The Tour in the mountains: Analysis & discussion

The Tour hits the mountains: Power output thoughts

The 2012 Tour de France has reached its first rest day, and with it a chance to catch our breath after a frantic few days that have taken the peloton into the mountains, then to a time-trial, via a press conference which generated just as much interest as either of the Tour's first "shake-up" stages.  If it's the mountains, then it must mean power output analysis, and so below, I look at some of the limited data from Saturday's mountain finish, and ask whether it flags anything "suspicious"?

First, the press conference.  In case you missed it, it featured Bradley Wiggins, leader of the Tour de France, fielding a question about doping accusations from skeptics on social media with the following answer:

“I say they’re just fucking wankers,” Wiggins said. “I cannot be doing with people like that. It justifies their own bone idleness because they can’t imagine applying themselves to do anything in their lives.

“It’s easy for them to sit under a pseudonym on Twitter and write that sort of shit,” Wiggins added, “rather than get off their own arses in their own lives and apply themselves and work hard at something and achieve something. And that’s ultimately what counts. C**ts.”  (Did I mention that this post is rated R for profanity?)

Many have commented on this already, and far more eloquently than I can.  The best of those, and well worth the 5 minutes it will take to read, is this by Joe Lindsey, who addresses all the key points.  The bottom line is that cycling's history puts its current champions squarely into the doping spotlight, and so this is a question that owes its origins to fifty years of deception.  Given this, a more nuanced response would be welcome, and a stronger anti-doping stance celebrated by those who share Wiggins' apparent frustration with doping (and here I exclude the snipers who will never be satisfied, but they're really not worth spending energy on)


To understand the perception of cycling from its fans, there is no better expression than this, written on a forum by a fan, and it says what I think many who follow the sport closely are feeling.


Some thoughts before getting onto power outputs.  First, I would start by highlighting that I would like to believe everyone wants the same thing - a drug-free sport.  I think Wiggins (based on his and Sky's history), those asking the question and those who are now a little concerned and perplexed by his answer share a common desire.  And given that desire, they come to the debate WANTING to believe.  The fans who matter (again, I exclude the outright snipers who just want to tear things down) want desperately to believe that after years of false flats, we've finally reached the end of the hard slog uphill and can enjoy a free ride into a doping-free sport.


Let's face it,  for at least 15 to 20 years, cycling has made fools of its fans.  Just go back and look at the top 5 of the last 15 Tours de France and allow yourself to reminiscence about the excitement you felt watching the race, discovering a new star, cheering your rider to victory, only to later discover the deceit.  I know I have.


Therefore, it is not unreasonable for people to be skeptical, particularly when every one of those champions has vehemently protested their innocence before their fall.  So when the latest champion (and a man who after today's TT looks more likely than ever to be a huge champion) doesn't give the response they crave, a negative reaction is expected, however unfair it may be for us to want a specific anti-doping response (another debate).


Having said that, I can also appreciate that to a rider who has reached the summit of the sport without doping (let's assume this to be true here), and who has invested so much time and effort into that dream, the nagging questions will be frustrating, even angering.  So in the midst of "battle", perhaps one should make allowances for emotional responses.


Here's the thing though - that anger and emotion should surely be channeled and directed towards the people responsible for the question in the first place - the dopers.  The "irksome, annoying question" that triggered Wiggins wrath surely owes its origin to the actions and deceit of previous generations.  Someone asks it in 2012, sure, but the question is planted in the 90s and 2000s by the generations of Mr 60%, Pantani, Ullrich, Armstrong, Landis.  Wiggins has famously shown his contempt for dopers before, including once calling Christophe Moreni  an "idiot" for the doping offense that saw Wiggins' Cofidis team withdraw from the Tour in 2007.


That is the type of response fans applaud - they want their riders to share their anger, to condemn cheating.  They cannot understand why a clean rider, who loses out to dopers, would not join them in the fight AGAINST doping, rather than becoming a passive observer (and 'victim') of a dishonest culture (as an aside, the psychology of silence among clean riders in the peloton would make a fascinating thesis).  Can you blame them?

But for too long, cycling's champions have been perceived to be leaning more towards sympathy to dopers than condemnation.  Wiggins' response is viewed by those people as being yet another example of this.  Further, Sky have crafted themselves as a team that prides itself on its anti-doping stance, and their vocal attitude against doping has rightly been hailed as leading the way into a new era for the sport.

