It
is funny and interesting to say that America is a late bloomer as a continent.Living in this continent is to be behind
many conflicts and events played out someplace else before our time; World War I and II for example.
It is also a fact that experience is
personal and it is difficult to be convinced about something if we have not
experienced it or know a similar event.Stephen Curry doubts
that men were on the moon.So, it is important
for parents and civilization to show the know-how.Many things can be part of the experience of
an entire population if we “really learn from History.” Internet is playing a
big role to show the know-how in order to appropriate a larger experience.Idiosyncrasies are the difference in this
globalized world and not the content of the experiences.In a way, the Aztecs
lost the war because of their idiosyncrasies regarding war and not because they were
not apt for it.Our team is a late
bloomer because we learned from experience since triathlon started without
being part of the triathlon history.Mexico, except for the Aztecs and Mayas, has being out of the Universal
History. Learning from History is not an
easy task.We have to start with
believing what we see as the first step to learn from History.
In
our team, we started to review the “old testament” in order to have a better
idea of human beings. “Nothing new under the sun,” says the Ecclesiastes. “The old testament” gives the best “visual” written pictures to learn to believe
in what we see.When Cecilia Ramirez was
asked by the Mexican TV if she was afraid of competing against the Brits, Americans,
French etc., she just said: “I believe in myself and my team, and concentrated in myself during the race.”
I
listened to Emma Coronel’s interview regarding her life with Joaquín Guzman. Well, I could be listening to Sarah Sanders
and her statements, they are the same:
Can
we have champions in triathlon with this kind of thinking and education?
The
type of education needed for champions is not what Sanders and Coronel have in
mind.What we learned from what they say
is the scary reality of humanity; we went too far creating “monsters” that
could destroy us.There was not Nazi
guard that felt bad for what he did, or bad about what he was living. Fortunately,
they were not too many, but we are not in the same situation nowadays looking
at people as Sarah and Emma.Trump speaks
about impeachment with the same insight as Sarah and Emma:
If Donald Trump is starting to get worried about his position after his
week from hell, he isn’t showing it. In a blustering interview with Fox & Friends broadcast Wednesday morning, the
president claimed it would be impossible to impeach him—because he’s doing an
“A+” job.
Well,
Trump is not a champion and never would be.Bankruptcies to earn money is not a strategy of a champion but it can
give you money as it happened with Trump.We will never see his tax filings.The route to be a champion does not allow “fake news” and “fake
information.”It is just a matter of
looking at Kristian Blummenfelt and we can see what is needed:a lot of honest and hard work.His work is in Strava.Although, many people would believe that he
made up mileage using his car.
The
Mexican walker, Lupita Gonzalez (Gold Medal in Rio because the Chinese was DQS
for doping), gave positive for trenbolone; she claims it is from contaminated
meat.But from what we know, she made
big changes after the Olympics and she could hardly tolerate needed training
after a long haul rest; she most likely used this kind of help offered by
ignorant and ill-advising people around her. This is not different from Emma Coronel,
but Lupita has not money as it is the case of Emma.This became a huge problem for Lupita and
probably the real end of her career (money recipient).Education to overcome this kind of hurdle is
badly needed, the ability to know “who is who” in order to make decision
regarding training and nutrition.
Emma
and Donald speak quite the same.These
guys are historic figures to study to learn about human ignorance.We have gone too far in democratizing
thinking and behavior to the point of having these people making decision for
many.We continue to work with our kids
to create something different; at least they should know “who is who.”
We were giving the weekly reading to our
athletes. It is an article written by a
physician regarding what is happening in Oncology. Of course, this is happening in Medicine in
general, because we are ruled by pharmaceuticals and we have plenty of doctors
that functioned as buffoons or cheerleaders.
A new class
of physician has emerged in the era of social media. I call them "Twitter
cheerleaders." A Twitter cheerleader is someone who bestows lavish praise
on a new cancer drug, paper, trial, or test, while an objective and impartial
look at the data may suggest caution or, at a minimum, less exuberant language.
