The Barefoot Kilimanjaro Challenge

The Barefoot Kilimanjaro Challenge

Only 3 days to go before I jet off to Kilimanjaro to tackle Africa's highest summit, and the world's highest free-standing mountain...barefoot...

 
Let me start off by pointing out that doing this climb has NOTHING to do with advocacy for barefoot running (or living) and nor is it even related to the whole barefoot running debate, which I've covered quite a lot lately here on The Science of Sport (you can read the most recent posts here and here if you're interested in my position!)

No, this trip is all about a) the challenge, b) the charity and c) the quite fascinating problem-solving approach required to combat the terrain, the altitude and the cold, and how these three "foes" interact with one another.  Basically, it's an exploratory trip, which I think is possible, but I readily accept may not be! (It has been done before, reportedly - local guides report that an Italian man did it, and a woman from Colorado has done it, but wearing cycling booties to cover the top of the feet, apparently).  We can only control every variable possible and then hope for best on the day!  My mission is to help get ONE person to the top barefoot, and to do it safely.  I'd obviously love to be that person, or one of many to do it barefoot, but I accept that given the time-frames, it may not be possible for me.  Only time will tell, but as I say, the goal is to get one person, minimum, to the top of Africa.

The bottom line is that people's first response is "Impossible" or "Outrageous".  And maybe that's the truth, but it's also the best reason to try, because just maybe, if you think about the challenges, then you start to see potential solutions.  And if you can overcome then, then you do the impossible, and that's what I'm looking forward to exploring!

But before I get into that, this trip is also aimed at raising money for a great cause - the Red Cross Children's Hospital in South Africa.  It's a world class facility, with some great doctors doing among the best medical work you'll find anywhere.  They are the beneficiaries of this trip, and I'd love to help raise them money through your donations.  Visit the expedition homepage for more information and to donate!

The start of the journey

To take you back to the very beginning of this particular story (for me, anyway), I met a group of guys last year in September who asked me for some assistance in their preparation for an attempt to become the first people to reach the summit of Kilimanjaro without shoes.  They'd been doing pretty much everything barefoot since July 2011 and wanted to know more about altitude and the cold. 

I gave them some advice, stayed in touch, until in about November, the expedition organizer, Matt Botha floated a proposal that was simply too good to ignore: "Come with us, help us on the mountain and not just before".  I took about 5 seconds to say yes, and another 5 minutes to decide that I didn't want to merely think about the challenges facing these "nutters", to rationalize and intellectualize the effects of cold, altitude and sharp rocks on the team's chance of success - I wanted to feel it.  And so I decided in November that I would also try to do this barefoot.  I'm willing to accept that in the 6 weeks since that I decision, I may not have had the time to get my feet ready.  Much will depend on the surface and on the speed at which we walk (try run on gravel and then walk slowly to see what I mean).  So I am, as I type this, a mixture of confident, hopeful, and anxious.  But therein lies the challenge...

A set of problems: Terrain, altitude and cold - which one gets you first?

Hiking to 5,895m brings with it a quite fascinating set of problems to solve.  Some are obvious, some less so.  The obvious ones are the altitude (not unique to being barefoot of course), the cold (a particular problem for us) and the terrain.  Kilimanjaro is known for it's sharp, jagged shale and the prospect of many hours on that surface is an anxiety-inducing one!

The terrain and nature's outsole

Getting the feet tough enough is just a matter of being habitually barefoot.  It means walking on tar, gravel, off-road at every possible opportunity until "nature's outsole" becomes so thick that those small stones feel like pressure, and not pain.  There's not too much to say about this, other than that everyone (barring me) has done it for six months and should be ready in this regard.  We've sent an experienced guide up our planed route (the Rongai route from the north-east) armed with a camera to film the various stages.  We've scouted it through a collection of photographs, testimonials and videos, and we've walked on surfaces that simulate what we'll encounter, but of course, we will only truly know when we feel it for ourselves.  And that's about as well prepared as we can be for now!

Altitude

The altitude is equally difficult to predict.  It's impossible to know who will thrive at altitude, and who will suffer.  The physiological response to arrival at altitude (even the lower slopes of Kili are high enough to be classified as altitude) is to hyperventilate.  We breathe more deeply and more often, and the result is that we breathe of carbon dioxide.  Carbon dioxide is known as a volatile acid, because it combines with water to produce carbonic acid. As a result, breathing off CO2 causes our blood pH to rise - we develop what is called respiratory alkalosis.  That's not necessarily good news, because as our pH rises, it actually blunts the ventilatory response.  So in the very situation where we would want to breathe more, this physiological response kind of dampens it - we breathe with "the handbrake" on.

The next step is that the kidneys kick in, and help to correct this alkalosis by excreting more bicarbonate.  The result is a corrected alkalosis, which bascially removes the "handbrake" and allows hyperventilation to help us keep our pO2 and oxygen delivery to the tissues normal.  The problem is that this takes time, particularly the metabolic correction, and so when the altitude continues to increase without this adaptation, we are unable to adapt and can, in severe cases, develop acute mountain sickness, the worst symptoms of which are pulmonary and cerebral oedema.  If you get those, you're having a bad day out. 

Predicting who this will be is a difficult, if not impossible task.  Individuals with the highest alveolar ventilation and highest oxygen saturation levels tend to do better at altitude, but there is little correlation to fitness or to training, and so the fact that the team is fit and well-trained has only limited relevance in this case.  We'll only really know about the altitude once we're up above 4,000m. 

We have a set of plans in place to minimize the effect, and they are not limited to medication.  The trip has been designed to take one day longer to ascend, which gives us a day of adaptation at 4000m.  We also have a day where the change in altitude is minimal (from 4300 to 4700m, so only 400 m ascent) and so these are two "buffer days" that we are optimistic will allow us to get above 5,000m feeling strong for that final push. 

