Weekend musings

An interesting read to continue a debate

Well, it was a very busy week last week, and a slow weekend so far. My apologies...

I am off to Dubai on Friday for the Sevens Rugby World Cup, where I will be traveling as a consultant and scientific advisor to the South African Team. Preparation for that trip has taken much of my time.

However, for the "slow weekend", no major opinion piece from me. Rather, there has been quite a lively debate in the comments section of our last post, which was the preview of the Amgen Tour of California (the irony, by the way, of having a cycling race sponsored by a company that makes EPO is quite unescapable. Thanks to Mike for pointing that out!)

There have been some interesting and divided opinions on this matter. Without doubt, one's opinion is very much a function of your starting belief (as most things are, of course). And when that belief does not match the opinions here, what has been frustrating for me personally is that the default response from those who disagree has been to whip out the "stick to science" insult, as though we discard our evidence based analytic approach simply because we express opinions that oppose doping in cycling and on Lance Armstrong's own doping past.

So to confirm what many of you have written - we are not objective about anything we write about, and nor do we intend to be. Just ask Oscar Pistorius, or Gatorade, or Usain Bolt, or Sammy Wanjiru, or Pose runners. Our opinions on all those matters was equally 'black and white' - the evidence demands an opinion in all these cases, including that of Armstrong. But opinion based solely on belief is different from evidence-based opinion, and doesn't, in my opinion, contribute much to the useful debate. It is isolated opinion, and is not what we are about, despite perceptions. Nor is the purpose of this site to sit on the fence and dryly translate science for you - read our Vision and Mission to see what we actually are about.

In any event, in doing some reading on the debate, I came across the following really interesting pieces, which I personally found to be excellent reads:

An excellent viewpoint on the scrapping of the Don Catlin anti-doping programme

The second is the letter below, written by a reader to VeloNews. You can read the original here. It doesn't deal with doping, it doesn't accuse anyone of doing drugs, but just puts out, very eloquently, an opinion on the Armstrong-Kimmage exchange.

Re: The Armstrong/Kimmage exchange
Editor,

Speaking for myself as one of the many "around the world affected by (cancer)," (In my childhood, cancer claimed my father, and later on, my sister as well.) I hold nothing against Mr. Kimmage for his recent characterization of Mr. Armstrong, and I surely do not appreciate Mr. Armstrong assuming the authority to speak for me — especially with such intolerant, hateful words telling someone that they are "not worth the chair they are sitting on."

Indeed, if even half of what has legitimately been alleged about Armstrong is true — the numerous firsthand accounts and sworn testimony of former teammates and associates, the undisputed test results, his conduct towards those who have spoken out about doping within cycling — then Kimmage's metaphor (and that’s what it was, not any sort of insult to those affected by cancer) is appropriate, perhaps even understated.

Armstrong has never credibly addressed these charges, choosing instead to respond with public displays of hostility that have now descended to the level naked aggression with his brutal verbal assault on the very worth on another human being. However unwittingly, Armstrong makes Kimmage look like a prophet in alleging revenge as the motive for his comeback, since we have just seen the first score being settled.

At least in his exchange with Greg LeMond last September, Armstrong insisted that the press conference would not "go negative" since he meant to "talk about the global cancer campaign, the comeback to cycling, and the credibility in and around that." At that point, I was willing to give him the benefit of the doubt, but any "credibility" he could have commanded is now gone, not only as a result of his treatment of Mr. Kimmage, but also his having reneged on a public promise to subject himself to "the most advanced anti-doping program in the world," which would be conducted in a "completely independent" manner because "ultimately…we as fans must get back to enjoying the race and respecting the riders and their performances." (Perhaps the drama of Armstrong’s press-conference "performance" is intended for the public's viewing enjoyment.)

This time, he did not even try to conceal his contempt, which he had the gall to wrap in self-righteous outrage on behalf of those he professes to represent and care about, but whom he is all too willing to exploit for advantage in his personal feuds. Such conduct is beyond the pale from a public spokesperson (even a self-appointed one) for any sort of worthy cause, and it lays bare the dark forces at work in this man – forces that may now be said to constitute an ugly blight not just upon cycling, but the fight against cancer itself.