Cheerleaders uncritically parrot drug company marketing. How can readers
recognize cheerleaders? Here are some of my tips…
1. Cheerleaders
celebrate press releases that don't contain information on the magnitude of
benefit.
2.Cheerleaders celebrate a paper without
reading it.
3.Cheerleaders call a drug that does not
improve overall survival "miraculous."
4.Cheerleaders think any drug, no matter
how marginal or ineffective, will be useful and it is just a matter of patient
selection or some yet-to-be-discovered combination.
5.Cheerleaders re-tweet cost-effectiveness
analyses sponsored by the maker of the cancer drug that show favorable results.
6.Cheerleaders make frequent, lavish, hyperbolic
claims about the future.
7.Cheerleaders point to improvements in
5-year survival statistics as a measure of how good cancer drugs have become.
Instead of
cheerleaders, what we desperately need from physicians are realistic appraisals
of what has been accomplished. Clear statements of future cancer goals. Cancer
research funding policies that are driven by evidence, and greater honesty
daily in the examination room and on the wards. Take off the rose-tinted
sunglasses with the Pharma logo, and see the world with your own eyes. We would
all be better off with fewer cheerleaders and more true scientists.
Hey, we are not talking about Trump.This is something to be aware of Medicine in
the USA.This was present when I
practiced there, but now they have megaphones (twitter) to do so.
Some Federations and related governing bodies practice
marketing the same way the drug companies do.They buy buffoons or cheerleaders to do the dirty job for them.It is a matter of taking a look at our own environment
and the way they twit or the way they do not twit.Depending on the way of marketing we have the
triathletes we deserve.We do not twit
at all.
Cecilia won the championship and we continue thinking
about the Salomonic explanation.She did
it for happiness within our ethical code:
“Meaningless! Meaningless!” says the Teacher. “Utterly meaningless! Everything is meaningless.”
What do
people gain from all their labors at which they toil under the sun? Generations come and generations go, but the earth remains forever.
The sun
rises and the sun sets, and hurries back to where it rises. The wind blows to the south and turns to the north; round and round it goes, ever returning on its course.
All
streams flow into the sea, yet the sea is never full. To the place the streams come from, there they return again.
All
things are wearisome, more than one can say. The eye never has enough of seeing, nor the ear its fill of hearing.
What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun. Is there anything of which one can say, “Look! This is something new”? It was here already, long ago; it was here before our time. No one remembers the former generations, and even those yet to come will not be remembered by those who follow them.—Ecclesiastes 1:1–11
This week another Mexican triathlete appeared in the
ITU’s main page, he was caught using performance enhancing drugs.These are not isolated incidences but we do
not have a way to calculate how many are out there using these drugs.We do not have a systematic doping culture
because we lack a system and an organization to have one; what people call
organized crime in Mexico is really disorganized.We have too many crimes/bandits and little justice
as you hear in the news.To believe that
things are planned in Mexico is too much.It is so bad that these triathletes are fighting literally for their life because they
are too old and do not know what else to do; most of them are unprepared to
continue with something else for living.Please see:
There is an
article written in the ITU’s page reporting a Mexican triathlete caught using
performance enhancing drugs. Doping points out to the real issue we
encounter in most of the athletes: “they are running for their
life.” I tell team members that “we are running for our life” daily;
going to work and perform the best we can to continue in the game. Being
a professional takes time and training so “running for our life” does not
become "running for our life" literally. To focus in our
work we have to know that “we are running for our life” daily. We
have to believe that this is our situation and more importantly in a Third
World Country. Our society takes this problem lightly and Mexican
triathletes end up using performance enhancing drugs to stay
alive. Our society takes training lightly and at the end “running
for our life” is literally “running for our life.” We hammer the
concept of “running for your life” in our team to improve training; economical,
physical and mental freedom depends on how focused and devoted we are to what
we do daily; if we know and understand that we are running for our life we
should take training more seriously. It is not the way the FMTRI and
related teams take it.
