask several of us who wrote for them a question submitted by a reader. Once there was one from someone who wanted to know what we thought was the fastest marathon time that was humanly possible.My answer was that if we're talking about the traditional human unaided by genetic manipulation or chemical aids that we may well have already surpassed that performance.

I based the answer on looking at the improvement in the marathon record over my lifetime. For fourteen years it was stuck at 2:08:39 but by the mid 80s begun moving slowly through the 2:07s and into the 2:06s. You'd expect to see something like this as an ultimate is approached and I thought maybe late in my lifetime we might see low 2:06s to high 2:05s. But then EPO came along and in the next decade the time improved more than it had in the previous twenty years. Was all of that due to EPO? I highly doubt it. Much changed with marathoning in those years and I think the big paydays and professionalized pace making on courses designed to be lightning fast are huge factors. But there was EPO. What I find odd in your comments is that it seems like (I am assuming here) you'd agree with my last statement but you want to discount the role of PEDs.

That's up to you. But I get the impression you feel like you're being more rational than a lot of us by wanting to attribute these nealry unbelievable performance to training and claiming to rely on data to form your opinions or arguments. To me, staking out this position actually undermines most of your argument because there are very actual clear data on this topic. We're all just grabbing a fact here and there.

Too funny - I put my "faith" in one of the top anti-doping experts in the world & a top research scientist on the performance benefits of PEDs. 🙄

Since we are going in circles, why don't reach out to Olaf Schumacher & confer with him? You could bring up all your data & skepticism, and well as questioning his analysis on the performance benefits of EPO with elites.

Go to the source rekrunner - I'm not the source! I'm relying on information from an academic with impeccable credentials & someone held in high esteem in the field of anti-doping (and please don't lecture me on your "appeal to authority" nonsense).

On LA - you know darn well what he's talking about. We've been over this before. In case you need a refresher, here's LA explaining this when he was a guest speaker at a CU sports ethics class several years ago:

You forgot the most important particular : Schumacher (and with him ALL the researchers working with antidoping) don't consider the physiological effects of training (training that they don't know anything about).

The advantages in the performances identified by Schumacher are real with runners who have very little training, and not too much talent. Having little training, they don't increase the total volume of blood, something that happens to any athlete training for enhancing the aerobic ability, situation that can improve in higher percentage running a high mileage, inside the high mileage a high intensity, and all this training in altitude.

These are numbers very far from the reality, and a talk with the researchers can only confirm they don't have idea about the effects of the training of high level for the best runners in the world.

Maintaining the thesis that EPO can produce in 10000m a jump of one minute is completely risible. I coached many athletes under 27' (26'30" Nicholas Kemboi, 26'38" Hamed Hassan, 26'46" Imane Merga, 26'49" Moses Mosop, 26'52" John Korir and Mark Bett, 26'55" Geoffrey Kirui...) without using any supplement (also legal), when the WR of Bekele was 26'17" : do you think I can suppose everybody could improve UNDER 26' using EPO ?

My evidence is the perfromances achieved by my CLEAN athletes, and, since not only my athletes were clean, a lot of other athletes ran without using any illegal substance at the highest levels of the all-time lists.

For beating the WR of Shaheen in steeple, we had to wait 19 years, with the lights as pacers, new shoes and new surfaces for the tracks. The times of the specialists in short distances (800 - 1500) of 40 years ago are still at the top of the lists despite the technological improvement. In 400m, the first 2 athletes in Roma Olympics 1960 finished together in 44"9 : shoes with long spikes directly fixed on the sole, tracks in red earth, 4 rounds in following days, and the training was only once per day, nobody lifting weights, nobody controlling lactate, nobody with biomecanical supports : performances still good today (after 64 years !) for going in the Olympic Final !

But of course people knowing the athletics of 60 years ago, the type of training used that time, and the level of results of that age, are very few, nobody of them in Letsrun.

How much faster are the fancy shoes,that todays athletes wear? would jakob ingebritsen and faith kipyegon have run their 1500 about 3 seconds slower,if they competed in the 90s,on 90s tracks? without the shoes?

Have you thought of ever reaching out to OSchumacher & discussing this with him? You certainly have the credentials & knowledge of a world-class coach & trainer. I can't imagine that he wouldn't want to discuss your position & concerns.

You have keep in mind that in his testimony at the Karamasheva hearing, he doesn't mention anything about runners with "very little training" and "not too much talent." Maybe Karamasheva did have very little training but she's far not talented - one of Russia's top middle-distance runners.

