Why is altitude training acceptable but EPO isn't?

Great suggestion but I think you should go with organic grown, fair trade EPO.

We are often told by some here that EPO doesn't benefit altitude-trained trained athletes.

Greta Runberg wrote:

Wouldn't it be better for the environment if athletes didn't fly to altitude camps and just took EPO? Also, I'm pretty sure going to altitude is just a cover for taking EPO anyway, so let's stop the charade.

Says the 6 minute miler. It’s astounding the amount of clueless joggers here that state their facts as if it were opinion. >90% have never even met the elites in an altitude camp, let alone spent weeks together with them at one.

We go down this road all the time. Why allow aspirin and Tylenol to help with the aches and pains associated with training? If you allow that, why not EPO or Test.?

I think all goes back to "the spirit of competition." You want the best athletes out there, not the athletes with the best laboratory.

I actually kinda agree with this. I read Scott faubles book in which he makes some flippant comment about how horrible injecting EPO is, but how using an in-house sauna to induce the same effect is natural and ok. What? Do you think your average 2:07 Kenyan dude has a sauna in their house?

I saw it as another delivery of the same sad “if you are faster than me you are probably cheating” line.

Would you prefer middle school and high schoolers that want to be like the pros take a vacation to altitude or inject epo?

Well, surely lots of people live at altitude, and if altitude training was banned would such people have to move their homes to a lower altitude or face a ban?

The one tiny little glitch not mentioned here re EPO is that if it is not closely monitored, the viscosity of the blood may become too thick resulting in death.

Greta Runberg wrote:

Wouldn't it be better for the environment if athletes didn't fly to altitude camps and just took EPO? Also, I'm pretty sure going to altitude is just a cover for taking EPO anyway, so let's stop the charade.

No, it would not be better at all for the environment if athletes didn't fly to altitude camps and just took EPO because the planes that they take to Denver, Phoenix, etc., to get to their altitude camps will fly there even if those athletes aren't on them.

big brain time in this thread, wow.

yes, air travel is an outrageous expenditure of fossil fuels and we will have to stop doing it so much if we want to avoid cooking to death. that said, you do realize that, unless you live on a small island you can just _drive_ to altitude right?

what's really outrageous re: flying is US athletes flying to Doha this weekend to run a race for a few minutes when they could go to portland and race some of the best. totally unnecessary air travel IMO

fethullah gulen rupp wrote:

big brain time in this thread, wow.

yes, air travel is an outrageous expenditure of fossil fuels and we will have to stop doing it so much if we want to avoid cooking to death. that said, you do realize that, unless you live on a small island you can just _drive_ to altitude right?

what's really outrageous re: flying is US athletes flying to Doha this weekend to run a race for a few minutes when they could go to portland and race some of the best. totally unnecessary air travel IMO

Tagging onto my last post, could you explain why it's outrageous for US athletes to fly to Doha? It's not a chartered flight. They're on planes that are going there whether the athletes are on the planes or not. Seriously, take me through your thinking process here.

Sal Bert'o taught me to do both.

It still costs money to go to these meets, money which could be spent elsewhere in the sport.

Great question for rekrunner.

Seriously... wrote:

It still costs money to go to these meets, money which could be spent elsewhere in the sport.

It wouldn't be. And that's not the reason whoever I replied to is saying it's outrageous for US athletes to fly to Doha.

HRE wrote:

fethullah gulen rupp wrote:

big brain time in this thread, wow.

yes, air travel is an outrageous expenditure of fossil fuels and we will have to stop doing it so much if we want to avoid cooking to death. that said, you do realize that, unless you live on a small island you can just _drive_ to altitude right?

what's really outrageous re: flying is US athletes flying to Doha this weekend to run a race for a few minutes when they could go to portland and race some of the best. totally unnecessary air travel IMO

Tagging onto my last post, could you explain why it's outrageous for US athletes to fly to Doha? It's not a chartered flight. They're on planes that are going there whether the athletes are on the planes or not. Seriously, take me through your thinking process here.

you are right that the airlines are not basing the decision to schedule a flight to Doha on a handful of professional runners. it comes back to this idea we see so often in climate/environmental discussions of "i will use paper straws to save the oceans" vs. "i will fly everywhere because my own personal consumer decisions will not make a difference." obviously the answer has to be somewhere in the middle. and considering what we know about how bad air travel is in terms of fuel demand and emissions, i think it's good that we're having some reckoning with this idea where we assume we will just fly rather than do a 4+ hour road trip or something.

like, air travel is really quite miraculous. i wish there were a way to generate the energy required to do it without burning a ton of fossil fuel, but as far as i know there's not. nuclear jets seem like a bad idea lol. so i think the compromise has to be flying less. do there need to be multiple flights per week between the US and Doha? i would argue no. business can be conducted virtually, tourism and pro sports are luxuries, and people visiting family probably only do it a few times a year anyway. so we could get away with like one flight per month or something. sure, that doha flight alone isn't going to move the needle (going back to your point). but aggregate that same logic across all flights and we might actually make a dent in emissions.

Because when you train at altitude your body is still self-regulating. You sacrifice speed during workouts and recovery time for additional red blood cells. Someone at low altitude taking EPO is sacrificing nothing but an increased risk of a stroke.

joed|rt wrote:

Because when you train at altitude your body is still self-regulating. You sacrifice speed during workouts and recovery time for additional red blood cells. Someone at low altitude taking EPO is sacrificing nothing but an increased risk of a stroke.

Thanks, that makes sense.

joed|rt wrote:

Because when you train at altitude your body is still self-regulating. You sacrifice speed during workouts and recovery time for additional red blood cells. Someone at low altitude taking EPO is sacrificing nothing but an increased risk of a stroke.

The first part of this is the main reason. While one can have unhealthy effects of altitude, it is not see the same way as EPO. There was a discussion within WADA about this sort of thing.