There are things in common in these two athletes who
were mentioned in the ITU’s page.Both
lived for years at the National Institute of the Sports in Mexico City and left
the center after finishing aging the U-23 category.They did not achieve anything as triathletes but
they complied with “marcas mínimas” (17:24 for swimming 1,500 meters; 15:20 for
5k running) in order to continue living at the center (food, shelter and money
for competitions).No one at the CNAR
has done much as a junior, U-23 or elite levels anyway.There is not doping control for “marcas
mínimas.”The testing should be done
then if it is like the anti-doping slogan says:
ITU is concerned about
athletes health and well-being when they pollute their body with drugs. ITU is
strongly committed to making sure that Triathlon remains a clean sport and that
our athletes are competing on a level-playing field. We realize how important
are both, in-competition and out-of-competition tests leading up to the Olympic
Games and ITU is committed to finding any athletes who do not respect the
rules.
We have not heard any comments from the Mexican
Federation, not even news about the incidents reported in the ITU’s page.Mexicans from the Federation are in the ITU’s
organigram and they are not controlling the information as it was the case with
the doping violation of Adriana Barraza which did not appear in the ITU’s page.These poor, “old dudes” triathletes, part of
the Mexican Federation, are becoming the scapegoats for using barbaric doping methods
and being mediocre triathletes.Doping
is present in a more sophisticated way by using a TUE (therapeutic use
exemption) like most of the first world countries.It is not an excuse but doping is present in
this context too:
The Norwegian
Olympic delegation has brought around 6,000 doses of asthma medication to the
2018 PyeongChang Olympics to treat national team members if they are diagnosed
with the chronic respiratory disease.
Norwegian
government-owned broadcasting corporation NRK published the list of drugs taken to PyeongChang by the Norwegian
team doctor. It includes 1,800 doses of Symbicort, 1,200 doses of Atrovent,
1,200 doses of Alvesco, 360 doses of Ventolin and 1,200 doses of Airomir –
which amounts to 10 times more asthma drugs than Finland has brought to South
Korea.
Beta-2
agonists are on the list of prohibited substances in sport. Salbutamol by
inhalation is permitted to treat allergic asthma, and/or exercise-induced
asthma or exercise-induced bronchoconstriction. If the level of salbutamol in
urine exceeds 1000 ng/mL, the result is considered as a doping violation with
an anabolic steroid. We report a case of a track and field athlete who tested
well above this limit during a competition. He had a valid therapeutic use
exemption for the use of salbutamol by inhalation and he claimed that he never
used salbutamol orally. Further studies under controlled application by
inhalation showed that this limit was exceeded. We propose that sanctioning
bodies in sport should consider this possibility before taking into account a
two-year ban for the use of an anabolic steroid.
Well, doping has been institutionalized by having a
TUE which sometimes do not follow the protocols for illnesses they treat e.g.,
using steroid orally for asthma in the case of Henri Schoeman and Adriana
Barraza.We wrote about it:
22 janv. 2018
Triathlon and Postmodern Era: Doping
Considering that inflammation is the final result of
the osmolar and vascular modifications described, anti-inflammatory treatment through inhaled steroids
is often effective and sufficient to achieve a good EIA/EIB control (93). It should be noted
that ICSs are the only anti-inflammatory drugs that improve respiratory
epithelial healing (107). ICSs reduce the damage induced by repeated training
and competitions, as we have seen for the phenotype of the ‘athlete's asthma’,
enabling the athletes to master their sports and improving the long-term
prognosis (10)…
Oral corticosteroids and oral or intravenous β2-agonists are prohibited. The list of prohibited drugs
is usually updated every year and can be found on the WADA website (www.wada-ama.org).
Doping should be taken seriously by ITU and
Federations to keep sports as a way of educating people to help to create a
better world, which is our main goal, and it has not happened.Doping in these Mexican triathletes is
because they realized they were “running for their life” too late in life.In order to pay bills one needs to embrace
the job seriously, otherwise one will be “running for one’s life,” and most of
the times one is already dead.