I've also heard Schumacher say during a university lecture that EPO microdosing with elites can produce significant gains. Again, he mentions nothing about athletes with little training that are not too talented.

European doping is "in" control.

People are easily fooled by credentials. Top research scientists know they need accurate data and they expect to have their words peer-reviewed to filter out the nonsense. Schumacher is not the original source of the data, and his words cannot tell me more than the data.

But if you faithfully follow Schumacher's non-peer reviewed statement without any performance data, you should flatly reject as pure nonsense any suggestion that Lombard improved by 3 minutes because of EPO.

I don't know what Lance means by ten-percenter. I never did. Percentages are unitless and require the scale and units to be defined on a case by case basis. Don't forget that Lance is a pathological liar -- all the more reason to verify his statements with data.

If you say the data is shaky, then you must accept that any conclusions from shaky data will also be shaky. Besides controlled experiments, we can also look for trends in real performances. For example, we see that today with the new shoes. Most people use the trends of times dropping in the 1990s coinciding with EPO in sports as an indication of the power of EPO. But we also need to be careful as trends can be spurious. In this case, there is no tangible evidence of blood doping in East Africa in the 1990s, and there was no similar performance trend outside of Africa due to EPO, which would be highly unusual given all the assumptions.

Funny -- for me, if anything, the marathon is the counter-example, as it defies most all of the EPO milestones, only getting faster whenever testing is improved.

Who ran 2:08:39, and when? In 1969, Derek Clayton ran 2:08:33 on a disputed short course (500m). Back up 2 years and in 1967, he ran 2:09:36 (beating the previous WR in 1965 by 2:14). By 1985, Carlos Lopes ran 2:07:12, and by 1988 Belayneh Dinsamo ran 2:06:50. That's an improvement of 2:46 in 21 years. In 2008, Geb ran 2:03:59, an improvement of 2:51 in the next 20 years. That's about the same. What can we conclude from that? A lot has changed in 40 years, besides PEDs.

After that, it started becoming a young man's race, with athletes skipping the track and going straight to the marathon, with racers and organizers choosing fast courses with pacemakers, and then there is the era of new shoes.

Let's back up again to 1988 and shed the light of EPO and EPO testing milestones. After 1998, EPO came out, and the marathon did not get faster for 10 years, until 1998. Shortly afterwards, the first EPO test comes out, and the marathon times start dropping. Then in 2004, an improved EPO test (that rumors say forced El G into retirement), and shortly thereafter, Geb slices one more minute off the marathon. Then the ABP is rolled out, and some of the young kids have sliced off another minute. And then we move to the era of new shoes, when a couple more minutes have come off.

So, rekrunner, when are you going to reach out to Schumacher & tell him those things instead of lecturing me all the time? (with your imperious attitude you display here, you shouldn't be timid at all in contacting Schumacher).

I think you know what LA means & you're playing dumb (how many times over the last few years have we discussed his perspective on EPO & the benefits he received from using it?).

LA has talked about the performance benefits & the efficacy he received from EPO in many interviews over the last several years. In this interview with Neil Degrasse he explains the difference between "low-octane" doping & high-octane" doping" with endurance sports.

Basically, he says "low-octane" doping consists of PEDs such as anabolic steroids, testosterone, GH, corticosteroids, etc, & provide only a 1-2% improvement in performance. He says a clean athlete can compete with a "low-octane" doper.

"High-octane" doping consists of EPO & blood transfusions. He says they provide a "10%" improvement in performance, hence the "ten-percenter" characterization. He says EPO changed the entire dynamics of cycling and that a clean rider could not compete with an EPO user.

You call LA a "pathological liar" because what he says conflicts with your narrative on the ineffectiveness of EPO with elite athletes. Conversely, if LA said something to the effect that EPO is a "one-percenter" PED & it didn't work for him, then you would be endorsing LA using his perspective to strengthen your argument. So, basically it boils down to what LA is saying & how his perspective is hurting your position. 😉

I did in fact type 2:08:39 for Clayton's time. That was definitely a typo. I will say that the debate over the accuracy of the Antwerp course really only started seriously when it was years before anyone really approached that time. And to make a thoroughly obnoxious grammar point but is a pet peeve of mine, data is plural and requires a plural form of a verb, i.e. "data are," not "data is." (Really sorry about that but I can't help myself.

