Joe Mama wrote:
It's a universal truth in sports right now, that as long as you know when the tests are coming, you can beat them. If you train in the off-season, in a reclusive area, you are going to know hours, if not days in advance before a tester is coming... and that's if its completely unannounced... for example, if you are micro dosing EPO, all you need is a hand full of hours, and maybe a jug of water, and you'll beat the test every time....
Compared to doping in cycling this is child's play. In cycling they were able to pull off doping during competitions that lasted weeks, and had athletes tested throughout the competition... if all Mr. Trackstar needs to do is run one race a few seconds to a few minutes long, it would be significantly less complicated to time your usage...
I'm certainly no expert on micro-dosing EPO, but considering that all of the testers do know where these athletes are at all times, why would the athletes know days or even hours in advance? The folks I know who sponsored Olympic / World Championship level atheletes didn't get that much notice. That would be the dumbest testing system ever.
Again, I'm not saying with certainty that none of these guys are doping, however I do doubt they are. What I am saying is that it seems crazy that a guy like Rupp is so highly accused of it, when guys like Jager, Teg, True, Mead, Derrick, Solinsky are not when from the high school level up to their current respective levels or peaks, Rupp has been consistently just that much better.
They are all very good, they always have been. They have all gotten better and better and better and eventually ran under 13:00 or are poised to do so. I mean if you were to look at a graph of where they started from in high school and are at now (or at their peak) the should line up very nicely, with Rupp consistently being a little better.
As far as the "he suddenly got fast" claim. That is just silly. Anyone following the last 10 years knows that he started out as a 5K-10K guy, with emphasis on the 10K. He ran 29:09 as a high schooler, ran 28:15 as a college frosh, going sub 14:00 on the second half all alone, and 27:32 as a college junior. He was working on strength the entire time.
Isn't it the brojos who said strength equals speed? Well 5-7 years of working on monster strength in a way that no other recent high schooler ever had should produce the most finishing speed then right? This was a guy who before he could legally drink beer would follow up a 5000 or 10000 race with a work out. How many were doing that kind of work? If you do that year after year, slowly increasing your volume along with it, you are going to build your strength but continue to run right at the redline. Eventually when you are in your mid twenties start to get on top of it.
Then you make a coaching philosophical change and put emphasis on speed work and implement 800 and 1500 races, start working out with wheating, centro, mcnamara, acosta and which every else 3:36-3:39 guy Oregon had at the time and guess what, you get faster.
It's almost like people are saying, if you go from working out strictly as a 5K-10K guy doing long sessions, and begin working out with some of the best milers in the US, you should NOT get faster! That is just not logical.
And you'd still ignore the fact that he closed out his 27:32 in about 2:00 and won the race in 2007, and ran 4:01 in high school while having the strength to run 29:09.
Most high schoolers race 800, 1600, 3200 or 800, 1500, 3000 so when they are racing the mile, they are damn well tuned for it. Rupp raced a mile to tune for 5000.