There is an article written in the ITU’s page reporting
a Mexican triathlete caught using performance enhancing drugs.Doping points out to the real issue we
encounter in most of the athletes:“they
are running for their life.”I tell team
members that “we are running for our life” daily; going to work and perform the
best we can to continue in the game.Being a professional takes time and training so “running for our life”
does not become "running for our life" literally.To focus in
our work we have to know that “we are running for our life” daily.We have to believe that this is our situation
and more importantly in a Third World Country.Our society takes this problem lightly and Mexican triathletes end up using performance enhancing
drugs to stay alive.Our society takes
training lightly and at the end “running for our life” is literally “running
for our life.”We hammer the concept of “running
for your life” in our team to improve training; economical, physical and mental
freedom depends on how focused and devoted we are to what we do daily; if we know and understand that we are running for our life we should take training more seriously. It is not the way the FMTRI and related teams take it.
A phrase we use with team members is: “you need to buy
your freedom.”We are in this stage
since the beginning of our days.LeBron
James –talking about athletes,- finally reached that point of freedom.It takes time and commitment “to buy our
freedom.”
Germany is out
of the Soccer World Cup (2018).It lost
against the Mexicans and Koreans.Germans
were strong players specialized to play against the Europeans, speed and
karate-like game were not practiced.They were too slow most of the time even though technically they were in
the game.Mexicans lost against the Swedish
when they ran out of speed. Physically,
the Mexicans were not ready to play three games in two weeks.Triathlon is not different and enduring speed
needs specific training.The winner in
the Soccer World Cup will be who endures the tournament; the teams are too much
party and a little endurance training.At the end soccer is an entertainment instead of a real sport, or at
least the Mexican team.
We have posts
regarding this subject:
27 janv. 2013
Speed and Triathlon
To win in triathlon and even ironman, you
need speed. A 10k speed of 31 minutes is necessary to win Hawaii;
29 or below to win an ITU triathlon championship for males. I am
talking about having reached a plateau cycling and swimming, and having the
above speed running. Reaching a plateau means 6:45 min/5k cycling on
a flat surface and swimming in 16:30 or below the 1,500 meters. If
you do not have those numbers, your chances are practically non-existent to win
Hawaii or/and ITU championship. SO, YOU NEED TO PRACTICE SPEED if
your goals are to achieve your maximum potential. How to do it?
Bernard Lagat (35 años) mentioned interesting
things in his interview for Runners World: “It is an August afternoon
last summer, a week before the first round of the 1500 meters in the track and
field World Championships in Berlin. The day before, Lagat had gone to a nearby
track where he ran a pitch-perfect workout. He clocked one minute and 20
seconds for 600 meters, followed by three 41-second 300s. The times were
identical to the training runs he had completed before the last World
Championships, in 2007, when he went on to win both the 1500 and 5000 meters.
So, based on yesterday's workout, he is heartened. He hasn't lost a step.”
Let´s continue with what Lagat
noticed. Adding somebody else that needs special attention: Peter
Snell.
“When Lagat makes this point, it dawns on a
visitor what a startling contrast there is between his youthful potency and his
well-disguised age—a contrast few athletes of his stature ever get to achieve.
Peter Snell of New Zealand, after winning the Olympic 800 meters in 1960, and
the 800 and 1500 in 1964, became a research scientist so as to study his own
kind—the great. He found that champion middle-distance men have only been able
to endure racing and training at their peak for an average of five years. That
was all Snell himself could stand.”
But we come back to his ample cultural
experience which makes a difference in what he learns and applies it to life:
“Boys are prepared with weeks of seclusion
and instruction in the ways of the tribe. "Circumcision parallels what the
military does to a draftee," says 1972 Olympic 800-meter bronze medalist
Mike Boit. "The elders shave his head, give him a new name, and subject
him to rigorous discipline, all to remove his individuality and replace it with
a new identity of toughness and obedience." The result is men who do not
shrink from the discomfort of running, or much else…No matter how painful something
is, you have to take it. I saw that in both my parents. I only had to observe
them to learn toughness. But the essential thing in Nandi society is not simply
enduring. It is also always finding a solution." One does not simply
suffer in silence. "You seek help from the elders. A society with elders
is healthy. It's not always that way in the West."