So when their star rider, the man who is identified as a custodian of the sport by virtue of the yellow jersey he wears, suddenly turns that anger and wrath against the fans, I can appreciate the disappointment.  This is the greatest opportunity for clean riders to show the world that the sport has moved on, and swinging in the opposite direction, against the detractors, only fuels their skepticism and ultimately, invites more of the same doubt.

It doesn't help that Sky hasn't entirely broken ties with all doping baggage, as they still have ties to doctors known to have worked in teams with doping tolerance.  This doesn't mean they are doping, and even the doctors can change, but perception is reality, and people who view the sport from outside, who dream of a dope-free Tour, need a stronger reassurance than this.

In any event, more time may be required, and hopefully, anti-doping stance will not be discoloured by a yellow jersey.

Now, onto the power outputs.

6.2 W/kg for a top 10, 6.5 W/kg for the lead group


So, unfortunately, we have a scarcity of top rider data, as is often the case, but we do have Jani Brajkovic's SRM file to play with.  I've taken it from the TrainingPeaks Tour analysis site, and zoomed in on the relevant section, the Les Planche des Belles Filles.

The climb took Brajkovic 17 minutes to complete, and he lost 46 seconds on the stage winners (16:15 for the fastest time of the day).  His power output was reported as 351W, which gives him 5.8 W/kg (remember that relative power, expressed to body weight, is crucial for climbing, and it also allows comparison to other riders).

Note that there is about a minute's worth of missing data in the file, in the first quarter.  Jani actually tweeted me himself to point this out, and obviously some technical gremlins affected the SRM.  If one attempts to "normalize" these sections, and push them up towards the range of 400W that the power was at the time, then the average power output jumps from 351W to about 375W, and the relative power output is around 6.2 W/kg.

So, in terms of what that means for Wiggins and co at the front of the stage, it predicts about 6.4 to 6.5 W/kg.  Over 16 minutes, that's not at all unreasonable.  To give you some context, calculations of climbing power output in the Tour de France in the 1990s and 2000s often estimated that top riders maintained power outputs of 6.4 to 6.5W/kg on the Tour's HC climbs, most of which take over 40 minutes to climb.  So in other words, there was an era where the best riders were maintaining similar power outputs to what we saw on Saturday, for three times the duration.  Put differently, all those riders would probably have been a minute clear of this current generation on this climb...

Another point is the physiological implications of this performance.  I try to explain this every year, but every year it seems to invite the (obvious) criticism, of which I'm well aware, that assumptions have to be made.  Every year, I try to explain that if you control the assumptions, and make sure you always take "best case scenarios", you get a very clear and accurate picture of the physiological requirements behind a performance.  So we'll try this again...

I've written before that I believe a sustained power output of above about 6.1 W/kg on the longer (40 min or more) climbs is not physiologically 'plausible'.  I know that this is a view that Aldo Sassi shared (independently, I might add), and the reason for it is that to produce that kind of work, there are physiological requirements.  Think of them as specifications in a car, and unless you have a certain engine, you can't achieve certain speeds.  In cycling terms, the performances of 6.2 W/kg and higher simply cannot be met by any plausible combination of VO2max, cycling efficiency and thresholds.  I describe this theory and the assumptions in this post from back in 2010.

Back to the 2012 race, the assumptions one might make for a 17 min climb are that a rider with efficiency 23% (high case assumption) can sustain 90% - 95% of maximal intensity for this short duration. Then, you can estimate that riding at 6.2W/kg (again, this is Brajkovic), the VO2 on the climb will be 77 ml/kg/min.  Given the 90-95% of max estimate, this rider has a predicted VO2max between 81 ml/kg/min and 85 ml/kg/min  (I realise there are 'errors' in the assumption, but I compare across generations to illustrate a point)

If you take lower case assumptions (efficiency of 24%, which I think is probably a more reasonable assumption), then the estimated VO2max falls to between 77 and 81 ml/kg/min.

Obviously, you can infer from these numbers what the implications are for the top 5 on the day, and you'll see that they're not too different.  You're predicting physiology that says that the world's best cyclists have a VO2max of 85 to 87 ml/kg/min, that they're 23% efficient, and riding at 90% of maximum.  Or, they could be 24% efficient with a VO2max of 81 ml/kg/min.  That is, on paper, normal physiology for the best cyclists in the world in peak condition.

The "abnormal" physiology of years gone by came from guys who were sustaining 6.4W/kg for 45 minutes.  That points to a human that has a VO2max of 97 ml/kg/min on the bike, or an efficiency of  28%, or can sustain 95% of max for 45 min at the end of five hours of racing.  That just doesn't happen.