I agree with you completely that much has changed in the marathon since Bikila's shoeless world best from 1960. (I bet that's a record for fastest barefoot marathons that will stand forever.) And because there have been so many things that have changed it's impossible to know how each change has affected overall performance so yes, conclusions here can be shaky. I really don't want to go much deeper than that because conclusions can be shaky, but I'll say two quick things and then try not to go down the rabbit hole anymore.

One is that you're reluctant to believe Lance Armstrong because he's shown to be a liar. I'm inclined to believe him because he has pretty extensive experience with PEDs and while it made sense for him to lie when he was competing and passing himself off as clean ("People ask what I'm on. I'm on the bike six hours a day") I don't see what he has to gain by continuing to lie. That doesn't mean he doesn't have a reason to lie now but because I can't find a reason for him to do so I'm inclined to believe him.

The second thing here is that the better testing we supposedly have now makes these fantastic performances more credible. Again, that requires you to conclude that the testing process is not only improved but legitimate pretty much universally. There's no way I can get to the same conclusion. Such a conclusion requires faith in the bodies and people carrying out the testing and I have almost none. What I believe is that the process is supposed to convince people of what you say you believe, i.e., that more and better testing is a strong argument for legitimacy of most performances. But I'll likely never have any data supporting that belief. Each of us has to decide if we believe that and each of us is guessing when we do.

Again, whatever all these authorities you are appealing to say -- I start to care only after I have seen their data and their context, behind their statements.

You are the one trying to drag Schumacher into this. If I reached out to Schumacher, I would not tell him what he surely already knows as a "top researcher". I would ask him to show me his data behind his statements, and he would understand why I am asking. I would also ask him which elite runners he has coached to elite performances, clean and doped.

I actually called Lance a pathological liar because of his long serial history of lying. If he says 10%, I need to fact-check it. Fool you once, shame on him. Fool you twice, shame on you. Lance is not a scientist, but a story-teller. He is also a faithful believer in drugs, as far back as 1995. But again, where is his data? What are the units? What did he measure to arrive at these percentages? What is the margin of error and confidence?

My narrative is not the strawman you are poking with a stick. Even if Lance said 1%, I would express doubts, partly because of his history of lying. My narrative is that EPO can be effective with everyone, amateurs and elites alike, when they are aerobically weak, and it can provide a placebo effect for those who are mentally weak. But EPO will be less effective (if at all) for everyone, amateurs and elite alikes, when they are already aerobically strong, e.g. after lengthy training at high altitude, and already believe in their training, their coach, and themselves.

You believe everything Armstrong has said, because he claimed to use PEDs?

Armstrong has claimed a 10% improvement from the injection of excess EPO.

However EPO is already optimally produced by the body.
Thus a well trained endurance athlete has no use for any excess EPO that would knock the homeostasis of the body out of whack.

Regarding Armstrong's claim, a 10% improvement from a 27 minute 10k would be 24:18.
So you think any top runner who can run a 27 minute 10k would run 24:18 by injecting excess EPO like Armstrong has stated???

I agree with Renato Canova that such claims are completely ridiculous.

I noted you said "data are", and do know the difference between data and datum. That is not something I learned at a young age, so like your pet peeve, sorry, I can't always help myself.

Permit me to respond to your two points. In addition to Lance's lying, there are more reasons to doubt him. Historically, in part because my sport is running, I did not doubt drugs for multi-stage, multi-week grand tours, for reasons that generally do not apply to running events that are completed in seconds, minutes, or around two hours. But more recently I have seen two meta-studies reviewing more than three decades of doping studies, in the context of cycling, concluding both that most studies are of poor qualtiy, and that the performance effects from blood doping are over-estimated. One of them culminated in a time-trial cycling up the Mont Ventoux, where the EPO group was slightly worse.

What does Lance have to gain now? Partial acceptance or understanding of the public. First, he may be lying to himself. Self-deception is a psychological defense mechanism designed to protect someone who did bad things from feeling bad about them. And it serves him to exaggerate the myths (e.g. ten-percenter versus three-percenter from Schumacher), so that others believe that despite doing a bad thing, it is understandable and rational that in the heat of the moment, he really believed he had no choice, because the reward was so great that you couldn't win without it.

Regarding testing, I might agree with you about how effective testing is not. Looking at testing milestones is not my argument, but one I am often confronted with. Scroll back a few pages, and look at how hard OED argues that OOC testing successfully prevented virtually all non-Africans worldwide from 150+ countries for nearly three decades, from improving on 1980s pre-EPO era times, despite what we know about doping and testing in Russia, China, Italy, Spain, Turkey, Greece, etc.