Doping in cycling: Science, the law, and PR, and insights on Pistorius

The complexity of science vs law vs PR: Implications for anti-doping and Oscar Pistorius

I've finally emerged from the "bubbles" that were the trip up Kilimanjaro, which was followed almost immediately by a trip to the USA where I spent a week with the SA Sevens team for the IRB Series tournament in Las Vegas.  It was another harsh reminder that the best preparation and hardest work can sometimes fail because on the day, things don't work and other teams are better...competitive sports is a ruthless world!

In any event, those tournament weeks are always something of a "bubble", inside which I miss many interesting sports stories.  The jet lag and 9 hour time difference don't help, but the bubble has finally burst and I thought I'd share one or two links, and some short insights on stories that have broken since late January.

Cycling and doping: Three big stories

To begin with, three big stories in the world of cycling and doping.  In no particular time order, Jan Ullrich, Tour de France champion and many time runner-up was sanctioned by the Court of Arbitration for Sport, and all his results since 2005 annulled.  He of course retired years ago, so the two year ban is more symbolic than practical, but it ends one of cycling's more high-profile chapters.  Ullrich, for his part, responded on his website, apologizing for his dealings with Fuentes, but not entirely accepting the court's opinion.  You can read his full statement here.

This decision was preceded by perhaps an even more significant one - the US Attorney Andre Birotte Jr announced that the federal investigation into Lance Armstrong would be ending.  The announcement was strategically timed to garner as little media coverage (in the USA) as possible, coming the Friday before the Superbowl.  There has however been some reaction to it, mostly dealing with the timing of the decision (the investigation had been a 2-year long struggle up to this point), and perhaps more importantly, the legal vs ethical issues surrounding doping.

Those who have kept up with the case will be well aware that doping in sport is not a federal crime.  As a result, the investigation was not about whether Armstrong doped or not, it was built predominantly around fraud, conspiracy and other charges related to the violation of Armstrong's team's contract with the U.S. Postal Service.  Those who are proclaiming "innocence" are thus choosing to stop short of the point, at least as far as doping goes.

The result of this is that the federal investigation may have been dropped because of a simple balance between "cost" (time and financial) and "reward".  There has been no explanation for why the investigation has been dropped, and nor is there likely to be, leaving most to speculate and wonder what the reasons are.  One of the outcomes is that the ball is now firmly in the court of the anti-doping authorities, such as USADA, who can continue to pursue the case of doping against Armstrong.

There were reports, since confirmed, that USADA had been in contact with the investigators to gain access to the evidence they had collected as part of the criminal case.  Travis Tygart, the CEO of USADA, issued this statement following the US Attorney General's annoucement:

"Unlike the U.S. Attorney, USADA's job is to protect clean sport rather than enforce specific criminal laws. Our investigation into doping in the sport of cycling is continuing and we look forward to obtaining the information developed during the federal investigation."

Time will tell whether that evidence is forthcoming, and how it is acted upon, but certainly, the announcement that the investigation was ending is not the same thing as drawing a line under the issue.

Sports Illustrated yesterday carried this article expanding on the USADA investigation, for those interested in reading more.

The Contador verdict

Then third, and most relevant to cycling today (since he is the only active cyclist of the three), was the decision, finally, of CAS on the Alberto Contador case.  The end result of over two years of deliberations and court proceedings, protestations, accusations and cow slandering?  Four thousand pages of argument and counter-argument, a 98-page verdict, and a two year ban for Contador, which is really only 6 months, because it has been backdated to when the case began.

There are far better summaries of this case than I can provide in a short time.  For perhaps the best, read Matt Rendell's excellent analysis here.  He tackles issues of strict liability, the Contador defence (veal solomillo and clenbuterol, at 32 Euros a kilogram, apparently), and the UCI/WADA argument, which was built around the likelihood that the clenbuterol came from the infusion of plasma as part of Contador's alleged blood doping during that Tour de France.