There's a risk of running away with physiological implications here.  Let's simplify it into the obvious metrics - power and time.  The difference between the current era and previous eras is startling.  In the last four years, none of the Tour's decisive HC climbs have been done at greater than 6 W/kg.  Even the Contador-Schleck showdown on the Tormalet, with the Tour title at stake, was ridden at 5.9 W/kg.  


The graph below was put together by Alex Simmons, and it shows the time on the famous Alp d'Huez climb as a function of power output.  There's a lot of data there but slide your finger across from a time of 38:30.  That's the kind of performance (or faster) we saw in the previous generation.  Then consider the more recent times - Frank Schleck did 40:46 in 2006, the first time in 12 years they didn't break 40.  The best performances in the last 3 years are all slower than 41 minutes.  That fits well with what I've added to the graph in blue and yellow - those are the equivalent performances to two climbs in the 2010 Tour, where riders simply don't get above 6W/kg anymore.  Not even once, let alone repeatedly during the race, as they once did.

Chris Froome, when coming second in the 2011 Vuelta TT (47km) rode at 5.8 W/kg for 55 minutes.  That's likely to be close to what he and Wiggins produced in the Tour today, and is yet another indication of where the "ceiling" for that duration of effort lies.

So that's what we're all getting at when we say the Tour is getting slower.  It is, and it's a good sign, because it brings everything back into the realm of expected physiology.


Now, an important disclaimer.  None of this disproves doping, and none of this proves doping either.  When a rider produces performances that have "alien" physiology implications, it's a strong flag for doping (I'm gratified to read that cycling's governing bodies are actually looking at this approach now). But when the physiology is "normal" or at least, not suspicious, then it doesn't necessarily vindicate the rider.  Why?  Because doping helps with far more than on-the-day performances - it also aids recovery and thus enables consistency. 


So we can't rule anything out this way.  All I will say, and I'm very confident in saying this, is that what we saw on the slopes of Les Planche des Belles Filles did not have me thinking "That's just not right, there's something not adding up".  It adds up.  It's exactly what you'd expect, just as I expect that when we do hit the longer HC climbs later this week, we'll see the top men ride at 5.9 to 6 W/kg, just as they have done for the last three years.

It will be fascinating to see what develops in the high Alps and Pyrenees over the next two weeks.  Hopefully, we'll have some data to chat about.  And a press conference or two!


Ross

Olympic buzz: The Tour, Bolt vs Blake and other Olympic musings

The Olympic Buzz: The Tour, Bolt vs Blake, and more Olympic thoughts

July is traditionally our bumper period here on the Science of Sport, with the Tour and the peak of the athletics season, but unfortunately so far it's been a bumper period for "real work" too, hence the infrequent posting.  Between students, writing and recent work for the South African Olympic broadcaster Supersport, I've barely kept pace with all the developments in the lead-up to the Games and the Tour de France, let alone added any insight of my own!  As a result, much of the "energy" of the website has been funneled to our Twitter feed and Facebook page, where I have been posting thoughts and links to keep you abreast of the stories, so if you're not following there, now's the time.

But here are three thoughts, dealing with Bolt and Blake, the Tour de France, and other Olympic musings.

Le Tour - attrition, predictability and doping clouds

The race

As I write this, the Tour is heading upwards and into the mountains for the first real shake-up of the overall classification.  Since the prologue, where Cancellara re-affirmed himself as cycling's best short TT man, little (read: nothing) has changed in the way of jersey wearers.

There's been drama, most of it in the form of crashes and events off the bike, but all the major yellow jersey contenders have bided their time, waiting for today's finish and the mountains and long time-trials that lie ahead.  Some have been unsuccessful at avoiding the carnage and race-damage caused by accidents, and yesterday's stage into Metz saw a number of names lose considerable time, and remind us that while it takes almost 90 hours of racing to win the Tour, you can lose it in a second.  You can catch up on who has lost what in this article, but Schleck, Hesjedal (who has since abaondoned the race) Gesink, Valverde and Brajkovic were among those affected.  By today's 7th stage, 17 riders had abandoned, which is the highest since 1998, and that was only because an entire team (Festina) was kicked off for doping.  So it has certainly been attritional, and not for the ideal reasons!

What the crash does is remove many men from overall contention, but shifts their focus to stage wins, which may mean more aggression at least in terms of break-aways.  On the other hand, the format of the race, with the two long time-trials, means that attacking in the mountains was always going to be the only play for many climbing specialists anyway, and Wiggins and Evans, who will look at the time-trials as their battle-ground to gain time, can assess and respond to those breakaways a little differently now.

