Triathlon and Trump

I asked one of my patients from New Jersey if she was going to vote for Trump after his visit to Mexico, she was born Republican.  She said: “No, he owes us money from a development in New Jersey where he never paid contractors because he declared bankruptcy.  He made his money that way.  He is not a producer, he just knows the system.” In our team we work on education 100% of the time in order to overcome old patterns of behavior.  Working in the system because we know its flaws does not help to accomplish championships; the opposite, our ability to struggle to improve gets hampered.  The athletes live from the system but do not accomplish anything as athlete as is the case of the majority of the Mexican triathletes.  Our system is doomed to failure since the get-go when “marcas mínimas” is considered before any real triathlon competition.  Triathletes prepare themselves for the “marcas mínimas” instead of triathlon.

Let´s get back to business. Summer Cook won the triathlon at Edmonton.  She comes from a swim and run program (born 1991).  She struggled to keep with the first pack and at times she was unable to draft, even Barrie Shepley noticed it.  She has improved her biking to be there but still far from being skilled or able to tolerate an Olympic distance triathlon.  Gwen Jorgensen has been the only able to do the jump from the program of swim and run to triathlon through the recruitment programs in the USA; and only females ventured long enough to do the jump.  Alan Webb tried:

 “My original dream was to be an Olympic swimmer.”

Webb was in eighth grade when Athens was awarded the 2004 Olympics, and his sister Lisa brought him back a T-shirt from her visit to Greece. At the time, he wore it with the dream of competing in the Games—as a swimmer. Growing up in Reston, Va., he swam on a club team starting at age 11. He excelled in the pool, but his talent in running was undeniable, and juggling the two sports became too much by the time he was a sophomore in high school. He had to make a choice, and that choice was running.

“It was tough at the time—to give up that journey,” Webb says. “It was maybe a false hope at that point to think I could be an Olympic swimmer, but to give that up to be a runner … I think I made the right choice. I had instant success and I realized, ‘Whoa—I’m not good, I’m really good.”

http://triathlon.competitor.com/2015/03/features/runner-interrupted-alan-webbs-new-olympic-dream_113062#5BVd5DVQCsughMgv.99

There were some others who used to train running as part of the swimming program and became acceptable Olympic distance triathletes over the years; such is the case of Andy Potts.  Potts did not improve his running to top levels.  A swimming-running program is not the solution to have top triathletes.  As in the case of the USA, they do not have room (time after finishing College) to improve either biking or running to finish an Olympic distance triathlon at the top.  Gwen Jorgensen is good regardless of her background, unfortunately, publicity will use her to sell recruitment from these programs.  Well, where did I leave Trump? Trump is an expert in using the system the same way.

Triathlon and Bluffing; Women Rio Olympics

Bluffing is a way of deceiving people in Mexico; sometimes we called people bluffing politicians.  Our president with his “white house” and now the plagiarism of his thesis makes bluffing in sports a yoke, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/aug/22/mexico-president-enrique-pena-nieto-plagiarized-thesis-law-degree

But most of our soccer players and teams bluff to the point of losing 7-0 against Chile and not having a single analysis of what has happened; they said they were going to win the Copa America Centenario.  Bluffing is effective with fearful and ignorant people; fear that comes from ignorance, lack of knowledge of our “métier,” lack of passion in what we do, etc. Also, bluffing is effective if there is a psychopath that “bullies” using bluffing with ignorant people.  There are many factors that make people bluff and others afraid because of the bluff, but the above points are the most important factors of why we believe in the person bluffing.

Bluffing happened in Rio and worked during the women race.  Nobody did their homework before the race, including Gwen Jorgensen.  I will show you the way Francesco Nibali races to show what NOT BLUFFING means, he was the real winner in Rio and has been the star in the one day classics.  He takes over the races no matter who is with him.  I like his competition against the Italians in the Italian Championship.

