Ritz Talks NYC Half, Hansons-Brooks, L-Carnitine, And His Upcoming Return To The Marathon in Boston

S. Canaday wrote:

I came on here to defend Rojo. The guy got a very high SAT score (which means one is not stupid) and graduated from Princeton with honors. In my personal interactions with him (where we certainly did not agree on some things...and even got in arguments at times), I can realize and admit that he has a higher IQ than I do ...

People who come on here and complain about typos and try to make points with illogical reasoning are probably closer to an average IQ.

You write (and wield logic) like my college freshmen, and about half of them are writing in a second language or attended high school in a disadvantaged district. By the end the semester, they will all be better writers regardless of their field of study. You already *have* a four-year Cornell education...

Like, seriously...you really think a "high SAT score" is a useful indicator of practical, applied intelligence in a 40 year old man? Or has anything to do with journalistic training and instincts? What on earth is wrong with you?

People like to jump all over Rupp, but how dare we call out Ritz. I'm sorry it's a double standard!!!! Ritz was an adult and knew what he was doing was wrong, but he did it anyway!!!!!!

I for one think Ritz is cute as fuq. If Richard Gere went into athletics instead of acting, he would be like that.

I forgot to mention, I see a bit of Ryan Gosling in him too. He is definitely the cutest male runner(apart from Bekele).

You forgot one major difference between Ritz and Rupp. RITZ LEFT ALBERTO. This happened long before (3 years) his contract ended.

#cleansport wrote:

People like to jump all over Rupp, but how dare we call out Ritz. I'm sorry it's a double standard!!!! Ritz was an adult and knew what he was doing was wrong, but he did it anyway!!!!!!

Yes. He knew but he wanted to win too bad. It's Ritz's fault.

LR Critics: Better questions could have been asked in that interview.

Sage: Not possible! Rojo majored in Econ and scored well on the SATs! His IQ is higher than mine to boot!

Better questions:

"Why didn't you know the WADA rules? Is that common for a 28 year old professional runner?"

"Why did you ask your coach about the WADA rules instead of looking them up?"

"What was the maximum injection you received?"

"Did the injections help you?"

"Who else received such injections?"

"Why - in your opinion - did USADA not ban anyone from your group who used this forbidden method?"

Accept Except wrote:

You forgot one major difference between Ritz and Rupp. RITZ LEFT ALBERTO. This happened long before (3 years) his contract ended.

He LEFT ALBERTO before taking the drugs or after? It’s too bad he didn’t refuse all the drugs as hard as he refused to wear the NOP jersey in Boston. It sure would have saved him a lot of trouble, and integrity, but it would have cost him a lot of money.

I think they’d have better results if they experimented with high doses (~3-8 grams) of L-Citrulline 30 minutes before running because it converts quickly to NO and results in increased vascular dilation.

This thread is amazingly funny. I'm not sure how a thread on ritz turned into a thread on the correlation between SAT and IQ stores. It proves my belife that all threads after about 3 pages just turn into a personal pissing match between like 5 people obsessed with a certain topic. I mean there is some thread on our site about some woman who did some ultra run or treadmill run that has thousands of posts.

Anyway, I'm pleased Sage has got my back. I remember after having a long meeting with Sage once one of the other coaches at COrnell said, "Wow that guy is a lot of work - must be a pain to a coach." I was like, "That's not the way to view it at all. He wants to be great ." Yes a pain I guess if you are a lazy coach used to shoving it down the athletes throats but Sage's passion has served him well.

The person with the "highest IQ" in terms of what matters in the modern social media driven world in 2018 has to be Sage. I'm blown away that he has like 90k followers on youtube. He's done that without dressing provocatively, posting a porno movie all the while being a professional ultra/trail guy. I mean flotrack killed off their trail/ultra site as presumably there was little audience in it and yet Sage has created his own brand.

Keep it going Sage.