This defence is particularly intriguing to me, because it has evidence supporting it, and therefore can be "proved" (in so far as "proof" seems to exist in these cases).  That evidence was described by Prof Michael Ashenden, one of the leading biological passport scientists.  He reported to CAS that Contador's reticulocyte percentages during the race were abnormally high, which would be indicative of EPO use, because that switches on red blood cell formation (for more on the biological passport, reticulocytes and how all this works, read this article that I wrote last year).  Contador's hemoglobin levels were also abnormal, compared to his biological passport history, leading the UCI, WADA and Ashenden to suggest that they were consistent with blood doping.

Ultimately, the CAS tribunal ruled that a blood transfusion was "very unlikely to have occurred", though I'm not sure why they came to this strong decision.  It was perhaps related to the biological passport's own internal requirements for a "strike", which I explained previously.  It was Ashenden's testimony, the legal back-and-forth it caused, its ultimate dismissal and then the CAS judges refusal to allow Ashenden to have a final session of questioning that was leaked to the press after the hearing, so unhappy were the WADA/UCI lawyers.

The legal battle - how law undermines the openness of science

All of which brings me to my main opinion/insight on these matters.  The fact of the matter is, as anti-doping becomes more sophisticated, it becomes more and fraught with the burden of scientific "proof". The reality is that science is open, it asks questions and only answers some of them!  It is rarely black or white, and the problem with this is that legal teams, armed with scientific experts of their own, can always, without fail, cast doubt on scientific findings.

To me, the findings of abnormal reticulocytes and hemoglobin concentration points very strongly to a likelihood of transfusion.  It doesn't prove it - the biological passport cannot prove anything in that way, and it has been designed like this to protect cyclists against false positive tests.  However, it points there, and so when a tribunal, dealing with the same evidence I'm seeing, concludes that a transfusion is "very unlikely to have occurred", I'm left mystified at their thought-processes.  At worst, they can conclude that a "transfusion is possible, but cannot be upheld given the physiological complexity of blood parameters".  But to dismiss it as "very unlikely"...?

A declaration like that ("very unlikely to have occurred") is definitive, it is black and white.  Science is grey, and so the two, science and law, seem to be very uneasy bedfellows.

Science being picked off, one by one, by the law

I have long held this opinion.  It began as a healthy skepticism of lawyers, and it was the Oscar Pistorius-CAS decision that pretty much condemned me to have zero confidence in the manner in which the law evaluates scientific evidence.  That decision was, to be blunt, a complete joke, and the CAS was manipulated by Hugh Herr and the rest of the Pistorius team, because they were able to exploit scientific "uncertainty" to win a legal verdict.

Then yesterday I read this absolutely brilliant piece by Lionel Birnie, in which he explains how the law attacks science and undermines it exactly because it is open.  As I was reading it, I found myself thinking "This piece could just as well have been written for the Pistorius case".  Science's greatest strength is its weakest point in anti-doping cases (and in cases like those of Pistorius).  Here is a section of Birnie's piece, which I highly recommend:

It seems that a lot of people love to put their faith in the law and yet are sceptical about science. The law is man-made (and therefore flawless) whereas what we know about science keeps changing (and therefore cannot be trusted). This applies to sport just as it does to many areas of life.

Science is attacked for its greatest strength – the fact that it cannot prove or disprove everything. Science is exploratory. It is open-minded and willing to accept that there may be another possibility, however slim the idea may seem. Science is never so arrogant as to presume it knows everything. 

When dealing with anti-doping cases, the law is exploitative in the sense that it seeks out areas where science is on shaky ground. It looks for loopholes and unpicks them ruthlessly. You could argue that science sees the dots and tries to work out how they are connected, while the law picks them off one by one. 

We have seen in many anti-doping cases how the defence lawyers work through the argument line by line, clause by clause, trying to prove or disprove.  And that is why we end up with such division among sports fans who are struggling to work out who the good guys are and who are the baddies.