   

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=znlpow8-Jak

A year before the Olympics a test was done on the same road for triathlon; the bike was two minute faster and swimming 20 seconds during the Olympics.  The British women were able to perform better running under no much pressure in the testing race, the bike was slower but there was no money or other big incentive on the line.  Barbara Riveros ran the same way during the Olympics than a year before.  I will put it side by side their performance:

Pos	First Name	Last Name	Country		Time	Swim	T1	Bike	T2	Run
1	Gwen	Jorgensen	USA		01:58:46	00:19:38	00:00:52	01:03:42	00:00:37	00:33:57
2	Non	Stanford	GBR		01:59:05	00:19:33	00:00:54	01:03:46	00:00:35	00:34:17
3	Vicky	Holland	GBR		01:59:27	00:19:37	00:00:53	01:03:43	00:00:33	00:34:41
4	Sarah	True	USA		01:59:46	00:19:29	00:00:56	01:03:47	00:00:33	00:35:01
5	Barbara	Riveros	CHI		02:00:08	00:19:52	00:00:52	01:03:28	00:00:36	00:35:20
Pos	First Name	Last Name	Country		Time	Swim	T1	Bike	T2	Run
1	Gwen	Jorgensen	USA		01:56:16	00:19:12	00:00:56	01:01:21	00:00:38	00:34:09
2	Nicola	Spirig	SUI		01:56:56	00:19:12	00:00:54	01:01:22	00:00:38	00:34:50
3	Vicky	Holland	GBR		01:57:01	00:19:09	00:00:54	01:01:26	00:00:38	00:34:54
4	Non	Stanford	GBR		01:57:04	00:19:10	00:00:53	01:01:25	00:00:41	00:34:55
5	Barbara	Riveros	CHI		01:57:29	00:19:13	00:00:52	01:01:24	00:00:39	00:35:21

It became evident that Gwen was afraid of running the way she used to as well as the British females.  They were afraid of not finishing the race and at the end they did not race the way they know-how.  They help Spirig win the silver.  Barbara gave was she has; unfortunately, no improvement for the last five years.  She has learned what bluffing is about in her country.

We work constantly with our athletes to overcome bluffing by reading pertinent information about rivals and how the world moves, so they are well informed about what people is capable of doing or how they are bluffing about things.  They knew that Gwen was capable of running below 33:30 in Rio but she was afraid.

Triathlon Rio Olympics: “Nothing New Under the Sun”

Once more, the Brownlees lecturing what triathlon is about.  All out swimming, all out bicycling and easy run (just to win).

Let’s see what happened.  The fastest swimmer, Varga, took 17:18 to finish the swimming section; the last one to take the peloton was eleven seconds behind, Ben Kanute.  The Russians were unable to follow the peloton even though the three of them were within that window. The competition looked like it was over then; nine riders were together making the first pack and the Brownlees directed them to give most of the energy they could have to distance themselves one minutes and 14 seconds from the second pack.  The only one surviving the bike besides the Brownlees was Heri Schoeman.  370 watts average for that segment for the first pack would be most likely.

We do not have number regarding the triathlon Rio Olympics bike segment but we can extrapolate some power meter numbers from competitors present in the second pack.  We have written previous posts regarding this subject:

4 juil. 2014

Triathlon: How Bad the Cycling Segment Is?

 On the other hand, we have good triathletes who are on the border of qualifying for the Olympics as it is the case of Leonardo Chacón; his capacity to ride the 40k is 330-340 watts (FTP 345,http://www.leochacon.com/#skill-section). Obviously, he is going to walk if he stays with the first pack drafting because he is all-out riding the bike with that FTP.  Mario Mola has a higher wattage compared to Chacón (FTP), so he is able to run after drafting in one of the packs; same thing for Murray.  Mola is unable to pull the peloton; he uses drafting as his only option to reach the podium.

We have not changed a bit from our post above.  The second pack average power was around 330.  Leonardo was able to run after the bike the way he knows under that humidity and heat.  Mola and Murray were able to run at their best and the Brownlees just kept what they gained on the bike.

We also wrote about the Brownlees racing:

14 juin 2016

Triathlon: How should it be?

We love what we saw at Leeds.  That is how the champions want us to be; fearless and to our maximum capacity.  The Brownlees planned and executed it perfectly; Alistair waited for Johnny as a plan “B.”  Wattage around 390 average from our measures.  This was a taste for Rio.

Are we going to learn from it?  The Brownlees has had the same strategy but nobody wanted to play differently or even see the strategy.  It is not possible to increase the wattage from year to year; even Christ Froom does not improves for years, he improves regarding holding the distance with less difficulties but he is not faster.  Improving 30 watts in a year is for a junior which has a lot of margin to improve.

22 mai 2016

Triathlon Cagliari and the Bike

We know from previous competitors that when they are teenagers, they can improve from 20 to 30 watts per year if they train close to 500k a week for a 20k time trial.