Lionel Birnie wrote an interesting piece on the predictability of the Tour, suggesting that the race was in danger of stagnating and the its organizers needed to take action to prevent this.  A few people responded to a tweet about this saying that if you find it boring, it's because you don't understand the sport, which is a) foolish to say given Birnie's history in the sport, and b) missing the point.  Birnie makes the distinction between the quality of the race and it's lack of 'change', for want of a better word. And I agree.

The point is that when sport becomes predictable, it loses value.  Its biggest asset is the uncertainty, and the likelihood that anything can happen.  The first week of the Tour has brought drama and crashes, it has brought great sprints and revealed new superstars (Sagan).  It has brought some debate (Sagan's tactical duel with Cancellara for example), and it has brought the team tactics and speculation over who has what form?  But it has also brought pretty much exactly what most people expected it to bring - jersey wearers on Saturday who will retain their jerseys throughout the first week, the usual hopeful breakaway that is reeled in within reach of the finish, and impressive sprints to the grab stage wins, without shaking up the overall race.

And yes, the overall race unfolds over three weeks, and with the start of the mountains and Monday's time-trial looming, the focus now shifts to the GC, but like Birnie, I feel there's something missing in week 1, and that 'something' is the uncertainty that sport needs.

The doping shadow

Outside the race, of course, there is plenty of uncertainty, and it revolves around the shadow of doping that continues to hover over the sport of cycling.  When USADA announced their investigation into the doping conspiracy by Armstrong and five others only weeks before the Tour, it was inevitable that the story would permeate throughout the race around France.

And when a leaked story emerged on Thursday, alleging that four current Tour riders and Jonathan Vaughters had testified and were given suspended six-month bans, the reaction was swift.  At first, USADA took a beating - how could the anti-doping body negotiate reduced sentences for dopers?  How dare they suspend the sentences for some people, and offer some form of leniency in return for testimony?  Of course, doing this is morally acceptable, and it happens all the time, not only in sport, but in criminal investigations too.  It's as it should be - if you don't incentivize the truth, nobody would ever tell it, especially when they are already in the belly of the beast, as it were.  If cycling is to clean up its act, it requires that its riders, who are almost always part of the complex and intricate doping web (because honestly, who else can reveal how cheating happens if not a cheat?), come forward, and short of incentivizing this, it'll never happen.

But then the story was flatly denied, and the plot thickened.  Much has been written about it since, but this is one of the best commentaries on the leak, what it means, and how one might react to it.  It makes this observation:

"Regardless of where the leak fits into any broader legal or public relations strategy on the part of its U.S.-based source, it seems clear by its timing and its scope — not a full list of witnesses, only Tour de France participants — that it is intended to inflict maximum damage to the public image of the named parties.

As one of cycling’s few crossover successes, the Tour and its news reach the general public and the casual fan, and by timing the leak for the Tour’s first week, the source ensured that the names traveled beyond mere cycling circles, and that they would be perceived by the average news consumer as getting away with something by admitting doping and riding the Tour at the same time. By political standards, it was a shrewd move."

Those within cycling saw this news report, naming Hincapie, Leipheimer, Vande velde, Vaughters and Zabriskie as witnesses, and reacted with little more than cursory acknowledgement.  It's barely news, because the history of the case provides the context to know that they are likely to have spoken out.  That was only fueled when the four riders withdrew from USA Olympic team selection, so most who follow cycling barely registered the names.  To those outside, of course, it's different.

The problem, I guess, for Armstrong and his mighty PR machine, is that these men are more difficult to discredit than the previous witnesses, Floyd Landis and Tyler Hamilton. Both of them are known dopers, and they (gasp!) lied about doping after the fact.  Eventually, they came clean, and when they named Armstrong, they could be attacked for being greedy, dishonest, ambitious, conniving etc.

The same is not true of "The Five".  So what better strategy than to portray them as a) dopers, b) manipulative cheats who will tell USADA what they want to hear to save themselves, and c) getting away with it?  It's the defense strategy in a crystal ball.

There was some confusion, however, because having initially positioned the PR message as one of "look at how USADA are victimizing me" and "don't believe them, they're cheats", Armstrong later tried to portray the five as victims too.  He also worked himself into the awkward position of basically pointing out that everyone in his own team doped, before trying to argue that he, as the leader and most successful rider, didn't!  So not only did all his major challengers dope, so did his domestiques, his helpers, but he did it clean.  But that again is clear only to those who follow cycling outside of the Tour.  The overall thrust of the leak and reaction was one of strategically placed "explosives" to undermine the case, and one can see now why USADA has tried to keep the names of all its witnesses confidential.  It's a mighty force to come up against.