So many jewels in that piece alone - "Science is open-minded and willing to accept that there may be another possibility", and "science cannot prove or disprove EVERYTHING".  Case in point - dehydration and performance.  There are scientists who maintain that any dehydration will compromise your performance.  There are others who argue that we can lose 2 to 8% of our fluid with no negative effects, and they cannot reconcile those two opinions, as simple a question as this may appear.  Science is full of areas of contention, and doping is perhaps one of the most complex.  The case of Pistorius is equally complex - the evidence certainly pointed to an advantage, but clever scientists, backed by even smarter lawyers, are able to "pick them off one by one".

Direction dependent - the verdict depends on who gets the final scientific "disproving" say

Therefore, what we had with Pistorius was a case of science trying to "join the dots" and create a picture that he had an advantage, while others picked off those points to cast doubt on this finding.  The key is to realize that this could have happened in either direction.  That is, it could have been designed in a way that said that Pistorius was clear to compete unless the IAAF could show that an advantage existed.  Then, the IAAF would have had the initiative and would have been able to cast doubt on evidence suggesting there was no advantage.  As it was, the question was asked in the other direction - the starting point was that Pistorius had an advantage, and this could be disproved (legally) by picking off the evidence.

Therefore, the decision you arrive at depends entirely on the direction from which you approach it, at least in terms of how the science is evaluated.  In anti-doping, this start point is determined by the concept of "strict liability" - the athlete has to show that the positive test was not the result of doping.  For Pistorius, the burden was with the IAAF to prove that the advantage existed, and so Pistorius' team were able to deflect every scientific finding with enough doubt to get the verdict, despite the scientific evidence (which didn't meet CAS' legal standard, clearly, though there were other factors in play here too)

Enter public relations

Lionel Birnie's great insight didn't end there, however.  He also recognized that it is a third party, Public Relations, that ultimately wields the biggest stick in cases like these.  He writes:

The court of public opinion is where the phoney war is fought. Over the past 18 months, while science and the law have been carefully preparing their arguments for serious scrutiny, the public are teased along as if they’re watching a Punch and Judy show.

PR is flashy. It comes up with catchy phrases that capture the public imagination and it wins hearts and closes off minds.  It is hardly surprising that most people will be turned off by the idea of wading through pages of legal and scientific argument. It is difficult, it strays well outside our areas of understanding and it makes our brains hurt.

Once again, this is so accurate for the Contador case, it's accurate for Armstrong, it's accurate for Pistorius (thanks Nike and about a dozen other sponsors).  Last year, Prof Peter Weyand, one of the researchers who did join the dots to see the advantage Pistorius had, wrote to me after I published his explanation of his research, and expressed frustration at how the general public do not want to wade through the complexities of the scientific argument.

He is 100% correct.  I share this frustration, and when I read drivel like the recent Outside magazine or New York Times pieces on Pistorius, it's tremendously frustrating because one half of the scientific team (Herr) are making idiotic claims that have no basis in evidence or reality, while the other half (Weyand) are being circumspect and scientifically cautious.  Public relations looks at this with glee, because it's so easy to back the extreme view, however false or inaccurate it may be.  That fuels the fire, and the public are watching, to borrow Birnie's phrase, "a Punch and Judy show".

The general public, and therefore the general media who cater to them, do not want to peel back layer after layer of scientific explanation to truly understand a case.  They want simple answers, black and white, and science is incapable of providing them.  PR, on the other hand, thrives on simple answers.  Backed by legal complexities, it's not difficult to see why so many people are confused, and therefore choose to hear one message over another without necessarily understanding it.

The fight against doping - the danger of crippling complexity

So, for doping, there is a real problem.  Anti-doping is becoming so complex that it may end up crippling itself in the court of law.  The more dots there are to join (the role of science), the more points there are to attack (the role of law).  The end result is that the cost of prosecution will sky-rocket, it will become increasingly difficult to enforce test results, and the public, ultimately the "paying" customer, will be turned off by the complexity.  Enter the PR firms.