Charles Howe,
Olmsted Falls, Ohio

Some of the comments in our previous post are also well worth reading, particularly those that disagree, just to get a spectrum of opinions on this one. People obviously feel very strongly about it. And it's no co-incidence that there is a very strong divide in opinions with many on one side of the Atlantic tending to have one opinion, and the majority of those on the other a completely different view (as Ron points out below, the other "watershed" in opinion seems to be the depth of involvement in cycling, which is really interesting - the more involved you are, the less likely you are to buy the media opinion)

That's not a judgment on the people, but rather a comment on the power of the media to mould our opinions. Now you need to ask who is controlling that media? Who is winning the public relations battle? Fueled by Nike, Oakley and the LAF, objective opinions are in short supply here. In the excellent words of bianchigirl, some of the journalism is nothing more than "fawning obsequiousness". I'll take Paul Kimmage's writing any day - it might be as biased as the other side, but it's closer to the truth.

I'm hoping to squeeze in a post on the aging and exercise series this week, time-willing!

Ross

Tour of California 2009: The dopers return

Cycling season starts with doping on center stage

This weekend saw the start of the 2009 Amgen Tour of California. It has become a popular local race in California and the USA and with several top pro teams have races in recent editions, it is becoming an event not to be missed by serious teams in the peloton.

However this year it is notable for a slightly different reason. Doping seems to be ever present in cycling, and it seems like you can't talk about the sport without doping being part of the conversation. And so it is with this year's Tour of California, because we are seeing the return to the pro peloton of three cyclists who have been banned over the past four years:

1. Tyler Hamilton: banned after a positive test for blood doping in the 2004 Vuelta Espana (he raced mostly locally in the USA in the second half of 2007 and last year)
   
2. Ivan Basso: banned when he admitted to working with Efumiano Fuentes in Operacion Puerto but never admitted to actually doping
   
3. Floyd Landis: banned in 2006 after testing positive for synthetic testosterone

At the pre-race press conference former pro Paul Kimmage posed a really interesting question to Lance Armstrong:

"You've spoken recently about the return of Ivan Basso and Floyd Landis, who have returned after their suspensions, compared to David Millar – that they should be welcomed back like he was. But there was one obvious difference in that Millar admitted his doping whereas these guys have admitted to nothing. What is it about these guys that you seem to admire so much?"

In response Kimmage's character was attacked, as is Armstrong's normal tactic when dealing with these issues. He told Kimmage that he was "not worth the chair he was sitting on" for daring to raise Armstrong's doping past, hiding behind the accusation that Kimmage had somehow offended cancer survivors when he implied that Armstrong was the "cancer of cycling". It was a classic case of shooting the messenger. But Kimmage raises a really important question: "What do we do with these athletes?"

None ever admitted to actually doping, although in two cases (Landis and Hamilton) there is a mountain of physiological evidence against them even though they still to this day vehemently deny they ever did anything wrong. It makes it difficult to reconcile how to view them. Interestingly, Dwain Chambers, of track and field, has been widely cast as a pariah, despite admitting, apologizing, and trying to start afresh. He was quoted recently as saying that he should probably not have confessed. Cycling seems to welcome these men back with open arms.

A first for cycling: The return of the doped contender

This is a new situation in cycling, because although we had the Festina scandal in 1998, the highest profile rider on that team was Richard Virenque, whose claim to fame is winning the climbing classification a total of seven times, before and after 1998. Alex Zulle was 2nd overall in the 1999 Tour, but faded into relative obscurity after that. But now we see a former tour winner (Landis), an heir-apparent to the throne and Giro winner (Basso), and an ambitious 4th place tour finisher (2003) and Olympic gold medalist (Hamilton).

These are not the run-of-the-mill domestiques who have thin palmares and leave the sport without anyone taking notice. Instead these are all high-profile team leaders found guilty of doping. Now they are back, having served their time, so is it then an issue of redemption and forgiveness? Do we wipe the slate clean just because they served their ban? Even though Hamilton and Landis deny to our faces that they ever doped even though the data and evidence say otherwise?

As fans this puts us in a tough position as we try to reconcile how we feel about forgiveness and redemption as we watch these athletes return to the pro peleton. Honestly I am not sure how I feel about this yet and likely will struggle with this issue. On the one hand they did serve their time. . .but on the other hand we listened to them deny any wrong doing again and again when we have seen the evidence against them. And in fact we can put them in the same category of athletes like Marion Jones and Alex Rodriguez. All of them initially denied, denied, denied, even in the face of mounting evidence. Eventually they admitted to doping, but tried to tell us they did not know what they were taking at the time, as if that somehow makes it OK that they doped. So we will watch the Tour of California and the rest of the season with much anticipation as these three make their comebacks.

