Brojos say it is a fair question: Is Ritz on drugs?

Barry Abercrombie wrote:

Cabada and Trafeh have as much natural talent as Ritz.

0/10

Symmonds

2009 27:22.28 Berlin 17/08/2009

2008 28:05.31 Eugene, OR 04/07/2008

2007 28:28.59 Osaka 27/08/2007

2006 27:35.65 Palo Alto, CA 30/04/2006

2004 27:38.50 Palo Alto, CA 30/04/2004

If you look at his 10,000m there is no sudden improvement so just to target his 5,000m is not really fair. In fact did he ever even do a top European meet before breaking 13?

[quote]Sunshine Desserts wrote:

Ritz probably now has the benefit of access to an altitude chamber. The maximum benefit from these things appears to occur when they are set to simulate 14k-15k feet and used for 12 hours or more per day. There seems to be a big spike in erythropoietin production once these parameters are reached vis-a-vis lower altitude settings or shorter durations that most people use when they merely spend 7-9 hours a night sleeping in a hypoxic tent. Performances also tend to improve by an average of one second per lap in the longer track distances using this protocol, even among already highly-accomplished runners who are new to this type of use of a hypoxic chamber. All indications are that this is safe and allows the body to produce its own hormone in response to a controlled stimulus rather than simply injecting the hormone at the risk of bypassing some natural protective mechanism.

[quote]

You are incorrect in your logic. The body's natural response to hypoxia by increasing production of erythropoietin reaches a maximum roughlt 2 to 3 days after the initial altitude stimulus and will decline back to baseline over the course of about a month.

There's a national championship for it every year, run by most of our best distance runners. And the former record holder is no slouch at all. So not really.

There really needs to be a WC this year. Having a dead year ruins the flow for everyone. I.E. there needs to be an WC in 2011, 2013, 2014, 2015, when there's not an Oly, instead of having a bye year.

For who, for what? WAF and the other IAAF meets do well enough for our sport's stars.

Red Glare wrote:

There's a national championship for it every year, run by most of our best distance runners. And the former record holder is no slouch at all. So not really.

So what's Cabada doing now that shows he's as talented as Ritz?

You know, there's something to be said for that red flag that goes off in ones mind. Personally mine went off for Ramzi as well as Komen and Ngeny. That doesn't mean I'm right on all of them but i can't escape that strong feeling that goes off the same way it goes off when you feel a strange person walking down the street before they have said anything or done anything.

Experience and a strong sense can go a long way. You pay attention to the characteristics and habits of people who have done something bad, and you start to notice them in others.

With most people and running they just focus on a sudden substantial PR. But that is a very narrow approach. You have to ask why? What might have contributed to the PR? What might have inhibited the PR or a more steady progression of PRs? In most cases there are logical reasons for this if you know enough about the runners.

And don't discount body language, attitude, and eyes. The eyes cannot lie (unless the person is a sociopath in which case you wouldn't trust anything they say).

To me Ritz's story is pretty simple. High school phemon, the best talent in 20 plus years outside of arguably Webb, Fernandez & Rupp. If you follow those guys you'll notice that they all have similar cases to Ritz. Injuries and spells where no significant PR's are laid down for logical and legitimate reasons.

If you were to ask anybody when Ritz was a senior in high school if they thought he would break Kennedy's AR at 5K who would have said no? He was light years ahead of Kennedy and he went to world jrs and finished 3rd. Do you know who he beat in that race?

1 182 Bekele Kenenisa ETH 25:04

2 323 Lebo Duncan KEN 25:37 0:33

3 534 Ritzenhein Dathan USA 25:46 0:42

4 315 Kemboi Nicholas KEN 25:52 0:48

5 Tegenkamp Mattew USA 25:55 0:51

6 317 Kipchumba Robert KEN 26:00 0:56

Lebo was 9 seconds up on Ritz and had finished 7th at world Cross Jrs in 1999 & 2nd in 2000 as well as 2nd at world champs 10K in 2000 so he was no fluke. He also had run 28:14 in 1999 and 28:12 in 2000 both in Nairobi Kenya at 5,500 feet altitude, so essentially he was already a 27:30 10K runner.

RITZ --

Kemboi ran 13:24 for 5K that year (2001).

Teg is now a 12:58 5K runner.

Kipchumba ran 27:44 prior to that race and 7:44, 13:19 & 27:25 the same year (2001).

If you don't think Ritz had the makings of a sub 13:00 runner at that point, who does???

And most important to me is that when I've seen Ritz in person or in interviews he looks like he has nothing to hide. He doesn't look guilty, he doesn't act guilty and he looks absolutely thrilled and passionate about his successes and failures.