And this will be vital.  One of the "combination problem" we face is that the cold is going to force us to stop often in order to warm our feet up (see below).  Therefore, we'll be losing time, and for every 10 minutes, we'll only be walking about 7 minutes.  The ability to walk faster than normal in order to get this lost time back is going to be crucial.  That means that we need to not only adapt, but do well at altitude, and this a crucial success factor.

The cold - not an endurance test, but physiology

And finally, we have the cold.  This is probably the biggest concern, and has been the main source of worry for me (there have been sleepless nights in the last month!)

The temperature at the summit has remained relatively constant over the last month, at around -5 to -6 degrees celsius (23F).  At night, it drops to around -8 (18F).  The wind chill factor is worth another 4 to 5 degrees, so we are looking at a temperature of around -9 to -10 degrees at the summit when we go up (we will not go up at night).  That's cold enough to keep you up at night with worry, I'm sure you'd agree!

I won't bore you with discussions of frostbite, other than to say that it's not fun, and equals a very bad day out.  I say this from experience... I hope, and will spend every ounce of my energy on the climb to make sure of this, that I will not see a case of frostbite in either my feet of those of the other 6 teams members.  This is all about prevention, and not treatment. If anyone develops symptoms, their expedition is over, for safety's sake, and I've worked hard at emphasizing this - there cannot be any "macho" toughing it out, or pushing through the pain.  As I said, I'll do everything I can to ensure that we stay well below the limits of freezing our tissues.  It's a big challenge.

To prepare, we have been testing the limits of tolerance to various cold temperatures.  That is, I've been taking some of the team into a cold room, at temperatures ranging from -6 C to - 18 C and testing how long we can walk for, and how long it to rewarm the feet to allow us to continue.  It has been a fascinating experience, but not without peril.  I guess the only way to truly know what the "limit" is is to exceed it, which I did on myself.  Just over a week ago, I developed mild frostbite in both feet as a result of staying at -10 C for too long without rewarming.

It was a valuable lesson, for me, and for the team, because it drummed home how cautious we will have to be (you can read more about the experience and my thoughts on the cold at this article which I wrote for the Barefoot Impi website).  It also finally confirmed for me what the schedule will be on the mountain.  The plan at this stage (and it is a flexible plan, that's for sure) is to walk for 7 minutes, then stop for 3 minutes to actively warm our feet.  That will be repeated for an hour, followed by a 20 minute stop to properly re-warm.  Seven "repeats" of this hour equals the summit.  No one said it would be easy...but the idea is that by stopping every 7 minutes, we never allow the tissue to freeze, and then return to baseline every hour with a long heating stop.

There is more to it than this, but I'll share the details with you from the mountain, as the expedition evolves.  The other thing that we have in our favour is that we ascend gradually, and the temperature drops along with our ascent. Therefore, on our third day when we are an Mawenzi Tarn (4300m), we expect the temperature to be around + 5 C (41 F).  That is cold, but safe, and so we'll have a good idea of what the mountain is throwing at us BEFORE we hit those sub-zero temperatures. On our rest day at 4,700m, we plan to hike up to the rim (partly for altitude adaptation) and return to camp later, and during this day-hike, we'll wear shoes, but check the terrain and temperatures to get an idea of what waits the next day.   Learning and adapting on the go will be the name of the game.

Ground temperature - a key factor

And finally, the key factor, the one that is probably going to make or break the expedition, will be the ground temperature.  It's one thing for the air temperature to be -5 C, but it's another thing to be walking on a solid surface at -5 C.  The cold room we have trained in has a steel floor that is probably -10 C, and that was a huge factor in my own case of frost-bite last week.  Walking on freezing ground would be a very, very difficult ask. Probably impossible.  However, having viewed countless videos on Kilimanjaro at this time of the year (Jan and Feb are the warmest monthson the mountain, by the way), I am confident that there is no ice on the path.  That means the ground temperature is above zero for a good portion of the day, even if the air is -5 C, and that's cause for optimism.  If the ground, heated by the sun, reaches anything in the range of positive temperatures, our task will be made exponentially easier.  In fact, based on the cold room tests, I'd say that air temperatures of -10 with a ground temperature of +2 C is easier than air temps of -5 and ground temps of -5. 

To capitalize on this ppssibility, we will not hike at night.  The normal procedure is to start for the summit from the Kibo camp at midnight, so that you get to the top for the sunrise (they allocate 7 hours for these 4.6 km, so steep is the climb and so inhibiting is the effect of the altitude).  We have modified this plan - we will start a few hours after sunrise, summit just before sunset, and then put shoes on and head down at night.  We are hoping that the addition of radiant heating of the ground does us a big favour.  Let's hope for the Africa sun to work its magic.!

Finally, other reasons for confidence... when you are walking 4.6 km in 7 hours, you are taking 9 minutes per 100m.  Try walking that slowly.  Now, the good thing about this is that if you walk as slowly as that, you can get away with walking on quite sharp, rough ground.  Try it.  Find some gravel and walk your normal speed (about 1 to 1.5 min per 100m), and then repeat at 5 min per 100m pace.  Feel that difference.  We are optimistic that this will be in our favour on the shale slopes of Kilimanjaro.

Impossible?  Possibly, but delve deeper

Having said this, I remain anxious. Optimistically anxious, I guess you could call it. There is a lot that we cannot predict.  We don't know how altitude, or cold (air and ground), or the ground will affect us independently, let alone how they may interact with one another. I am also worried about the time on my feet - 6 to 8 hours, five days, that's a tough ask to repeat barefoot.

