Runners

[BloodnThunder]

Yes.  Almost three years ago to the day her Marathon PR was 2:24:45, which is world class for a female.  When an athlete is already an elite a 10+ minute improvement is really just not feasible.  Last year at Chicago she 'only' ran 2:18.35 so In a year she improved 4.5 minutes. In today's day and age there is really only one explanation for that type of gain.

[neversummer]

Interesting. I’ve just looked at some progression on Wikipedia- her previous pr was set in April at London. In 6 months she took out 4:16. By comparison, it took Kipchoge 5 years+ to take out 3:51 from his first marathon in 2013 to the current wr. His progression to the wr certainly looks more organic, with improvement in seconds, while she has tended to make huge leaps. Her first was 2:47:59 in November 2015 (maybe an outlier?), so she’s taken out over 30 minutes in 4 years. If you discount that, 10+ minutes in three years seems like a lot.
I was thinking today of Lance Armstrong constantly repeating that he’d never tested positive as proof he wasn’t doping. We all know how that went. I’d like to think we are in a new era, but maybe it’s a new era of better/undetectable drugs or regimen. Thinking about Balco and Barry Bonds, he didn’t test positive because no one knew the drugs he was taking even existed. And heck, people who are masters level cat 3 have been caught doping to win local races...
I’d have to guess it’s rampant in ultra running. No governing body, no out of competition testing, no real testing except at certain races. I read an article somewhere where Sage Canaday said you wouldn’t even have to be careful or microdose. Just stop so your body flushes everything out if you’re doing a race where you might be tested.

[Matty123]

Enough with these shin splints. I run a mile and the pain becomes unbearable. I have to run interval sprints. The only way it doesn’t hurt

[cander49]

Good points. While he is ‘only’ 1:40 off, that’s a lot of time to take out in reality.
Saw the female world record was set this weekend as well at Chicago. @cander49 has now run two races where a wr was set, so he must be the X factor.

Hahaha. I had a fairly mediocre day in Chicago this year, but at least I was only 1:53 off my PR with a rough second half and a decent bit of late race puking. Motivated for next time. I think my diet is holding me back right now, so I'm going to clean it up and cut all the ridiculous junk food that I eat.

There should be zero doubt that Brigid Kosgei is doped to the gills. She's in the Gabriele Rosa group, for which many of the previous world beaters have test positive and get banned (Asbel Kiprop won 4 combined Olympic or World Championships gold medals on the track, Jemima Sumgong won an Olympic gold and the London Marathon, Rita Jeptoo won the Chicago Marathon twice and Boston three times). Sadly, Rosa also coached some big talent before all the bans that must all be heavily suspected for doping, such as Paul Tergat (former marathon WR), Martin Lel (winner of NYC and London Marathons), and Moses Tanui (world champion at 10,000 and two-time winner of Boston Marathon). Rosa, himself, was charged with doping his athletes in Kenya, but the case was eventually dropped.

I'm not that excited about Kipchoge's sub 2, to be honest. There wasn't really a doubt he could do it with that kind of pacing. Based on how easy it looked for him and how much he sped up in the last kilometer, he could have run 1:58:xx under those conditions. I've argued repeatedly that he was capable of 2:00:xx in Berlin last year with perfect conditions and pacing. It was slightly too hot and sunny (not a big deal, but worth probably 20-30 seconds, and his pacers did a terrible job, pacing a little unevenly and dropping earlier than they were supposed to. It seems possible that someone could organize a real race with a bunch of 2:03 guys getting paid a bunch of money to pace in that Vienna formation as long as they could hang on (25k at least?), and then he could just finish on his own. The race would be legal without having subbed in pacers, and he'd have a legitimate shot at sub-2 in a real race. The other main issue is that he's not, on paper, clearly the top marathoner in the world anymore, so it's less special given that Kenenisa Bekele could almost certainly have done it as well. Bekele is back within 2 seconds in a real race (2:01:41 in Berlin recently), and he did that coming off an injury with an abridged training cycle. Bekele beat Kipchoge on the track nearly every time back in the day, and he's running essentially the same time as Kipchoge without having enough time to be 100%. Dude was a full 30 pounds over race weight earlier this year after injury, took it off in two months, and came back to run a 2:01. If he stays healthy (a big if at this point in his career), there's no doubt he is capable of at least sub-2:01 under legal racing if the conditions are good. Ultimately, Kipchoge will always have a big asterisk on the 1:59, and it will steal the thunder from whoever does it under a legal scenario, which is too bad for them.

[BloodnThunder]

Unfortunately doping is always one step ahead of the tests.  That gap is shortening but it is still entirely possible to get away with it.  Out of competition testing is key as that is when the real doping takes place.  In some of the African countries out of competition testing is rare compared to the US and some European countries....  Then you have countries like Russia where everyone knows about it and they're all in on the scheme.

[BloodnThunder]

Good points. While he is ‘only’ 1:40 off, that’s a lot of time to take out in reality.
Saw the female world record was set this weekend as well at Chicago. @cander49 has now run two races where a wr was set, so he must be the X factor.

Hahaha. I had a fairly mediocre day in Chicago this year, but at least I was only 1:53 off my PR. Motivated for next time.