If you've ever cheated and won at a game you know the difference between how that feels and how it feels if you won honestly.

Lastly, where Ritz was in relation to Teg and Bekele as a senior in high school doesn't look too different now in terms of the 5K.

Work on your reading comprehension, I didn't say he was doing anything now that shows it.

Google before you post wrote:

Red Glare wrote:

There's a national championship for it every year, run by most of our best distance runners. And the former record holder is no slouch at all. So not really.

So what's Cabada doing now that shows he's as talented as Ritz?

I don't believe Ritz is on anything. Just because someone runs well doesn't mean that they're doping. The one thing everyone always leaves out on these boards is the psychology of the sport. Physical ability can only be tapped into with the correct mindset and perspective. Self-Efficacy (confidence) is such a key factor in a runners success. Passion (as someone mentioned in this forum) is also so very key. You've got a guy who's in 4:20 (physical) shape who is so fired up about racing he can't stand it, he wants to be great so bad and you've got a guy in 4:16 (physical) shape who hates everything about racing and the sport and doesn't care. The 4:20 guy always wins and will probably run 4:16. The 4:16 guy will probably run around 4:20. Point is, maybe Ritz has finally found that mental state that he's been needing to match his physical state under Salazar. Regardless though, the American justice system is innocent until proven guilty. You have no evidence of any kind against Ritz yet, so stop speculating.

VH wrote:

The body's natural response to hypoxia by increasing production of erythropoietin reaches a maximum roughlt 2 to 3 days after the initial altitude stimulus and will decline back to baseline over the course of about a month.

That's what happens for an initial bout of hypoxia. The EPO levels will spike at 48-72 hours, but red cell production continues to increase in a time-dependent fashion for several weeks.

The point is that it wasn't until people did extensive trial and error testing with these hypoxic chambers that they found out 12 hours at 14k feet was the magic number. A normal night's sleep in one of the less expensive altitude tents isn't nearly as effective. Nor does the standard study (like the Levine/Stray-Gundersen study you're probably citing) explore the full picture, since it doesn't involve repeated and gradually increasing stimuli. Now you don't just hop right up to 14,000 ft. at the outset. You work your way up with repeated levels of stimulus and check blood values at each stage. Ideally, ferritin should be above 100. Hematocrit should always be at least 42, but 46-49 is the eventual preferred range once you're up to the maximum simulated altitude.

Now you might ask why you don't just live at 14,000 ft. Well, this would actually be better on a number of fronts than sleeping in an altitude tent and spending another few hours a day in a hypoxic room ... if you could get down to lower altitudes for your faster workouts, which would maintain absolute work rates you couldn't reach at high altitudes. If you can get down to moderate altitude (3,500-5,000 ft.) for tempo running or faster crest load running (speeds covering the whole range between 12k race pace and marathon race pace) and could go all the way to sea level for even faster running, you'd have the best possible situation. But this isn't often feasible or it might be time consuming and physically/psychologically draining to keep doing this a couple of times a week even if it is feasible. So the hypoxic chambers can confer an advantage in this way. You get a lot of the good from the live high, train low routine without the hassles of repeated travel. If you have a hypoxic room with a treadmill in it, you can get most (not all) of the effects of actually doing light running at (simulated) high altitude and (if you know exactly how to do it) tempo running or crest load segment running at (simulated) moderate altitude.

Most runners who opt for an altitude tent don't get the maximum benefit from it since they don't know that 12 hours confers a markedly higher benefit than the normal 7-9 hours of nightly sleep. Plus it would probably be impractical for a non-professional runner to just sit around in the tent for another several hours a day (but a hypoxic house would solve this problem, although it would be expensive). The Oregon Project has actually been one of the groups at the vanguard of studying the effects of different durations and simulated altitudes using air-thinning technology. So there's no doubt the runners are using some fairly sophisticated protocols, including the 12-hours-per-day-minimum routine and regular blood work. Living and doing easy running at an actual h-a site with regular excursions to moderate- or l-a sites for various workouts is still better from a physical standpoint, but the hypoxic house is close enough considering the runners probably get more rest and less stress not having to travel long distances out-and-back 2-3 times per week.

As for the rumored use of thyroid hormone and prednisone by at least some (but probably not all) of their runners - uhhh, no comment.

Ethics aside, I wouldn't want to take prednisone just to get faster. I was on it twice last summer and it's absolutely miserable.

Unfortunately, the PED question is a fair one for any elite endurance athlete who is rising above the competition. There are just too many exposed dopers, who have adamantly professed their innocence, prior to being busted. Many of them never admit to their guilt. Rather, they just make up a story about having abnormal blood results because they were in the womb with a twin that was stillborn. Then they go away for a couple of years and come back to make a living at the sport.