Triathlon and Anemia

Listening to Laura Esserman is necessary for somebody dedicated to taking care of patients:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pqm9yoOAVjU

How can we protect ourselves from the human errors made by lack of judgment when analyzing data?  This is the daily work of most of us clinicians that help patients, reason why we should get pay or not.  Analyzing data should be for everybody but most of us are already involved in the system and we have difficulties to see what is best for patients. Or simply, we become psychopaths when not looking at this data.  Triathlon and sports (see the Olympics) are full of coaches unable to see mediocrity or poor training.  In Mexico people would say: “do not worry, nobody is going to die.”  Mexico is closing the Olympics with no medals sending 126 athletes to compete.  The cost of training for each one of the athletes is as high as any developed country or perhaps higher. How the above is related to the name of the post: triathlon and anemia?

I looked at the data of African nations regarding hemoglobin (hg), hematocrit (htc) and related measures.  It is the most efficient and economical way of looking at nutrition and recovery in athletes.  Anemia comes when nutrition and recovery are not adequate for the physical activity done by the subject.  The hg, htc and related measures suffer when we are not meeting the nutritional and recovery requirements according to the physical activity.  How are the Ethiopians and Kenyans meeting the requirements now when we see the African general population suffering from low hemoglobin?

 

Bekele had a hematocrit of 49 when competing which locates him above the 95^th percentile of the African population; that hematocrit does not come from African nutrition from what we know.  Gebrsellasie has a hematocrit more in accordance to African nutrition.  

We wrote an article related to the subject:

13 juin 2012

Ferritin and triathlon

I read that Kenenisa Bekele has had a hematocrit of 49, compared to the 42 of Haile Gebrselassie.  We do not have the conditions of how they took the blood sample to have a better context in order to say something about it.  In the same article, they also mentioned that Bekele has 250 of Ferritin and Gebrselassie 150.  

http://www.independent.co.uk/sport/general/athletics-bekele-ready-to-shred-the-record-books-6167676.html

I have not seen a Ferritin of 250 in natural conditions; a level that high is only attained by IV iron.  The majority of the Tour de France cyclists carry values above 500 because we know that transfusions and regular IV infusions take place.  Our athletes have the blood taken first thing in the morning during the recovery week.

Our ability to practice triathlon will depend on the hemoglobin/hematocrit values one is carrying according to the table below.  Great disadvantage takes place before even competing if our hemoglobin is below 15 for females or 16 for males.  The Africans have learned it well and now they make sure the hemoglobin/hematocrit is as high as possible.  We now have the African doping scandal.

But going back to the title of this post.  We are afraid of calling anemia when looking at the Hg values in Mexico and in Africa, but even changing the name as Laura Esserman suggested for “idle” cancer.  A treatment should be instituted if we want to compete at our maximum capacity, but negligence is present in the whole process as is the case of Mexico.  Education is the way but when it does not exist, doping becomes the only option to treat anemia and related problems (lesions, chronic fatigue, etc.).  Eufemiano Fuentes defended himself for the doping of cyclists saying that “he was curing them with blood transfusion and related substances.”  We will continue educating athletes which is our main goal.

30 janv. 2013

Operación Puerto and Triathlon

I will paraphrase what Eufemiano Fuentes mentioned during his interrogatory in court for the English speaking readers.  I copy from the newspaper Marca.  There are videos related to the interrogatory in the same newspaper. 

Fuentes is questioning the way doping is considered because he believes that he was treating anemia.  It is interesting because the dilution of blood when training is well known and could mimic anemia.  He mentioned that he was giving the amount of blood needed to get to the normal level, always using the same subject’s blood.  This does not sound incorrect from the point of view of a medical doctor except for the fact that the problem can be solved differently by administering the right amount of nutrients at the right time; instead of the blood itself. Fuentes says that time was the limiting factor; he needed to have ready the competitor in a few days or perhaps weeks.  But he knew also that the administration of blood was doping for the UCI rules.  Fuentes questions that there is a hematocrit value of 50 as an upper limit; but there is no low value accepted by the UCI to be treated.  He took care of his athletes because there is a danger in practicing cycling at a profesional level with a low hematocrit.

Fuentes also mentioned that who opened up the persecution by the police and the Operación Puerto, Jesús Manzano, was using cocaine, and Fuentes did not want to follow him up as a cyclist because of that reason.