There should be zero doubt that Brigid Kosgei is doped to the gills. She's in the Gabriele Rosa group, for which many of the previous world beaters have test positive and get banned (Asbel Kiprop won 4 combined Olympic or World Championships gold medals on the track, Jemima Sumgong won an Olympic gold and the London Marathon, Rita Jeptoo won the Chicago Marathon twice and Boston three times). Sadly, Rosa also coached some big talent before all the bans that must all be heavily suspected for doping, such as Paul Tergat (former marathon WR), Martin Lel (winner of NYC and London Marathons), and Moses Tanui (world champion at 10,000 and two-time winner of Boston Marathon).

It's pretty embarrassing for the sport that Rosa hasn't been banned for life at this point. 

[cander49]

Agreed. But, let's be fair. It's not like Paula Radcliffe wasn't doped, herself. I have no delusions that anyone at their level is clean, but it's just annoying when the most obvious cases get the big results (Sifan Hassan, anyone?)

[cander49]

Unfortunately doping is always one step ahead of the tests.  That gap is shortening but it is still entirely possible to get away with it.  Out of competition testing is key as that is when the real doping takes place.  In some of the African countries out of competition testing is rare compared to the US and some European countries....  Then you have countries like Russia where everyone knows about it and they're all in on the scheme.

The problem with out of competition is that you can just skip two tests in a year (or in 100m world champion Christian Coleman's case, three, with extremely good luck and a technicality preventing him from getting banned) with absolutely no consequences. "Oops, I thought you were a burglar and locked myself in my panic room and refused to come out when you showed up to test me! Good thing there's no negative consequence for that!" - Mo Farah

[BloodnThunder]

True.  There need to be changes to doping controls regardless of the country.  But the frequency with which top athletes from some countries are tested out of competition vs. others is an issue.  They should of course be random but they should also be frequent.  Unfortunately, even without skipped tests you can beat the system with microdosing, masking agents, etc.  There really isn't a solution to the problem. 

And you won't get any argument from me that Radcliffe was juiced to the gills.

What's also sad, and a bit comical, about all of the doping is it is also rampant at the lower tiers.  Whether it's a pride factor or something else sub-elite and masters level competition has its fair share of cheating.  It's not like they're making a living racing but for some reason plenty of guys still choose to do it.

[neversummer]

https://www.nytimes.com/video/opinion/100000006788354/nike-running-mary-cain.html?fbclid=IwAR3CpDc23NOMDAN_gep5NQ3kzcspEG-rfR0jSxbe_EZ7fnlaBugxF5ZehGU

I suppose by now, most of you have seen or read this story. Thoughts?

[Brock]

21 miles in the Mt Hood National Forest




Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[AdamJ]

Incredible views

[Bfd70]

@Brock looks so fun. Great scenery. Jealous.

[BloodnThunder]

@neversummer just saw your post.  I'm going to apologize up front for what could be a rant.

Having run division I track and cross country and competing post collegiately semi-professionally (sponsorship where I received gear but no actual salary) I have a decent amount of experience dealing with and being trained by high level coaches.  At the D1 level, and certainly professional, weight is huge.  Coaches, rightfully so, pay a lot of attention to the weight of their athletes as being over or under weight hinders performance massively.  Weight is an unbelievably sensitive subject, especially for women, so addressing a female athlete about being overweight is a very steep and slippery slope to an eating disorder.  That said, Mary Cain was a highly trained professional athlete.  She was paid very well to maintain a body that allowed her to perform at her best.  She was part of what was likely the most well funded team in the world with access to numerous doctors and coaches all working to have her perform her best.  Maybe the delivery of some of the comments was less than ideal, which is not good for helping build an athlete's confidence, but they were delivered because she was not performing well.  I personally recall watching a few races with her where one of my first thoughts when she would begin fading in a race was, "Not that surprising.  She's overweight."  This isn't me thinking Mary Cain is fat it's me observing that she is not out on the razor's edge of leanness, which is where athletes need to be to perform optimally. 

I think the unfortunate thing about a lot of these situations, Alberto is not even close to the first, is that the media jumps at the chance to paint the coach in a bad light for saying an athlete, especially female, needs to lose weight.  Sometimes it is absolutely true.  The delivery and possible verbal abuse relating to it can be totally unacceptable but it would be great if they acknowledged that both the athletes and coaches are paid (A LOT) to maximize performance and ideal weight is critical to do so.

Since the above was posted other NOP female athletes have also come forward with their experiences.  Some mentioning Salazar did the opposite and actually went to great lengths to get them to gain weight as he felt their performance has hindered by being too thin.

From everything I have read Alberto is a master at pushing boundaries; he was banned 4 years because he pushed too far.  But what I have also gleaned from all my reading is that everything he did was with the best interest of his athlete's performance in mind.  He clearly went too far on more than one occasion but outside of possibly an inappropriate comment I do not think he did anything wrong when being critical of his athlete's weights.  This may be blunt but as much as anything I think Mary Cain's situation is one where an athlete with a fragile confidence had a hard time hearing the truth and her performance suffered because of it.  She has since been away from NOP for at least a year or two and has still not recovered.  I have to believe part of that is due to the fact she is still overweight.

[neversummer]

@BloodnThunder I didn’t know that about you, but not surprised. Whenever you do log a run on strava, you are fast. Both you and Collin’s easy days are faster than my hard days. I guess also not surprising on me- I’ve hated running most of my life, only really started to like it in the last few years, and I’m 39 now. I’ll never be at that level, but it’s still fun to cover long distances on foot.
Great counterpoints you raise. I enjoyed reading your reply though I forgot to reply back! Being at that level, you have a unique insight into that world and what it takes. So thank you!

Anyone have any reflections on your 2019 season? Achieve any goals, do any fun races? Plans or goals for 2020?