Timing Matters wrote:

Accept Except wrote:

You forgot one major difference between Ritz and Rupp. RITZ LEFT ALBERTO. This happened long before (3 years) his contract ended.

He LEFT ALBERTO before taking the drugs or after? It’s too bad he didn’t refuse all the drugs as hard as he refused to wear the NOP jersey in Boston. It sure would have saved him a lot of trouble, and integrity, but it would have cost him a lot of money.

I think he left NOP because Rupp was moving to "his distance" and knew support was not going his way.

Sage both has your back and is the one who turned this into a discussion of SAT, GMAT, and IQ score and undergrad majors. Also I'm not sure if you're mocking Sage or not by saying he has the "highest IQ" in quotes.

What I find interesting is how quick people are to bash anyone that posts under their real identities (brojos, Sage, Renato, etc.). If it isn't something you would say to them in person, think twice about what you are going to write. You're talking to a real person that has taken the risk of revealing their identity on an online message board.

My comments would be the same regardless if they used real or anonymous identities. As always I'm only commenting on what's being said in the threads.

The thread was about you patting yourself on the back for doing quite literally your job as a journalist. And then you make questionable statements about gotcha questions.

Sage then turned that into a chance to suck up to for some odd reason.

At least you guys let criticism stand instead of deleting any negative comments about you as you usually do.

On ROJO's Interview - he asked some good questions, but didn't press Ritz when Ritz deflected. It happens. Boston is in a few weeks, there will be another opportunity then.

On RITZ's Situation with Nike and the Investigation - there are so many considerations about why he may not want to discuss his time with NOP. For one, the mental stress. At best he has only a few more years of serious, competitive racing left. If he declines to speak about NOP, then the issue will more quickly be dropped by the media.

This is my complete speculation, but another reason I assume Ritz is keeping silent is that he doesn't want to deal with any hassle from Salazar or Nike. Just because he no longer runs for the company doesn't mean that Nike cannot go out of its way to prevent him from being entered at major races/events. While I find the chances of Nike doing that unlikely, it still could be a possibility. For now, they can just go their separate ways and agree not to speak negatively about each other.

And on USADA's investigation - I wonder if they really have enough to levy a sanction against NOP. Or maybe they do, but not enough to beat an appeal. Nike's first defense to any charge would be "show us a failed drug test." Then, to the extent that there are some athletes who discussed the injections of the L-Carnitine - Dr. Brown could respond and say that every treatment complied with the medical standards and code. Also, any athlete who supposedly violated the protocols could be subject to a sanction. If not from USADA, then WADA. This whole situation has already been discussed ad nauseam, so I won't go further down the rabbit hole. But the last I had read, USADA was trying to use the Texas Medical Board to pressure Brown into testifying, and based on Dr. Brown's online profile on the TMB website, he isn't being investigated or considered for any discipline as of today.

I wish the best of luck to Ritz both in the upcoming half and at Boston. He is a tremendous runner and arguably one of the most talented this country has ever produced.

Hey thanks Rojo,

I'm sure I was a big pain to coach in college (sorry about that!).

Also didn't mean to hijack this thread and rant about IQ/SAT scores like I did .

Obviously I'm biased (since I personally know Rojo and greatly respect him), but what I was trying to get at was this:

Imagine interviewing Ritz on the phone and coming up with these types of questions on the fly.... a lot of these "anonymous keyboard warriors" think they can do a much better job and ask much better questions. Of course it is easier to type them out after the fact.

I think a lot of people on here are just too critical in general. Offer constructive criticism and feedback if you disagree about the content/methods instead of just throwing around petty insults. Finally, if you think you can do better, then maybe you should apply yourself and create your own website from scratch and interview runners like Ritz for all of us to see.

LetsRun has the differentiation because they have smart people that have been passionately involved in the sport for a long time and they push certain angles/questions that other media wouldn't dare to ask. Gotta give credit where credit is due.