As for the final question asked by this article, what do we make of the riders who testify, even when they implicate themselves as dopers in the past?  Or are they the whistle-blowers whose testimony may help rid cycling, once and for all, of its affliction (I nearly said "cancer" there, then remembered Paul Kimmage...he is one of the real whistle-blowers, by the way, along with David Walsh, Simeone, Bassons, Betsey Andreu, Emma o'Reilly etc).  The cynic in me says that much of this "truth" has emerged only because these men may have been faced with Federal investigators and the threat of perjury charges (you want an incentive to talk?  That's a good one).  

But I also think that they should be commended, because the bubble has to burst eventually, and who am I to second-guess the difficult choices made by men like these in a team sport where pressure is exerted to dope or "decay" (in a professional cycling sense)?  Their job and future in the sport they loved was held hostage at needle-point, and that's not a choice I'd want to make.  So as long as they may have lied, their truth now, however 'late', is worthy of praise.

If history records that their testimony opened the doors to a cleaner sport, then I'd be prepared to acknowledge their role.  Whistleblowers?  Perhaps not.  But their contribution to cycling may go on to be far more than pulling fellow dopers up Alpine and Pyrenean mountain passes for hours.

Let's see how that unfolds.  Until then, focs on the Tour, and the start of the mountains, a change in yellow and hopefully, some interesting power output numbers!  Remember, if you want quick thoughts, and links, I'm doing what I can do get them out on our Twitter feed!

Bolt, Blake and the 100m intrigue

In sprinting circles, the big news of the last week was the double defeat of Usain Bolt by Yohan Blake at the Jamaican trials.  It has led, predictably, to the inviroration of the "Is he vulnerable?" debate (of course he is - it's perhaps the most prized medal of the Games, and the guy at the top is the target and thus always vulnerable in professional sport).

Most recently, he announced his withdrawal from the Monaco Diamond League event citing "problems" (not of the Yohan Blake variety), and then stated that he was on his way to Germany to consult a well-known doctor regarding apparently tight hamstrings.

Tyson Gay, in the lead-up to the Paris Diamond League meeting last night, suggested that Bolt looked a "little banged up" in his Blake defeats, and he certainly had a point.  If you watch the races, Bolt looks laboured out of the blocks in the 100m, and tight down the home straight in the 200m.  The manner of the two defeats was thus completely different - in the 100m he was beaten out the blocks, and could not make up the loss on Blake, whereas in the 200m, he was ahead before being caught and beaten at the end.  That would perhaps be most concerning to him - the 200m is his preferred event, after all.

Time-wise, Blake was fast (9.75s, a PR), and Bolt was relatively slow (9.86s), having run basically as fast as Blake on a few occasions this year (9.76s).   So Bolt was slower than normal, Blake was faster.  Historically, Bolt's best performances still make him a the favourite.  If Bolt returns to his 2008/2009 form, and gets into the 9.6 range, it's difficult to see anyone beating him.  That's a big if though - since 2009, Bolt has not returned to that form and has, at best been in the mid-9.70s range.  Of course, in the lead-up to Beijing, Bolt ran 9.72s, and then improved from there to run a 9.69s which was actually worth about 9.65s to win gold, so it's conceivable that both he and Blake can dip below 9.70s off their current level.

I received an email last week that suggested that neither has fully shown their hand, and are capable of much faster.  Similarly, there is a line of thought that Bolt may be holding back, playing psychological games and allowing Blake to become complacent.  A few thoughts on that.  First, Blake does not seem like the type to get complacent - you don't earn the nickname "The Beast" for training so hard if you're inclined towards complacency.  Second, few men would get complacent in the final month before their first Olympic Games, especially as defending world champions.  Third, as the most scrutinized athlete in the world, I cannot imagine Bolt would deliberately and knowingly invite the kind of speculation and doubt that the world media have poured on him since the defeats.  And fourth, 100m men are notoriously all about the 'edge', that psychological upper-hand, and to give that away by losing two races just seems inconceivable to me.

I do think that one can say that Bolt's slow start in the 100m was probably deliberately over cautious, that he wasn't pushing the limit there in order to safely qualify.  But there's a difference between holding back in the race and being cautious about the most vulnerable moment in your entire Olympic campaign.  But to lose both races suggests that Blake carries better form right now.  Much can change in a month, however, and by the 5th August, Bolt may well have found the 0.2s that he probably needs to beat back Blake's challenge.