What we never really get past in this discussion is that there is no solution to this problem. If there is money and fame in sport, there will be drugs. We should quit pretending to test, let the dopers run rampant and move on. We waste a lot of money and time on keeping up the facade of cleanliness.

Good post on the RBC impact of high/low living. It's interesting how the impact on VEGF never gets mentioned either. Let my clarify my position. I have no opinion of Salazar and would not, cannot corroborate the rumors perpetuated on this board, but for a couple of runners from the Boulder area who once told me that Salazar used to inject his runners with "iron bullets." They were uncomfortable with the notion, but I'm not sure why, and that gets to the crux of the matter.

Hard core, sustained training can certainly bring about iron deficiency, so does supplementing with Feosol to get ferritin levels back to proper levels constitute "cheating?" Is it not also plausible that extreme endurance exercise can also suppress the thyroid, just as it does the immune system, making "supplementation" not only reasonable but necessary?

To me, Salazar is the modern-day Olympic Training Center or at least what a training center should be in regards to endurance athletes. "Subsidies" are channeled in the most effective way to achieve the most desirable results when competing internationally. However, the question remains whether pushing the envelope and creating an environment not available to everyone else, while not circumventing the rules, is ethical or fair.

I have no disdain for Ritz. I quite like him and I want to see our runners succeed. No one in their right mind would reasonably question the guy's level of talent. And he's at his peak. David Moorcroft ran 13:00 in an essentially SOLO effort back in 1982, and likely would've been under in a rabbited race.

The irony is that the reason US distance runners are achieving success isn't necessarily a sudden genetic shift or an increased depth in the pool of potential stars like Africa. It's a RETURN to the past, the high volume, the minimalism of the shoes, etc that is getting guys back to the level of a Dave Moorcroft or a Ron Clarke or a Craig Virgin. Heck, is running more than 70 miles per week cheating?

Throw in the synthetic environment of an altitude house, the therapeutic supplementation, the blood analysis, the alter Gs and immediate attention to injuries, and abracadabra.... a 13:15 guy is suddenly a sub-13:00 performer. Or a guy with the potential to run 27:00 now has the ability to go below it.

Disagree. If a sport started handing out sanctions with real teeth (i.e. lifetime bans) that would go a long way towards cleaning things up. Yes, committed dopers will always be ahead of testers but tougher punishment helps to erode the incentive.

wilco will love you baby wrote:

What we never really get past in this discussion is that there is no solution to this problem. If there is money and fame in sport, there will be drugs. We should quit pretending to test, let the dopers run rampant and move on. We waste a lot of money and time on keeping up the facade of cleanliness.

Stupid comparison. Everybody knows the africans called it a day once they saw the conditions. He basically got his ass handed to him by a jogging Bekele. By the way, refresh my memory. Who got silver in the SENIOR race that year? Oh , yah, that world beater Sergey Lebid. I suppose if he ever ran a 26:40 you would've said he had it in him all time also?

Somebody mentioned that Trafeh has more talent than Ritz because he was born in Morocco. I tend to agree with the genetics argument. If Mo Trafeh was born with superior genetics, its only a matter of the right training and circumstances until he becomes an amazing runner. Look at the Kenyan national team. Some of those guys have been training for a year or two and already can come close to breaking 13 mins. Look at Daniel Komen... 19 years old and dominating the 1500 scene. Look at the world class sprinters. Theyre all big black men... Usain Bolt being the top of the top. Genes determine a LOT!

On top of that, I'm just glad Trafeh is on our side and I hope he continues to do the training he's doing because it's obviously working. This guy should write a book. He's self trained and performing amazingly. Don't tell my track group but I'd like to tailor my training to whatever he's doing. hahaha.

E_Smith wrote:

"Prednisone is a synthetic corticosteroid drug that is particularly effective as an immunosuppressant, and affects virtually all of the immune system. It is used to treat certain inflammatory diseases and (at higher doses) cancers, but has significant adverse effects. It is usually taken orally but can be delivered by intramuscular injection or intravenous injection. It has a mainly glucocorticoid effect. Prednisone is a prodrug that is converted by the liver into prednisolone, which is the active drug and also a steroid."

since other pro-hormones like andro are illegal I would think that prednisone would be too. as a steroid precursor I don't see how it could be in the gray area.

Because prednisone is a catabolic steroid precursor unlike andro which is an anabolic steroid precursor.

Just because something is a "steroid" doesn't mean it's good or helpful. You can get plenty of steroids for different reasons by a doctor, except all of them are going to be catabolic and useless for performance enhancement.