There is an anti-doping future, then, which exists on the internet and is waged by PR firms and athletes, who build mountains for anti-doping authorities to climb.  All of this is a call to action, though it beats me what the solution might be.

The end result for Contador is that he'll be able to race in the Vuelta this year.  We still don't know if he did anything wrong - having dismissed the Contador argument of contaminated beef, having dismissed the UCI/WADA argument of a blood transfusion, the CAS tribunal ends up concluding that a "contaminated supplement" is more likely the source, and therefore grounds for a ban (read part 2 of Rendell's excellent analysis for more on this).

Contador's results have been annulled, and so Andy Schleck is your Tour de France champion from 2010 (a hollow victory).  It could have been worse, of course - I was actually surprised that CAS did reach the decision it did, I fully expected Contador to be cleared, and so perhaps there is some hope left.  Whether such a long, and expensive process, changes the anti-doping game in the future remains to be seen.  Your thoughts welcome, and I realize that there is so much to the verdict and the argument that I haven't covered, but I highly recommend Rendell's pieces, both Part 1 and Part 2 on the judgment.

 The "upside down" VO2max protocol

The other interesting story, one that has garnered some great discussion on our Twitter account, is the recent study that found that VO2max is increased when you do a reverse protocol that starts out at a high power output and decreases (as opposed to the normal progressive increase to fatigue).  The implication of this finding is that the VO2 "max" concept is incorrect, which is something many already knew, but it calls into question the idea that oxygen delivery or use is limiting during maximal exercise. After all, if VO2max can be increased and then maintained simply by doing something different, despite maximal effort, then how was it the limitation in the first place?  The implication of your answer to this question is rather important!

The study is therefore a hook for the idea that something else regulates performance, though it doesn't establish precisely what that is.  There is the suggestion that the brain is in control, and that's so obvious many people will dismiss it as "too easy".  But there are many reasons to suggest this, and I'll cover these in a blog post as soon as I can.  The bottom line, regarding this study at least, is that it's fairly obvious, and not as outrageous as it may seem.  But the reaction of people who see it tells the story of sports science and the VO2max theory, which has long been full of holes, but remains entrenched among many as the explanation for maximal performance.  This is akin to proclaiming that the world is flat.  Someone has to point out that it is round, and as obvious as this may be (the idea that the brain is command is equally obvious), this study adds to that realization.

Perhaps even more important are the implications of this.  People make the incorrect leap that it's about "mind over matter". The idea that the brain controls exercise is not the same as saying that our mental capacities determine performance.  This is obvious.  It's not "mind" over matter, but "brain" over matter - it's still physiology, so let's not get too carried away with the idea that we can "believe" ourselves into being elite athletes.  Certainly, psychology is crucial, and belief is essential, but the physiological limits still exist, and the regulation of performance is still physiological!  Can we do more with the right mental approach?  Of course, but that's a parallel area of performance management.

More to come...

Ross

Barefoot Kilimanjaro: Mission Accomplished - Video diaries

Barefoot Kilimanjaro: Mission Accomplished - The Video Diary

On Saturday, 29 January, at 12.45 South Africa time, our entire team of six barefoot climbers (that's me on the right - pics of the whole team coming soon!), and four support crew (in shoes) reached Uhuru Peak, at 5,895m, the summit of Mt Kilimanjaro and the highest point in Africa.

The trip, as I explained recently in my "pre-expedition" post, was both for the challenge and for charity.  There will no doubt be much more said in the coming days - I will post a series of pictures and talk you through my own personal experience with my feet as soon as I can - but for now, we are all proud of achieving it and very grateful and thankful for all the great support we have received.

"Crazy with a capital C"

Before leaving, I wrote a post and tweeted to say we were on the way with the goal of reaching the summit entirely barefoot.  What was striking to me was the number of disbelieving replies that came in soon after.  They ranged from "hahaha - that's ridiculous", to "I hope you're kidding", to "Crazy with a capital C", and perhaps most intriguingly, someone who felt that it was "disrespectful to the mountain" to attempt to walk barefoot.