Then there are other, more subtle issues to worry about as well.  Sore feet mean adapted walking, and so we may end up with overuse injuries as a result of compensating how we walk. Cuts are a factor. Broken toes. So certainly, I'm nervous. We will take no risks - at the first sign of problems like frostbite or acute mountain sickness, we will act decisively to prevent long-term problems. But we are still committed, and I still believe that it is possible. Only time will tell.
Finally, I realise that the first response to this is often "impossible".  And perhaps we will return on Jan 31st saying "yes, it is".  But what I hope emerges, apart from achieving the first barefoot summit of the mountain, is the realization that when we dismiss something as impossible, we might be blinding ourselves to the fact that all it takes is some planning, preparation and deeper thought before potential solutions emerge.  For example, people have told me it's crazy because the temperatures at night are -18 degrees celsius when they did the summit.  Well, we're not doing it at night, and the temperatures don't drop that low in January.  It's actually quite disheartening how easily people dismiss things based purely on their experience.  It's almost as though they believe that if they got cold then it will be impossible for everyone else. 

The point is that there may be solutions to every possible problem you can think of.  Imagine if people stopped to think about them and solve them instead of labelling ideas outrageous and never making that second, third and fourth step.  Those steps may still fail, of course, but until you take them, you never know.

I've briefly discussed some of the steps we'll be taking in the post above.  Over the course of the next 8 days, I will be filming videos from the summit, talking you through what we are doing to combat the three issues mentioned above in more detail.  I don't know if I will be able to post these videos "live", but the worst case scenario is that when I return to South Africa on Jan 31st, I'll upload all the videos, and you can watch the trip evolve and hear me talk you through how difficult it is!

Also, I'll try to provide progress updates on Facebook and Twitter.  So if you haven't joined those communities, do so now!

And again, any donations to the Children's Hospital are greatly appreciated!

Ross

P.S.  As a final comment on Kilimanjaro, have a look at the video at this link (I tried to embed but there seems to be a blogger problem, so click through).  It shows Killian Jornet breaking the record for summitting Kilimanjaro - 7 hours 14 minutes return trip from the bottom.  Incredible performance.  But specifically, have a look at what he wears, on his hands and his head.  And yes, I realize that he is running up the climb and generating a lot more heat than we will, but anyone who has ever run at anything close to -10 C knows that your head and hands still get cold.  Jornet also doesn't wrap up at the summit when he stops for a break.  Look also at his team waiting for him on the summit, warmly dressed but without gloves.  There are many other videos of the summit where people are not in gloves at this time of the year.  This is basically to make the point that all the nay-sayers who point out that it's -20 at the summit are probably recalling the wrong time of year!  Let's hope so anyway!  And besides, it's the ground temperature that really matters!

The video also shows the terrain quite nicely - at 1:50, when Jornet gets onto the rim, there's a great close-up of what we'll be walking on.  It's a great video, educational and impressive!

Science of Sport awards: Teams of the year - Kenya & Barcelona

Team of the year - Kenyan athletics and Barcelona

Welcome to 2012!  It's an Olympic year, the undoubted highlight of the year for us, but there are Tours, Marathons, meets and matches to cover and we are looking forward to the analysis, debate and discussion.  We hit our three millionth visitor on New Year's Eve, and we're hoping for another million this year!  Dollars, that is...!

I'm still forging on with the recap of 2011 (better late than never), only three to go, and then we'll start looking ahead to 2012.  And today, it's Team of the Year, which is a shared award between Kenya (a pseudo-team, since athletics/running aren't exactly team sports) and Barcelona.

Kenya - total dominance

2011 was the year of the marathon, and it was completely owned by Kenya.  Not just dominated, but owned.  The year-end lists show that the Top 20 times in the marathon were run by Kenyans.  That's right - all 20 were from Kenya.  That list includes a new world record, and the winning performances from every major city marathon in 2011, and the World Championships marathon.  Not only were the majors won by Kenyans, but the course records at every major city marathon were broken too.  Not in that list are the incredible Boston marathon performances, where Mutai and Mosop ran 2:03:02 and 2:03:06 respectively, since those times are not eligible for official lists (the result of that, in case you are wondering, is that Ryan Hall's 2:04:58 also doesn't feature on that list - it's the fastest performance by a non-Kenyan in 2011, but not official).

The result of this Kenyan dominance was that the average of the Top 10 performances was a staggering 2:05:00.  That's almost 40 seconds faster than the world record only nine years ago, and more athletes broke 2:07 in 2011 than ever before (25 did it - 24 were Kenyan, only dos Santos of Brazil is in that company.  2:06 was broken by 11 men, incidentally).  In November, I analyzed the top performances and discussed the "seismic shift" that has occurred, along with some of the reasons behind it - worth a read for more detail.

Perhaps the most remarkable statistic was this one - 70 Kenyans ran faster over the marathon than the fastest European athlete. That was Oleksandr Sitkovskyy, a Ukranian who ran 2:09:26.  Ryan Hall's officially recognized performance from Chicago (2:08:04) is the second-fastest of the year by a non-African (dos Santos being first).

Kenya's dominance does not end with it's men marathon runners.  On the women's side, marathon running is not nearly as dominant, but they still have four women in the top 10, including the second fastest performance of 2011 with Keitany's London win.  Kenyan women swept the medals in the Daegu World Championships in August (Kiplagat, Jeptoo and Cherop), and they won two of the Majors (London and Berlin).  The battle between the Kenyans, particularly Keitany who really should have won New York but for her super fast early pace, and Liliya Shobulkhova, 2011's world number 1 will be one of the highlights of 2012, whether it comes in London in April or in August.