Doping and the other comeback of 2009

The other comeback story of this year's TOC is of course that of Lance Armstrong. He already raced in the Tour of Down Under in January, but as the TOC is taking place in the USA the hype is considerably higher. Of course it all started last year when he announced his intention to return to competition this year, and the relevance here is that concurrently he announced a one-of-a-kind anti-doping program with none other than Dr. Don Catlin, he of BALCO and THG fame among others. It was intended to show once and for all that he was clean, even though there was no talk of Catlin testing any samples from previous years. Quite how riding clean now has any relevance to riding clean over three years ago is beyond us, but in any case we will never get to see how this plan was meant to work.

Catlin was meant to be Armstrong's personal doping officer, testing Armstrong every three days and publishing the results. However Armstrong announced at the end of last week that in fact Catlin was not going to serve this role, and that many months of negotiations had broken down and the two parties could not reach an agreement. So in fact the announcement of Catlin as chief anti-doping officer was never formalized, even though it was announced way back in September of 2007, and not a single sample was analyzed.

When announcing his comeback, Armstrong insisted that he would not talk about doping this year, saying that "I am not going to tell you how clean I am, and I'm not gonna insinuate how dirty the others are. I'm going to ride my bike and I'm going to spread this message around the world and Don Catlin can tell you if I am clean or not."

Or not - Catlin is no longer part of the equation and Armstrong will be tested by the UCI and Astana's internal anti-doping program run by Rasmus Damsgaard. Armstrong also said that, "By shifting things from Dr. Catlin to Dr. Damsgaard, in conjunction with WADA, USADA, UCI... I still maintain it is the most comprehensive testing programme in the business." Which begs the question----if it is so good then why did he need Catlin in the first place? The original proposal called for testing every three days, but at the pre-race prss conference Armstrong stated that this was not needed given the International Cycling Union's (UCI) biological passport and all of the different testing agencies. . .again, why use Catlin in the first place then?

What is an internal anti-doping program, anyway?

The problem, as we have mentioned here before, with internal anti-doping programs is that the teams still hold all the information. Sooner or later this will lead to a team altering data or failing to report data that might implicate one of their riders---there is too much conflict of interest and therefore too much for a team to gain by witholding or altering information. In fact, I believe, and have it on good authority, that this is already happening, which is not surprising when you consider the massive conflict of interests between team, riders and the "independent" testers. You have riders who are paid to win, team sponsors who will withdraw their money for a positive test, and a situation where doping is crucial but announcing it is business suicide.

And in the case of Astana and Damsgaard it appears that the program lacks any real teeth beyond the UCI testing, anyway. In a Belgian interview Damsgaard stated that "the official anti-doping authority for all the tests I take, that’s the UCI. Thus it follows the customer's requirements. I only get the results after the UCI has received them." This seems to indicate that there is not much of an internal anti-doping program at all, and instead the team has hired an expert to have a look at the data to see if anything looks suspicious. If it does, then what? The poor team manager is now in the position of knowing riders are doping, when he has to produce winning results for sponsors, but sponsors will withdraw their money if riders are found to be doping! It's an impossible dilemma.

So how do these programs function? That is a question that we would love to know the answer to. Regardless, if anyone is asking our advice we propose a wiki approach where data is collected published by a third party for anyone and everyone to see---that includes the UCI, the teams, the athletes, and of course the fans like us.

In the mean time, enjoy the Tour of California! The course this year is a good one with plently of climbs including one on the final day that hopefully promises some fireworks and maybe even a new leader/winner on the final stage.

Jonathan

Exercise, aging and humour

Who says you lose speed with age? 72-year old granny runs down a teenage hand-bag thief

No, this is not Part 3 of the series I started last week on Exercise and Aging. But, it was too good an opportunity to pass up, because it fits so well, and makes the perfect "weekend interlude".

You can read the story here. It describes how 72-year Jean Hirst of Derbyshire, England, ran down a 15-year bag thief when she tried to make off with Mrs Hirst's handbag.

In the article it describes how the thief had a head start, but Mrs Hirst says she covered 70 yards in about 15 seconds and the girl, with a look of "sheer amazement" on her face, was forced to throw the bag aside when Mrs Hirst was within two strides of her in order to escape!

A big thumbs up for Mrs Hirst for turning back the clock - she was a junior sprint champion at 17.