My take was different - back in November, when I was first asked "Is it possible?", the obvious answer was "yes".  I remember saying at the time that it needed a lot of research, and possibly some creative solutions and planning, but of course it was possible.

It would be wrong to say "anything is possible", because that's the stuff of fairytales, but this was so clearly possible IF we played the preparation cards right, that it was a project worth doing only to show that sometimes, when we stop at identifying the problems, we limit ourselves so significantly to "conventional wisdom".  I was taken aback by the strength of the sentiment AGAINST our goal.  I mean, sure, there would be challenges - the cold, the risk of frost-bite, the altitude, the terrain - but those are challenges that can easily be overcome through good planning, and I couldn't understand that it was dismissed as "impossible" without thinking through those solutions first.

We as a team make no claims about this, physiologically or otherwise.  You'll see a lot of hype around people who do "unusual" things.  Firstly, I don't believe we did anything "unusual", at least from a physiological point of view - it's perfectly explainable, the difference is that it goes against conventional ideas.  But ultimately, we were five very normal guys and one girl who did something that was eminently possible all along.  The fact that it was THOUGHT to be crazy, ridiculous (pick your synonym) is merit-worthy, but it's not a physiological feat that demands anything other than acknowledgement of what is possible.  No "awe" or "wonder" here, just basic planning and principles.  Challenge beliefs - it's amazing what becomes possible!

I realise that walking up a mountain barefoot is "odd".  But if I may speak personally, apart from the great charity that it supported, the most appealing thing to me was to show up conventional wisdom by doing with 100% success rate.  I was not alone - many of the team were motivated by the 'nay-sayers' and I can honestly say that when all six of us got to the summit, with no drama, there was a feeling of vindication mixed with the happiness.  All it took was planning and preparation with intelligence, foresight and discipline. 

Clinical and "easy" thanks to the 80% done BEFORE

Ultimately, to be perfectly honest, we were clinical, precise and got to the summit relatively easily.  I'd go so far as to say that probably 80% of expeditions to Kilimanjaro have MORE problems and issues than we had, despite being entirely shod.  Perhaps being barefoot forced on us a more stringent approach, but it worked, and that should, I would hope, shake a paradigm or two.

It's never "easy" of course, and I don't wish to downplay the whole effort.  But the 80-20 principle is in play - I believe that the success of any "performance" is determined 80% BEFORE the performance ever happens.  It is the result of the months of preparation and training, and the actual achievement is only 20% of the challenge.  The team on this trip was super strong - 5 months of barefoot training, including a month of cold-weather preparation, plus real discipline about the altitude, meant that by the time we took our first steps in the Rongai Rain Forest, we had done pretty much all we could to prepare.  The remaining 20% was about adapting, learning on the go, and making sure we stuck to the plan.

We had the best support possible - Sean Disney of Adventure Dynamics International was, in my opinion, THE key player in the team, and he planned the route, controlled our pace, and guided us expertly throughout the five days to summit.  If you're interested in this climb (or others around the world), that would be my first port of call, and it obeys the # 1 principle - get the best people on board.

My personal account - bad timing complicated the climb, but still doable

Speaking personally, I made life difficult for myself by getting frostbite on Friday 13 January (I'll always remember the date!).  My timing, in hindsight, could not have been worse.  The frozen areas of skin formed blisters, and the blisters decided that they would start peeling on January 23rd, which was the very first day of the hike.  So as I climbed in altitude, my feet lost more and more skin, and by the end of day 3, in Mawenzi Tarn, I had no skin left underneath (the pic on the right is from the Tarn - the color is because I threw Friar's Balsam at it to try to dry out the soft, raw skin.  I don't think it really helped, but just doing something helped me in other ways!  I'll show you a pic of what my feet looked like at the summit in tomorrow's post!)