On the track, Kenya had one of their most successful campaigns ever.  At the Daegu World Championships, Kenya finished third on the medal table, winning 7 golds, 6 silvers and 4 bronzes.  The golds were won across the spectrum - Men's 800, men's 1500m, men's steeplechase, men's marathon, women's 5000m, women's 10000m and women's marathon.

Only one missing accolade

The only area where Kenya have yet to figure out a solution to the Ethiopian riddle is the long track events for men.  In the 10,000m in particular, Ethiopian men have shut Kenya out of gold since 1993.  In fact, with the exception of Charles Kamathi's gold in 2001, Ethiopian men have won every 10,000m gold since 1993 (admittedly, of the twelve golds won by Ethiopia in this stretch, 11 were shared between two men - Geb and Bekele!)

Unless Kenya can discover a 26:40 man with 52 second final lap closing speed in the next 6 months, that streak looks set to continue in London, though Mo Farah may have something to say about whether it's an Ethiopian streak or just a 'non-Kenyan' one!

Other than this, however, it's difficult to see Kenyan dominance being broken.  20 out of 20 in the marathon.  Their gold medallists looked peerless in Daegu.  And in Vivian Cheruiyot, they have the world's best female athlete, one of the stars of London 2012 if she maintains her 2011 form.  Kenya will therefore be the best performing African nation in London.

For the rest of the world, competing at the very highest level must feel futile. Hall flies the flag, as does Keflezighi, for the USA.  The promise of Galen Rupp stepping up to the marathon will be interesting, since he brings 26:40-credentials to the road.  That of course is one of the big reasons for the shift in marathon running - the entry of very fast, 26:40 men into the marathon before they have lost that speed.  Mo Farah is the other athlete who will be looked at to challenge Kenya over the marathon one day.

The genetic vs training debate

The scientifically fascinating debate is whether this dominance is genetic or environmental.  That's an unnecessarily polarized question.  To repeat a mantra I used a lot in 2011 - when someone wants to polarize an explanation into one of two things, they are always wrong.  The reality is that the kind of dominance that has been achieved by Kenya is too complex to the result of one or two factors.  If it was one, or even two-dimensional, then the world would imitate it very easily.  The fascinating thought experiment would be to apply the same environmental factors (training, diet, altitude, culture, socio-economic factors) to a few groups around the world, over three or four generations, and see how successful they are.  Of course, this experiment isn't going to happen, so we speculate.

There's no question that the pioneers of distance running in Kenya, the men who won Kenya's first global medals in the 1960s, were the catalyst for a generation of young athletes who could now simply imitate and aspire to follow in their footsteps.  Physical activity is a part of life in Kenya (not always running to and from school, I might add), and so is the desire to become a great runner.  The economic incentives are enormous, there are sufficient competition structures to identify the most talented athletes, and a culture of success that is demonstrated by the 2011 marathon results - "he did it, why not me?"

But none of these factors, as well-described as they are, disprove that some genetic factor is also in play.  The same ingredients applied elsewhere (because let's face it, there are many other regions around the world with similar isolated factors) may not produce the same results.  In a nation of 270 million people, for example, is there not a single athlete who has trained as hard as 100 Kenyans, with the same desire to succeed?  Of course there will be, but the ceiling that can be reached is genetically influenced.

I am something of a believer in the role of genes in performance, as you may recall from our talent vs training debate.  The failure of science to discover that gene, I believe, is more a function of genetic complexity combined with our limited ability to understand it.  As mentioned in the genetic debate, it takes 300,000 gene variants to explain only 50% of something like height.  Only 45% of training response can be explained by vast gene arrays.  How much more complex might performance be?

2011 produced some of the first scientific evidence that the response to training was strongly influenced by genes.  That is, it was found that individuals who had a certain number of specific genetic variants (called SNPs) were "high-responders", whereas those who lacked these specific gene variants saw almost no change in their VO2max or performance after months of training (the "low responders").  You can read more on this study here.  What hasn't been done yet is to show whether these SNPs are present more in certain populations than in others.  That's the study that would show whether the probability of discovering a high responder (and thus potential great runner) is greater in some groups than others.  Of course, as molecular methods improve, and genome-wide association studies become more powerful, these potential links will become clearer.

The fact that Jamaica and the USA dominate sprints and that east Africa dominate distance running is one of the most intriguing areas of exercise physiology.  And exercise economics, when you look at things like incentives, culture, economic factors.  The addition of genes to this mix is what makes Kenyan running so fascinating.

Until those answers are provided, we have only questions and theories.  There's no doubt however, about who the team to beat is in international running.  The only question, for the rest of the world, is "How"?

Barcelona - changing the way coaches approach sport

The second winner of the Team of the Year award is Barcelona's all conquering football team.  On the surface, that's an easy award to give out, because Barcelona have been exceptional.  In 2011, they won the Champions League, Spanish League title, World Club Championships, and a host of other trophies, bringing to 12 (out of a possible 15) the number of titles they've won under coach Pep Guardiola.

The fascinating thing for me, at least from a sports science/management perspective, is the manner in which they have achieved this success.  Yes, they have some of the greatest players in the world - the Player of the Year award title for 2010 (awarded in 2011) was a straight shootout between three Barca players in Lionel Messi, Xavi and Andres Iniesta (Messi won it).  But the Barcelona "way" is so distinctive that it has begun to inspire coaches and sports administrators from other sports to want to imitate it.

Much has been written about the Barcelona style of football, and their now legendary youth academy, La Masia (one such story can be read here), which produced Messi, Xavi, Iniesta, Puyol, Pique, Febregas, Busquets and Valdez of the current typical starting 11.

Barcelona's movement off the ball, the positional awareness of the players, the work rate when not in possession, and the ability to manipulate space and defenders are the "buzzwords" that I've heard a great deal around the sport of rugby, for example!  One rugby coach has expressed that it is his vision to be the "Barcelona of Sevens rugby", such is the influence of Barcelona on other coaches.