Lagat continues to learn about running after
Olympic medals and records after the age of 35, as pointed out in the
interview:
"Those races came down to the workouts
that I do," he says. "I was able to follow Bekele in the 5000, in the
3000, always being close and thinking, 'I'm really only training for the 1500,
but I can do this.' Now Bekele, he's training for his specialty, 5-K and 10-K,
and I'm getting close. Think about what can happen if I add more to what I am
doing for the 1500 or put on more 5000 training. I need those hard repetitions
at 1000, at 800, a lot of 400s that are more intense than what I've done…Lagat
has trained in Tubingen since 1998 because Templeton bases his stable of
runners here during European summer seasons. Within
the Schonbuch woods Lagat has retooled his techniques, again and again,
continuing an education and an evolution that allows him to endure beyond his
age."
Education and technique make us tolerate the
training regimen and to continue improving. Let´s take a look at
Peter Snell: As Snell pointed out in a telephone interview
with Running Research News, "Perhaps the best way to train is to
spend the maximum-possible amount of time running at a pace which is closely
related to the demands (or pace) of the race you're shooting for, without
getting overtrained."
Snell does not see it the same way with his
great experience on his shoulders, a unique experience: “Peter Snell
was a protégé of the late Arthur Lydiard and trained based on what is fondly
known as the “Lydiardism”. When you look at the background of training for
middle distance events, back in those days in the late 1950s and early 1960s,
the mainstream training method was intervals.
Arthur Lydiard defied all this and prescribed
Snell, as an 800m runner, to run 100 miles a week with weekly 22-miler over a
gruelingly hilly course. Snell ran this famous 22-mile circuit called
“Waiatarua” with a distance man, Murray Halberg, and a marathon runner, Barry
Magee.”
Snell lost against Jim Ryun, the High School
phenomenon that has his peak at the age of 18 and kept competing for the next
five years as Snell mentioned. Ryun peaked as young as the
Brownlees. Please, take a look at his records:
World records
Distance
Time
Date
City
880 yards
1:44.9
October 6, 1966
Terre Haute, IN
1,500 meters
3:33.1
July 8, 1967
Los Angeles, CA
One Mile
3:51.3
July 17, 1966
Berkeley, CA
One Mile
3:51.1
June 23, 1967
Bakersfield, CA
One Mile (indoor)
3:56.4
February 19, 1971
San Diego, CA
The way of training to improve speed was
mentioned in more details in one of our posts:
When stressing
the body the muscles suffer change according to the amount of Growth Hormone
(GH) released by the body, which also depends on the amount of cortisol
released by the body. At a certain limit cortisol inhibits the release of
growth hormone but cortisol is necessary to release GH. Too much cortisol
knocks out the growth hormone production and as a consequence the changes we
are looking for do not take place. That is why the stress should be
according to our objectives and level of training. If one wants to run 30
minutes-10k; one needs to increase the time on the stress zone progressively
until being able to run five minutes at the same speed, in the scale of 1-10,
7-8 effort makes the trick. Keeping technique and cadence is very
important (please, read previous 1, 2 and 3 parts); as I said, training is very
specific and the improvements made would be according to the training cadence
and technique. At the same time neurological training should take
place. Neurons do not use fat or proteins as fuels. They depend on
glucose. In order to keep firing as a “plug” for the muscles, neurons need
training which can be gotten at the regular muscular training, but one needs
specific training to increase the firing rate if one pursues a different
performance level. How can the neurons keep firing if one does no train
neurons to fire at high speed for a long period of time? If one´s pulse
is high or low depends on the neurological training, and this is the main
player in our speed, not so much the muscles. When one trains and the
pulse remains low even when we try to increase it by increasing speed; it means
that the neurons are tired, and the muscles could be o.k.
At the end,
educating athletes to endure and enjoy the process of training at early age is
the key element: a cultural matter.