So I lay in my tent that afternoon, January 26th, full of anxiety, not thinking I had it in me to do another two days to reach the summit.  But I decided to go hour by hour, for even one more day.  Get to Kibo Huts, the final base before the strike for the summit, and see whether that would be the motivation and source of one big, final effort for the summit.   That worked, and then it was summit day, and another "hour by hour" exercise, all the way to the top.  In the end, it worked, and yes, it was difficult, but the pictures made it look worse than it was, and had it not been for the frost-bite and blisters it caused, I think it would have been a relatively clinical and "easy" week for me too.

I'll explain a little more of what I felt during those last two days when I show you some pictures, and that will perhaps come tomorrow.

But for now, here are some videos - I tried to do a daily video diary.  They're fairly short, only a minute or two, but they show where we are on the mountain, how the ground looks, what we're doing day by day and how I'm progressing.  If there are any questions, I'm happy to answer them in the comments, and as I said, I'll do a picture diary tomorrow, with more detail about the feelings and emotions as I dealt with my own little issues on the final two days!

NOTE:  To all readers receiving this in email - the YouTube clips may appear as solid, black blocks in your emails.  Please CLICK HERE to be taken to the site to watch videos.

Day 1: Rongai Rain Forest - a relatively sedate start

Day 2: The longest day

This was a super long day - 8 hours 51 in total, but with a long break for lunch.  Also a challenging day, the gravel and rocks were difficult and was probably largely to blame for the loss of skin in my case!  But it was a good day, an optimistic day because it showed us what we were in for - we got a taste of the terrain, the temperature and altitude.  Probably just what we needed.

Day 3: Mawenzi Tarn

A short day, but a key day for me personally.  By the end of this day, my skin was largely off and I had doubts about making it to the summit.  The team coped brilliantly though, and so this was the day I grew 95% confident that we would get 5 people, at least, to the summit.  The other great thing about this day is that I was finally convinced that the cold would NOT be a factor in our summit - the African sun was just too strong and would prove decisive in minimizing the frostbite risk.  That became crystal clear today.

Day 4: To base camp at Kibo Huts

Perhaps the toughest day for me, mentally, because it took us 5 hours from Mawenzi to Kibo, where we'd be based for our "strike" to the summit.  For me, this was tough because it was not the final big effort, but it was difficult enough to be a real challenge.  Difficult terrain and a relatively long day.  The team again handled it well, and if I was 95% confident yesterday, I was 98% confident today.

Day 5: The summit 

This is a really short video of us arriving at the summit.  Interestingly enough, this was not the greatest moment of the trip.  In fact, the summit was actually a little bit of an anticlimax for me, because my "peak" had happened about 45 minutes early, at Stella Point.  That was the moment when I KNEW, with 100% certainty and beyond any doubt, that all six of us would make it.  It was a huge release, and that was the single best moment for me. The summit was still amazing though, don't get me wrong!  Big celebration!

Day 5: Descending

This video didn't quite work out - the day before, we'd checked out the climb and run down a section of the steep slope (it's about 40%).  It's a real rush - you slide with every step, and churn up shale and dust big time.  I tried to do it on the way back to Kibo, but by this stage (almost 9 hours of walking, most of it above 5,000m), I was pretty stuffed!  And the lack of perspective from the way I filmed it doesn't do justice to the speed of the descent, so it didn't quite come off!  It was still really fun to do though!

Day 5: In the tent

I nearly didn't put this video up - I filmed it only minutes after getting back to base camp.  I was tired, a little cold, and quite drained.  I didn't realize quite how tired until I watched myself - I look and sound shattered!  But it's from the moments after the mission had been accomplished, just some thoughts!  A longer clip, but with the key message, so bear with me!

Picture diary to come

That's all for now - I'm working through all my pictures, and I'll get a nice story out of that, mostly where I can talk you through the challenges of terrain, cold and altitude, and how we progressed.  It also tells the story of my feet quite nicely, but that's for another time!

In the meantime, for more thoughts from the other team members, and very importantly, to make donations to the Red Cross Children's Hospital Trust (a great cause), please visit the official site of the barefoot Kilimanjaro trip!

Chat soon
Ross

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