And why not?  Barcelona's dominance has been complete and distinctive, technically speaking, to the point that their opposition have likened playing them to playing against Playstation figures.  I'd be going beyond the limits of my own football knowledge to describe the technical characteristics of what the players learn at La Masia, and at the senior team, the specifics of what make them so remarkable.

The success of the club is again not the product of any single factor (in the same way that Kenyans aren't great runners for one reason alone).  So the Barcelona approach to youth development, their focus on skill and movement rather than size, strength and speed, and their desire to teach sportsmanship and creativity ahead of winning are only part of the mix.  Not one of these factors should be viewed as a competitive advantage, however - they are all easily replicated, in theory anyway.

The youth academy concept is now so common in sports, particularly football and rugby, and many of the elements and principles are shared, at least on paper.  The ethos of youth development is not unique, and nor is the attitude that "we invest in the person, not just the player".  This approach to youth-development is now accepted as best-practice, and every academy will have a code of conduct that dictates how young players are to be taught and managed.  So again, simply following the "recipe" doesn't guarantee the end-product.

The challenge for other coaches and sports administrators, even in sports like rugby, who want to imitate the Barcelona way, is to recognize how difficult it is to develop the culture that underscores the technical excellence and the on-field results.

Nevertheless, the Barcelona model will continue to be discussed, and attempts made to imitate it.  It is the sincerest form of flattery.  What we (the outsiders) see is the end result, which is sometimes breath-taking.  The 5 goal demolition of Real Madrid in 2010, the 4-0 defeat of Santos in the Club World Championship final in December, and the defeat of Manchester United in the Champions League Final at Wembley are some of the highlights from Barcelona's on-field "end product".  Whether the system can be reverse engineered, I have my doubts, but when a team is held up as the gold standard for how to play, then they're worthy of "Team of the Year".

Ross

Science of Sport awards: Sports science story of the year

Sports science story of the year: Looking into the brain

Looking back on 2011, but through an academic lens, leaves the impossible task of trying to pick a research highlight.  I guess in much the same way as your choice of a Sports Star of the Year would be influenced by your choice of sport (Messi, Djokovic, Cavendish or Wellington), the choice of most exciting or impactful sports science story of the year is heavily influenced by your particular focus within the sciences.

Similarly, within sports science, you may be heavily invested in physical activity and disease, molecular basis for injuries, applied physiology, or performance physiology.

My personal focus, at least during my PhD was fatigue, and specifically the role of the brain in the regulation of performance and pacing strategy.  Therefore, my pick as the sports science story of 2011 is a series of studies out of Switzerland, which have provided the first evidence of how brain structures interact with one another during fatiguing exercise. To quote from the third of the three studies:

To the best of our knowledge, this is the first study to empirically demonstrate that muscle fatigue leads to changes in interaction between structures of a brain's neural network

Background - the brain was clearly involved, but the "how" was missing

As I was finishing my PhD, the problem I encountered is that we were able to observe how performance and specifically pacing strategy was affected by various interventions (heat, high or low oxygen, energy supply, deception or manipulation of distance information), but we didn't have the tools to measure the neural processes that were producing these changes.


Briefly, it was pretty clear that exercise performance was regulated by the brain, and over time, the theory evolved that the brain was monitoring all the physiological systems and ensuring that performance was optimized in the face of potentially limiting (or even harmful) changes in homeostasis.  For example, it had been shown pretty clearly that when we hit a body temperature of around 40 degrees celsius, we stopped - limiting fatigue due to hyperthermia.  Therefore, as soon as exercise was self-paced, the brain would monitor the rate at which the temperature was rising, and then regulate exercise intensity in order to prevent us from hitting this "limit" before the known end of exercise.

The same was true for exercise at altitude, with low glycogen stores, and when you lied to athletes about how much exercise remained - there was an anticipatory component to fatigue, so that fatigue was not merely the failure of physiology, but the process by which that potential failure (in performance, in this case), might be regulated.

The problem is that our ability to measure the neural contributions was limited.  We were able to measure muscle activation levels, albeit crudely during dynamic exercise, but it gave a pretty clear picture of how the degree of muscle recruitment was altered by the brain over the course of exercise and with different situations.  However, much had to be inferred from how power output or running speed changed as a function of changes in various physiological systems.

Therefore, at the conclusion of my PhD back in 2006, we had a theory, sometimes called the "central governor" model, which I believe accurately explained what was observed during exercise, but was in need of a mechanistic component.  The theory began to evolve into the realms of philosophy (sometimes deliberate, other times out of ignorance).  And one of the problems was this lent itself to gross misunderstandings.  A very respected scientist came to me in Denver this year and mocked the theory because it meant there must "be a little man dancing around in your head telling you how to exercise".

Of course, that is not part of any theory I've ever seen, but in the absence of measurements of brain function during exercise, it is, I suppose, the inevitable criticism.  This lack of mechanistic explanation is one of the primary reasons that I looked elsewhere for future research, because we had taken our observations to a point where we had a model, a theory for how fatigue and physiology were inter-related, how pacing and performance were regulated, but we could not move beyond the hypothetical.

And so when, only a few months ago, a series of three studies on fatigue and the brain were published, it was an exciting breakthrough, the first, I suspect, of many, which will push the field of fatigue and exercise into the next phase of understanding.

The three studies: Building the model of fatigue

Science Daily have a really concise summary of the three studies, including some quotes from the scientists involved.  I won't rehash the translation of the science here, but rather direct you to their summary.