And I'm guessing that the 15-year old "failed" bag thief is not a prospective London 2012 runner. Thumbs down for stealing from an apparently helpless pensioner, and also for letting that head start slip!

A repeat performance - England has some sprint talent (in the over-65 category)

Amazingly enough, it turns out that this is NOT THE FIRST such occurrence in England - either England has the fastest pensioners in the world, or the slowest teenagers, because in doing a bit of research after receving the story from Jim Ferstle (thanks as always, Jim!), I found this story from October 2008:

Granny Janet Lane runs teenager to ground over snatched pension

Same situation, except Mrs Lane was 68, and the theives were boys. Incredibly, Mrs Lane ran them down despite wearing sandals. She had been a cross-country champion back in 1953, and had apparently kept herself in shape ever since!

So another thumbs up for Janet Lane! And another thumbs down for those British teenagers - lacking morals, as well as fast twitch muscle fibers!

Last word is a quote by Jean Hirst:

I didn't think of my safety, but I did pay for it a little the next day. I was covered in aches and pains and my daughter turned to me and said it was because I didn't warm up properly.

Have a great weekend, and join me for the rest of the series on Aging next week!

Ross

Exercise and aging Part 2

Exercise and aging: Growing old gracefully, with speed!

Yesterday we began a series on exercise and aging by looking at the world records across the age categories. To remind you, here's the graph minus the notes from yesterday:

I've indicated the records for 30 years, 50 years and 72 years, just to illustrate the main point of today's post. You can work out who holds the 30-year old record if you want (hint: He is one of only four people to break his own world record, and he ran for a country not of his birth). The 50-year old is Titus Mamabolo (a South African - our only record holder these days), and the 72-year old is Ed Whitlock of yesterday's post.

But the point that I alluded to yesterday is that there is a flaw in using this graph (or the relationship) to project what your own time will be at age Y based on your time aged X.

That's because the graph you see above is made up of perhaps 50 different runners, and each one has an entirely different trend in performance over the years. The individual running 2:05:38 will NOT be running 2:19:29 at 50, and will NOT run 2:59 at the age of 72. We know this because it hasn't happened on a single occasion in all the age-group records that one individual holds records more than 9 years apart. Ed Whitlock, who we introduced yesterday, and will feature again the future, is the holder of the most records - he owns 8 age-records, all in a batch.

A window of performance? Depends on the performance...

This seems to suggest that individuals have a narrow "window" during which they are able to excel. Bear in mind that "excel" in this case means running faster than any person in history! That's a tough bar to set, so I must make the allowance that the "window" becomes much longer when you start to lower the performance level slightly. That is, someone who is running at say 80% of the world record pace can probably much more accurately work out how their performances should change over time (which is why those calculators that predict your age-equivalent times do have some merit)

Of course, people tend to over-value those equations and formulas that work out what your time at the age of say 60 would be equivalent to if you were 30. While interesting, such predictions can't really be used as "instructive" or to judge your current performance, because you're on your own journey, and the changes over time can't really be accounted for unless you do a massive study that looks at say 500 individuals over the course of 60 years and plots the average decay in performance (and, to the best of my knowledge, that hasn't been done).

The reasons for the decline - age physiology

So now we get to the reasons for the decline. And this is relatively well-known physiology, which I promised yesterday that I'd avoid spending too much time on. However, it's important to understand as we move forward, because the next step will be too look at "Chronological Age vs. Running Age", and so we need to understand Chronological age.

So what can you expect as you get older? (That feels very morbid as I type it..., sorry)

Aging affects numerous physiological systems, including the neuromuscular, hormonal, respiratory, cardiovascular and metabolic systems.

Lean muscle mass and age

Perhaps the most widely known and significant changes that occur with aging are those that affect the muscle, and happen in part because the levels of hormones like testosterone and growth hormone fall over the years. Testosterone is the one everyone knows about because dopers use it so often, and as any body-builder will tell you, is anabolic (as opposed to catabolic), because it builds up tissues in response to stress, and is responsible for muscle growth and development after training.

Testosterone levels peak during adolescence and early adulthood, but somewhere between 30 and 40 years of age, begin to decline progressively. As a result, lean muscle mass declines by as much as 30% between 25 (when peak muscle mass occurs) and 70 years of age. This reduction involves decreases in the total number of muscle fibers and a decrease in the size of the fibers. At the same time, oxidative damage causes further reductions in muscle mass, as does a decline in the number of motor neurons that provide neural “nourishment” to the muscle fibers.

