On January 4th I posted a back-and-forth with marathon legend Bill Rodgers in which we discussed the continued dominance in the sport by altitude-born runners from Kenya and Ethiopia:
BILL RODGERS: SPEAKING OF ALTITUDE
Among Bill’s points was “We need a Ross Tucker type (Science of Sport) to give us their input. What is the EXTRA time EPO gives a sea-level born marathoner and an altitude-born marathoner? Is it a 5% factor? Fun to speculate. ”
Hi Toni
I actually saw your interview with Bill on Letsrun, around the same time that you sent me this. Very interesting indeed.
I don’t have a definite answer for you or Bill. It’s so difficult because we have to make inferences about what would happen in elite athletes, because all the research is done on sub-elite runners. One of the great shortcomings of sports science is that it too rarely assesses the very pinnacle of human physiology. In this case (doping), there are obvious ethical reasons for that, but nevertheless, its’ an answer nobody really knows.
What I can tell you is that recently, some research on EPO in decent runners (9 min for 3000m guys, so good, though not world class) has shown a similar improvement regardless of altitude origins which is really interesting. That study found a 30 second improvement over 3000m in people born at sea-level and altitude. So that suggests an improvement of around 5% for that caliber of athlete.
The problem with this comparison is that a sea-level athlete who runs 9 min is probably a better runner than an altitude native running 9 min at sea level. At least, they may be, and so perhaps the very best altitude natives get less of a boost from EPO than the very best sea-level natives.
The improvement available to an elite runner is likely a lot smaller, simply because they are already near the physiological limit. Those limits, or glass ceilings, can be nudged higher, but never broken in my opinion. At least, not shattered. There is a physiological failure point and so providing EPO might allow the athlete to go faster, but something else would eventually get them – maybe energy depletion, maybe body temperature, or fatigue of the muscles and joints because of impact forces and load, something like that.
So that’s why I suspect the very best runners get a much smaller benefit – they’re so close to all those potential limitations that their margins are maybe 1%. That’s a minute or so over a marathon, which I think is reasonable. Maybe it’s more, who knows? These Kenyan doping cases are wreaking havoc with perceptions of those runners, that’s for sure.
In cycling, the benefit seemed to be 5%, even in the elites. Maybe cycling, with less impact, and also altitude (the mountain top finishes are usually at 1500m) have more margin for improvement. Or maybe running would improve by 5%. That’s hard to conceptualise though – it suggests a 6 min improvement in a marathon. Then again, if you apply that to Jeptoo, you get a 2:26 – 2:27 performance, which may be about right! On the other hand, if you assume that Kipsang or Kimetto are not doping (damn cynicism), then you’re saying that they’d run 1:56 with EPO.
Mmmm, all in all, you can see how I’m just going around in circles, because we simply don’t know! Maybe, and this is hedging bets, responses to EPO are like responses to every medicine – huge individual variation, and so some people get huge improvements, others none, and the altitude effect might be general but not consistent across all individuals. I know that in cycling, teams looked for guys who they classed as “high responders” to EPO, which is to say, they had low red blood cell volumes to start with, because then there was more change before it got “illegal”.
It is a fun topic, nice to speculate, but unfortunately unanswerable.
Regarding what Bill was saying about separate competitions for altitude-born runners, that’s interesting. It goes to the whole “Deterministic” aspect of sport – if you’re born short, you’re not playing pro-basketball, and they aren’t going to create a category for anyone shorter than 5’10”! Boxing is different – being born small is not a disadvantage because you just compete in one of about 14 categories.
It’s all very random, and an altitude birth issue would be like the boxing one – trying to correct for an accident of longitude and latitude!
On the note of altitude, I have just recently published a paper with my colleague Jordan Santos looking at brain oxygenation in Kenyan runners, and we found that they are able to defend their brain oxygenation levels during a 5km time-trial. The problem here is comparison – our guys were 61 min half marathon runners, so very good. A few had one marathons internationally, though not quite at the level of the Marathon Majors.
Problem is, there are so few non East Africans with those performances, that we have nobody to compare them to. We’d have to gather about 30 of the world’s best European or North American runners and hope that 15 would let us test them, and only then would we be comparing athletes at the same level. Not going to happen!