For those interested in the papers discussed in that article, they are at the followings links:

1. Afferent pain information from the muscle contributes to inhibition of the motor cortex during fatiguing muscle contractions
2. The thalamus and insular cortex are involved in regulating exercise in response to afferent information from the muscle
3. Communication between brain areas during fatigue exercise

The studies are certainly a breakthrough, but by no means a complete picture.  For example, the first of the three studies produces a similar finding to a body of work by Markus Ammann (not in 2011, but over the last 4 or 5 years), which have shown a similar role of afferent (feedback) information from the muscle to the brain.  The motor output (think muscle activation) is clearly influenced by this information, which should be obvious as soon as one accept that fatigue, and therefore performance, are regulated in the same way that any system is (blood glucose, body temperature etc - there are sensors, there is feedback, there is an effector).

What is needed next is to move this technology on from isolated muscle contractions and onto dynamic exercise.  The above studies all used pretty isolated exercise (handgrips or leg extensions), or they use EEG during cycling (in Study 3).  When we can measure brain activity using fMRI in different regions of the brain during a 10km running time-trial, for example, then we will have some extremely powerful information.

That breakthrough may be coming - at my University, some colleagues have done some great work and are in fairly advanced stages of being able to measure brain activity using fMRI during cycling activity, and that should unlock more secrets - the video is below.



Next step - decoding the "lights" and making sense of data

Once this can be done, then it's a matter of understanding what it all means.  The field of neuroscience has long ago evolved from a "black box" approach to understanding brain function, towards an integrated model.  The danger for sports science is that the same may happen.  Indeed, it already exists - this mindset has been another source of criticism for the central governor, in that people seem to expect it to be a distinct anatomical structure.  Even the approach to studying fatigue has probably been held back by too specific approach to what is clearly a multi-faceted, complex phenomenon.

The reality is that it's far too complex for that, and only many years of research will build the picture of how the brain integrates such vast complexity to regulate performance in the obvious way that it does!

2011 may have provided the first steps, but they are the first of many!

Ross

Next time:  Sports stars of the year

Science of Sport Awards: More controversies

Controversies of 2011: Honorable mentions

Having earlier awarded "Controversy of the Year" to the Oscar Pistorius story, here are some other noteworthy controversies that affected sport in 2011.  

Caster Semenya - back on the stage

Caster Semenya was undoubtedly the big controversy of 2009, when she won the 800m world title amid speculation and tests about her gender.  2010 was a quiet year because the IAAF and various legal teams were ironing out the details of the treatment of whatever medical condition was present before Semenya could return to the sport.  That return happened in 2011, and Semenya once again became a big story at the World Championships.  

Having enjoyed a patchy season in 2011, where one very solid performance was followed by a poor showing, Semenya was always going to be an "all or nothing" performer in Daegu.  It turned out to be "all", at least in terms of the time she was able to produce.   More controversial was the manner of her racing - she looked unbelievably easy and relaxed, even when finishing fifth or sixth, and many speculated that she was losing on purpose to avoid the attention given to the winner.  That mistrust stems directly from the lack of transparency around the whole affair - having announced (unwittingly) to the world that there were problems, nobody took the initiative to inform athletics how those problems were resolved.  So Semenya was destined through that silence to be doubted and mistrusted, and that happened every time she raced, regardless of the outcome.

In Daegu, through the heats and semi-final, she looked dominant, and there was an ominous feeling among athletics followers going into the final.  There, the pace was quick - a 55.86s first lap, with Semenya in fifth and Marina Savinova on her shoulder in 6th.  600m was reached in 1:26:07, and a time matching the 1:55.45 that Semenya produced in Berlin in 2009 was on the cards.  As was the win - Semenya moved to the front with the same effortless style she had produced in 2009 and in some of her European races this year.  But Savinova held on, and the gap didn't grow as it had in Berlin, and with 50m to go, the Russian moved onto Semenya's shoulder and took gold in 1:55.87.  Semenya came in second in 1:56.35, just under a second slower than the winning time in Berlin, but with much stiffer competition, two years of maturity and more experience. 

I am reliably informed that the moment that Savinova took the lead from Semenya with 50m to go, there were loud cheers in the press box in Daegu, further proof of just how negatively the athlete is viewed by the media.  That is partly situational, but hasn't been helped by some extraordinary stupidity by her management team, who at one point in 2011 announced that any media who wished to interview her would have to pay for that privilege.  This, along with sponsor requests, complaints about money and a general veil of secrecy make Semenya one of the most controversial athletes in the world.

Pointedly, in the aftermath of her World Championship silver, Semenya smiled, spoke openly to the media and showed a side of herself that hadn't been seen, but probably should be seen more often.  She could be an incredibly media-friendly personality and it would be a good antidote to the negative perceptions that currently exist.  It will never remove them, of course, but it's a step in the right direction.  2012 will tell whether she embraces her status or continues, through her management, to play the villain.   She recently split with her coach, and has now teamed up with Maria Mutola, which gives another dimension to the story.  

As for what happened in the 18 months between Berlin and Daegu, we are none the wiser.  I am still firmly of the belief that chemical treatment was enforced to lower testosterone levels, though I have no idea how this is being monitored, or even if it is.  As long as that ignorance remains, Semenya's races, regardless of result, will always be accompanied by claims that she "lost on purpose", "threw the race", or wasn't trying hard enough.  I'd suggest that going to the front of the World Championship final with 200m to run, and then losing in the last 50m is MORE attention grabbing that staying in fourth or third the whole way, but the rumor mill will circulate.  Watch this space in 2012.

Read the report after Semenya's silver in the Daegu 800m final

Cycling and anti-doping

This is always controversial.  2011 started well enough, with three CAS cases being won before April, the first time that the biological passport had been tested in court.  It stood up to the test, a good sign for its future legal credibility.  However, it came at a cost - literally.  The financial burden of having to defend the bans handed down on the basis of the biological passport proved, over the remainder of 2011, to be a huge impediment to the effective implementation of the passport concept.