The net effect of the reduction in muscle mass is a loss of muscle strength – as much as 2% per year, so that by the age of 70, strength is reduced by up to 40%, though this depends on the individual and also their activity levels. Training helps prevent these reductions, which is good news, and is the part of the equation that you can control.

One of the more obvious, and upsetting consequences of this change is that your metabolic rate slows down, and so you start to gain weight (fat mass, that is). The common misperception that "muscle turns into fat" is actually the storage of fat that is partly caused by a loss of muscle thanks to aging. It's not that muscle is converted to fat, but rather that fat now tends to be deposited much more easily. If you don't adjust your diet, "middle age spread" is the result!

Injury and adaptation

One of the more frustrating aspects of aging (and the reason you've probably been the butt of some jokes from friends) is that your ability to recover from training is reduced. Pretty much all "moving parts" don't quite recover from sessions the day before, and your body’s ability to adapt to the stress of training is also reduced. You can no longer repair damage by laying down stronger muscle fibers in response to training. One of the big benefits of taking testosterone is that it aids recovery, allowing harder training. Aging is effectively "reverse doping", since testosterone is reduced, and training can't be done to the same level as before. One of the first things people will notice is that they wake up stiff and commonly jokingly say "I must be getting old". Exactly!

Other hormonal changes further contribute to this adaptation barrier – the production of growth hormone decreases steadily from the age of 10, just after puberty, which has much the same effect as the fall in testosterone, as well as some other effects on metabolism. Growth hormone has even been called the “anti-aging” hormone, a popular choice among the Hollywood elite to retain their celebrity looks! We'll return to this hormone again in the future...(thanks to Peter for his input on that one)

Other aging effects

There is also a decrease in the number of capillaries to each muscle fiber, which means that valuable energy and oxygen delivery to muscles is compromised. Stroke volume (the amount pumped per contraction) and heart rate also fall over time, meaning less blood can be pumped to the body as cardiac output falls. Respiratory muscles get weaker, and the resistance in the airways rises, which makes breathing harder work. The ability to get valuable oxygen out of the air into the blood and to the muscles is reduced, not a great outcome for a marathon runners! It doesn't take a degree in exercise physiology to appreciate how these changes in the heart and lungs would make running or any other endurance activity much more difficult.

Inside the muscle, proteins that are important to assist with metabolism are not produced in the same quantities – you therefore become less effective at producing ATP to power muscle contraction. The muscle’s capacity to store and release energy changes with age – less glucose and glycogen can be stored, and the muscle becomes less sensitive to hormones that normally drive metabolism, like adrenaline.

Changes in women - even more pronounced

In women, hormonal changes have even more dramatic effects – menopause and the associated hormonal changes are responsible for many effects, perhaps the most relevant for running being a decrease in bone mineral density that predisposes women to the development of osteopenia, which is a precursor to the more serious osteoporosis, where the risk of fractures is greatly increased.

Here, the excellent news is that running (and other exercise), because it is a weight-bearing exercise, is one of the most effective means of preventing osteoporosis, because it helps elevate the bone mineral density at a young age so that the inevitable age-induced decline does not have potentially disastrous consequences.

The same goes for all the other changes - the body ages, this is as inevitable as death and taxes (as the saying goes). However, regular exercise slows down the rate of decline in many of these systems, or at least reduces the impact of the change. The result is that regardless of what you've read in this post, and the fact that you may be bemoaning lost youth (don't worry, I am too!), if you continue to exercise now, then you'll reap the benefits, in spite of your natural battle against father time!

Chronological age vs running age

Well done if you've managed to read this far. This was a "textbook" physiology post, not my favourite kind, but hopefully I've skimmed through all the important systems and how the years affect them. If you're a scholar or student who just happens to be doing an assignment on this topic, then you're in luck (Please feel free to donate to us through our PayPal link! And don't forget to reference everything you say!)

However, this is all a precursor to the more juicy and exciting discussion to come, probably next week. That's when we'll start looking at the impact of many years of running as compared to many years of living. There is evidence that running age is just as important as chronological age in determining running performance, and that the two interact to properly explain what you will have experienced. And the notion of a "window" of opportunity seems to be borne out.

So let's tackle that next week, when we're all three days older. Hope this was instructive and not too morbid!

Ross