In any event, we found that they defend oxygenation – whether it’s a Kenyan thing, an altitude thing (all were born at altitude) or perhaps just a training status consequence, we don’t know yet, but it’s certainly an interesting one.
Well, that’s my thinking out loud! Sorry about the long delay getting back to you! Hope this helps a little.
WANDERING IN A RUNNING WORLD 
Toni:
Thanks. It’s interesting, but where would it point us if we really had definitive research? What is altitude? 3,000 ft.? 8,000 ft.? Should we handicap races (with head starts, say) based on what altitude the athlete grew up in? There could be a continuum, perhaps 3 seconds per 500 ft. altitude increments. (Ross alluded to the accident-of-birth phenomenon.) It would bring expanded meaning to the concept of a controlled start.
Mark Heinicke
Ross’s response is very interesting. I especially enjoyed reading your thoughts, too, Craig. I can’t say that I disagree with most of them.
My brother and I met and spoke with you a few times in Falmouth, Lynchburg, and elsewhere back in the “good old days”. How I miss them, and all of the personalities and rivalries that used to make road racing so exciting.
I have reread this communication by Ross twice…and am still trying to get a conclusion out of it. He is hedging his bets… because he is a published scientist…. but I am not. I am just a veteran of the sport. However, I feel that too damn many male distance runners have run under 2:05 for the marathon in the last 6 years! If you assign a 3%-5% advantage with possible/probable use of EPO …maybe the lesser figure if you are born & raised at altitude to begin with as Ross points out…. and add that back into the finish times….then that would raise most of the approximate 32 sub-2:05 times to much closer to what I might expect the marathon to be running right now…. much more in the 2:06-2:09 range which sounds much more reasonable to me 25 years after I was competing….. very fast…. but still very reasonable. That kind of generational improvement I could believe in!
On the other hand, maybe all flatlanders below a certain altitude…. should be allowed to take some monitored EPO….if they are to compete in big races with altitude born athletes who would enjoy a significant competitive edge with a higher red blood cell count just by virtue of where they were born and raised.,…to help “level the playing field” in all distance races somewhat. Why should those of us whose families and careers require that we live and train at lower altitude be made to suffer an unfair competitive edge against those athletes whose families and careers are based at a higher altitude location? Anyway, this is simply “food for thought” and the kind of topic that Toni and I could enjoy over several cups of coffee some day…..right up Toni’s alley! Craig Virgin
Provocative, as always, Craig. But coming from one who raced the best (and won), you speak with the imprimatur of your championship pedigree. I have noted how well your fellow Illinois native, Chris Derrick has followed in your footsteps. The sport needs wide-spread competition to survive and thrive. It cannot reduce itself to a dual meet or the world will lose all interest altogether.
The coffee’s on me.
Toni
Since I can’t run fast anymore, Toni, I have to think and talk somewhat provocatively or else I wouldn’t be a very good speaker or color analyst at events! Provocative or not, I’ll eat my old racing flats before I believe that there are 32 men out there running under 2:05 “clean” right now! I’ve waited for 6 years for the Kenyan Athletics investigation to finally get off the ground…. but I doubt it will be as exhaustive and comprehensive as it needs to be due to lack of funding. Also, being a flatlander, myself, I often wondered what it might be like to have a higher RBC count?!? Finally, I am extremely proud of 2 fellow Illinois H.S. alumni… Chris Derrick and Evan Jager… for their professional level running accomplishments and can only hope that Lukas V. recovers from his cycling accident sufficiently to pursue his triathlon potential in full. I’ll hold you to that latte!
While I’ll agree thirty two sub 2:05’s seems out of the realm of possibility for drug free athletes, let’s keep in mind this weekend saw thirty six sub 4:00 miles indoor according to Flo Track. The only way to insure a level playing field would be to have everyone born in the same place time and conditions train the same way and monitored 100% of their lives. Who would watch that. Even NASCAR gave up on that to some degree. David Epstein had a good take on this subject, but the answer will always be train better, hope the other guy gets caught if he’s cheating and if nothing else beat them at another sport that draws our best talent away from running here in the U.S. DO NOT lower the bar so we can compete nor lower our standards in an attempt to make it fair. Somebody will always look for a way to gain an edge, legal or otherwise.