In August, Gerard Vroomen, co-founder of the Cervelo team, raised questions about the testing being done as part of the passport system.  He wrote:

“I have not heard of a rider being tested for the biological passport between the end of the 2010 Tour and April 2011. After that I am not sure,” he stated. “While it is logical that the frequency of testing might decrease somewhat once profiles are established, the fact remains that the profile in itself is not a deterrent. The deterrent comes from testing current values against those profiles to see if there are clues indicating doping.

And of course, he is quite right.  We posted on this a few times in 2011, most recently when I presented at the UKSEM conference, and presented some of the data showing how doping behavior was changed as a result of the biological passport (it's in the presentation at the link).  However, without the testing, any rational cyclist (who is willing to dope) will change behavior back and resume doping.

The UCI of course reacted to this, making public their stats that 1,577 tests had been conducted during the period in question.   However, Prof Michael Ashenden, one of the leading experts in the fight against doping, also contributed his opinion that "It’s correct that the observation made by Gerard Vroomen matches with my experience. I have noticed a significant gap between tests in some of the profiles I have reviewed. It’s definitely not in every single profile, but enough to have left an impression on me.”

The UCI is certainly not an organization one would call fully transparent.  Or trustworthy (both reputations have been "earned")  And so their statement and statistics were met with more than a hint of skepticism, most commentators jumping not on the actual number, but the fact that it may represent a significant decrease in testing compared to previous years, and certainly to the vision of the passport system.  It was even labelled a "PR exercise".

And make no mistake, the biological passport is expensive.  What may push it over the edge, however, is the legal struggle that inevitably surrounds the cases it brings to light.  The cost of defending the finding may ultimately cripple the entire system.  Even the testing process is expensive, and the result is that the sport may have itself an effective tool that is extremely inefficient.  Contrast this to the idea that a urine test could catch dopers by detecting banned substances in the urine, which was theoretically efficient but utterly ineffective, and you appreciate that if the sport is to stay on top of the doping problem, it needs a whole lot more money.  And a whole lot more transparency.

The false-start rule, courtesy Usain Bolt

You may remember a time when every athlete in a sprint race was allowed a false start.  The result was that you could, in theory, have nine false starts before the first athlete was disqualified.  That made for drawn out races, it affected TV times and it allowed gamesmanship, and so the rule was changed, first to allow one false start for the race in 2003 (the second one, regardless of who it was, was out), and then to disqualify athletes immediately when false-starting.

This rule took effect in 2010, and many wondered how long it would take to claim its first high-profile 'victim'.  In the end, that person could not have been more high-profile - on Sunday August 28th, Usain Bolt went into his blocks for the final of the men's 100m in the IAAF World Championships, and then jumped the gun.

For Bolt to be the victim of a rule that people had warned against fueled a big debate, the "told-you-so" camp against the "those are the rules" camp.  It's a sad situation for those in the stadium who had paid big money to see the world's most recognizable athlete (and indeed, sportsman, so influential is Bolt), and so the analogy that was made at the time is that disqualifying an athlete for a 'mistake' is the same as sending Lionel Messi off in the 2nd minute of a Champions League final for an innocuous foul.

The difference, I suppose, is that a false-start is not an innocuous foul.  It's paramount to the result of the race, and entirely controllable by the athlete.  There is, of course, an issue with the starter, who oftens holds athletes at "get set" and causes the false start, so that's an issue that needs to be controlled by the IAAF.

However, generally, if the rule exists, and the athlete knows it, one can't make exceptions after the fact.  It's an impossible situation for the sport to deal with, because if one false start is allowed as an allowance of "human error", then the second error is punished disproportionately harshly.   Also, allowing one false start gives one athlete the opportunity to play games with the other seven by deliberately jumping the gun. It's also not quite the same as swimming, because the start carries relatively greater importance (the race is shorter and acceleration is faster).

So in the end, it's a rule that won't change.  Bolt was at fault, not the rule, and London 2012 will reveal if he's learned a lesson.  Incidentally, Bolt is not new to false starts in major races.  He jumped in 2009 as well, but because they had the one false start rule then, he got a reprieve and went on to run 9.58s.  So for the world's fastest man, the challenge is to control his desire to match his rivals out the blocks, and that alone will make London interesting.

Then, just as an aside, the plot thickened in the aftermath of Bolt's disqualification.  HD video of the incident showed that Yohan Blake twitched in the lane immediately adjacent to Bolt.  That twitch, theoretically, could constitute a false start, and could also be viewed as the trigger for Bolt's false start.  If that was the case, then it should have been Blake, and not Bolt, who was disqualified.  If you believe that Bolt's false start was entirely unrelated to Blake's twitch, then they could be viewed as unrelated events, and both might have been disqualified.  Or the third option, and the one which proved to be borne out by the start data, is that Blake's twitch, while clear on TV slow-motion replays, was not large enough to trigger the equipment, and therefore can't be called a twitch in the first place.

I guess it raises questions of what threshold the equipment should have, whether it should be trusted more than the eye of the starter and officials.  Ultimately, that's an academic debate.

Rugby's referee debacle

The Rugby World Cup produced South Africa's big controversy of 2011 when Bryce Lawrence was blamed for our team's quarter-final defeat against Australia.  Lawrence, from New Zealand, was accused of being incompetent at best, corrupt at worst, part of a plot to ensure that the South African team did not derail New Zealand's chances of winning the tournament on home soil.

