The Magic is in Believing wrote:
Pete why should we trust in the testing..., there must now be a level of suspicion surrounding the So Cal runners don't you think?
If you think it's only So Cal runners who should be under suspicion these days, then you're living under a rock. Seriously, I'm so depressed about the drug situation in our sport that some days I think I should just toss out the Nikes.
I wrote a column in Running Times a year ago after 4 masters were suspended for PED use. Wejo and I had traded emails on the subject previously. I'd complained that he shouldn't allow threads accusing masters of drug use, since by and large we didn't. He said I was naive. He was right. It killed me to write that column, especially since I'd solicited emails from masters in advance, promising them anonymity if they'd tell me the truth about drug use. Let's just say that testosterone cream isn't just for low testosterone anymore.
And then there's the Kenyan doping scandal. And the HUGE drop in 5000 times the exact same year that synthetic EPO went on the market.
And there are people like Hesch (fyi, from my peripheral involvement in the RW story, I'm aware of the other "so cal" people involved with the Tijuana pharamacies - there are two of them according to Hesch's confession to a teammate, but I won't give their names because my info is second-hand - and because I got it off the record - and no one should be publicly named as a potential PED user unless we absolutely know it's true ... it's the old genie in the bottle thing; we can never fully undo a false accusation).
Look, I'm going to be 100% honest here. I'm like a lot of LetsRun posters. I hear an unbelievable time, and the first thing that crosses my mind is, "Drugs?" But then I scold myself. Because that's not fair. You know, threads pop up on LetsRun accusing me of PED use (one popped up yesterday), and I'm clean - but I can also see how some people might wonder how a 50-year-old runs 15:02 and 31:11. You know how? Because I train smart and I'm lucky as hell. But I can't prove that. None of us can "prove" we're clean in an age where athletes get away with cheating in every sport all the time!
So I don't know how to answer you, Magic is in Believing. You're right that we can't trust anyone. You're right that we can't trust testing. But we won't have a sport if we don't trust runners who've given us no reason to distrust them. If I race a half-dozen times in non-money races in a year, fighting injury and not racing for 9 months of that year, does that sound like a drug cheat? Because that's what I did last year. If you know a kid who starts out as a 15:10 5K runner in his early twenties, then trains his ass off for 10 years, never slacking, to become a 14:35 5K runner, does that sound like a drug cheat? Because I know a local runner who did that (and it's for guys like him that I get so furious at guys like Hesch, who steal finish tapes and glory from hard-working local guys).
The answer, I think, is that we start by trusting ourselves, by training correctly and ethically. And then we trust the guys we train with, clubmates and running buddies. And then we trust the guys and gals we've known through the years, whose ups and downs and success and failures and injuries and etc. all match our experiences of this sport. And then we just go from there, training and competing and hoping that others will share our vision.
Or we throw out our Nikes.
Today, I'm gonna keep the Nikes.