The accusations of corruption came from influential sources, but lacked evidence, fueled largely by emotion.  Admittedly, Lawrence was absolutely terrible in that match, but unfortunately the South African "disease" of blaming everyone but themselves meant that we failed to take the lessons out of the match, adapt to the referee and win it anyway.  Which we should have done.   In short, Lawrence's failures on the day were simply incompetence, or perhaps instruction, in that he clearly erred on the side of the team without the ball, perhaps under orders to allow a free-flowing match.  He allowed far too much to happen in the rucks and the result was that the team defending was given the advantage.  The problem for South Africa is that this team was Australia, who barely had the ball as an attacking force.  The end result is that he appeared biased because he was advantaging the team without the ball.  Fixed?  No.  Incompetent?  Yes.

And this introduced the larger problem faced by rugby.  I wrote a post on this in October, describing how the sport has a credibility problem, because too much is left open to interpretation and therefore post-match criticism of the referee.  The IRB hasn't managed to control the standard or the interpretation of admittedly challenging rules, and so every result is questioned by angry and emotional fans (and sometimes coaches).  This is equally true in Sevens, where I'm involved with the SA Sevens team, and where the IRB just cannot seem to take seriously enough the development of its own referees.  The end result is farcical officiating, which unfortunately exerts too great an influence on the outcome of matches.

Match-fixing in cricket

Cricket is a sport that has been dogged by match-fixing for over a decade.  It was a South African who was the main protagonist when the problem was first thrust into the global limelight, when Hansie Cronje was tried and found guilty of match-fixing.  The problem had of course existed long before he fell prey to it, and 2011 showed that it is still very much alive. Three Pakistani cricketers, Salman Butt, Mohammad Aamer and Mohammad Asif were jailed in November for their part in a 2010 match-fixing conspiracy in London.

Specifically, it was a "spot-fixing" scandal, where betters can place a very specific bet within the context of the match (things like who bowls which over, whether a batsmen will score above or below a certain target, number of boundaries etc).  In this case, the bet was that Aamer, Pakistan's fast bowler, would deliver a no-ball on the first ball of the third over, and another on the sixth delivery of the tenth over, this time by Mohammed Asif.  Sure enough, both were (massive) no balls, and when a video came to light by News of the World showing the player's agent making these predictions, the plot was exposed.  Picking exactly which ball out of 540 in a day of cricket would be a no-ball may seem a ridiculous bet to make, but that's the nature of cricket, and it's why the game lends itself so easily to corruption like this.

Add to this the fact that the money in the game in India is absolutely enormous, and cricket is ripe for corruption.  The governing body for the sport, the ICC, has an anti-corruption unit which has made some impact, but when you consider how easily aspects of cricket can be fixed, it is an impossible battle to win.

Soccer's racism controversy - the extreme manifestation of a deeper problem

A final one, and really just a brief opinion, on the most recent controversy affecting sport, that of racism in football.  Luis Suarez of Liverpool received an 8-match ban for making racist comments to Patrice Evra of Manchester United, and John Terry, Chelsea's England international, faces criminal charges for his accused racist comments towards Anton Ferdinand.

There has been a real uproar about this in the media, not surprisingly.  It was discussed recently on radio in South Africa and got me thinking about the root cause of the problem.  That root cause, I believe, is not racism, but just the plain lack of respect that football seems to facilitate between players.   Racism is the manifestation or application of the problem, it's not the problem in an of itself.

Don't get me wrong - racism is clearly a problem, there's no doubt about it.  But it's one of the extreme expressions of the same thing along a continuum, and if the sport is serious about stamping out the extreme, it has to act on the less severe cases as well.

I have seen footage of Suarez and Evra's exchange, the argument that got Suarez the 8-match ban.  It's disgraceful, and it doesn't matter what he actually said.  Whether he was making racist comments, or attacking Evra's hairstyle, language, family, football ability, should not change the fact that the two of them were clearly way beyond a line of respect and decency and deserve bans.  Proving who started it, or who is more to blame is a trickier proposition, of course, but the point is that the two of them should both be sanctioned for their behavior towards one another.

That there is a racist undertone to it simply shows that it progressed far enough along that extreme that Suarez brought out more personal insults.  Suarez, for his part, has shown his character repeatedly since he became infamous in 2010 for his hand ball against Ghana and subsequent celebrations, and sadly, his character is not condemned nearly enough in football.  Nor is the lack of quality displayed by many footballers, who seem celebrated rather than condemned for what is actually just disgraceful behavior.

For example, when Jose Mourinho flicked Barcelona's assistant on the ear earlier this year, he should have been given a ban of 10 or more matches.  No debate, instant ban.  And when Pinto, the Barcelona reserve goalkeeper, got involved in a skirmish, it should have produced six matches.  Every player who storms a referee screaming for a decision should get a two match ban.  Swearing should be an automatic one match, at the report of the referee.  Football needs to be cleaned up, and focusing on the far extreme behavior and getting worked up over racism is a waste of energy, in my opinion, when the problem exists at the far left, where a basic disrespect for people is facilitated by the "beautiful game".

Football fans will no doubt unite and say it isn't so, but the fact is, football is tarnished by the behavior of its players, and it condones this behavior with inaction.  We shouldn't be debating whether Suarez is a racist or not, we should simply say that he deserves 8 matches for behavior that is undesirable and doesn't belong in the sport.

And I don't want the sport to be sanitized to the point where there is no 'sledging', no hostility.  Players in high pressure situations should express themselves, the sport needs the antagonism.  But a line needs to be drawn and defended.  Football currently has no such line, and then we are surprised that players might be racist?

Ross


And in breaking news, Suarez gets an unrelated 1-match ban for a gesture made to opposition fans.  It should be six more matchs, but proves the point...

Next time:  Sports Science stories of 2011!