Then, to this already intriguing set of questions you add Gatlin and his 9.80s at the trials, and now Tyson Gay, who last night beat Gatlin in Paris despite an abysmal start.  The manner in which Gay caught Gatlin in the final 30m belies the relatively slow time (9.99s) and given his lack of racing, Gay may be the third name in the mix in London, rather than Gatlin or Powell.  Powell, for his part, was just caught by Bolt in Jamaica, and his start is far superior to Bolt's.  He may not medal in London, but the first 30m may be dictated by how quickly he gets out of the blocks, and that may have a significant bearing on Bolt's relaxation and form, and that of the other big contenders.

All in all, the men's 100m, which until last year ago looked like Bolt's victory parade (quite literally, in the case of Beijing), now has four or five fascinating storylines, and a great rivalry or two to add to the existing privilege of watching the fastest man in history.  That can only be a good thing, and the 5th of August is the most anticipated date of the Games as a result.

More Olympic musings - distance events

Meanwhile, the distance events continue to come nicely to the boil.  Kenenisa Bekele, slowly making his way back to something like his best (though let's face it, the days of 12:37 and 26:20s seem gone), took another step last night in Paris, by running 12:55.79.  That's five seconds faster than anything he'd done before, and it continued his progressive improvements.

That's the good news. The bad news is that eight men went faster in the one race!  Four of them were Ethiopian, and so Bekele's 5000m challenge was effectively ended.  In the deepest 5,000m race ever, six men broke 12:50, with the race being won in 12:46.81.  That came with a final lap of 54.66s (it was probably even faster since this is leader-to-leader), by Ethiopia's Dejen Gebremeskel the winner.  In second was another Ethiopian, Hagos Gebrhiwet in 12:47.53.  It was a spectacular race, probably worth a 12:43 given an average job of pacing - the start was super fast (2:32), then a drop (2:37), followed by a steady middle period (2:34 & 2:36) and a quick last kilometer (2:27).

The question, of course, is whether the Ethiopians can produce this off a slow pace, with surges.  And can they run a sub-52s final lap, which is what seems likely to be needed if the pace is slow (over 13 min).  In the 2011 World Champs, incidentally, the winning time was a pedestrian 13:22, and the final lap was 52.75s and the last 2km were 5:10.  In Paris, the final 2km were quicker (5:03), the last lap slightly slower, and of course, the overall time was much, much faster.

Those are two different races then, and the absence of pace-makers means that tactical decisions and a different physiological requirement become important.  In the two new "Gebs", Ethiopia clearly has two exceptional runners, and their performances in London will be fascinating to see.

Equally fascinating are the women's middle distance events.  We've spoken many times about the 800m event, which was dominated by Jelimo in 2008, Semenya in 2009, nobody in 2010, Savinova in 2011 (though that was really confined to one race), and now a host of athletes have emerged in 2012.  Jelimo has re-emerged from a 3 year "slumber" to run 1:56s again (and the fourth fastest 600m ever).  Ethiopia has discovered Fantu Magiso, who has beaten Jelimo and looks like a frightening prospect if she gets it right tactically, especially in a slow race.  Savinova has raced sparingly, but started her season faster than in 2011, and ran 1:57 in Russia just last week, so she will be tough to beat and is tactically savvy.  And there's Semenya, who has yet to dip into the 1:57s it seems will be required, but clearly has the history to suggest this could happen.  The women's 800m is a fascinating race, both performance and personality-wise.

The women's 1500m is equally intriguing, if a little "worrying".  First it was Dibaba of Ethiopia who looked like a new star.  Then came Abeba Aregawi, who ran a 3:56 earlier this year, the fastest time in many years in an event that has really been tarnished by a doping past.  Then last night in Paris, she was beaten into third by Mariem Selsouli in a world-leading 3:56.17 and Asli Cakir in 3:56.62.  And that was off a relativel slow time through 800m - the third lap was 61s and that set it up.  Arguably, they may go even faster.

The cynical reaction, seen in forums on T&F sites, is one of disbelief, particularly because both women have served doping bans.  That is not by itself anything to judge a person on - second chances are only fair.  But it is difficult to see these huge performances and be trusting when you know the history, and it has to be said, the reputation of certain countries for doping.  The second-placed athlete, Cakir, ran a PB of over 5 seconds last night in Paris, having previously been a doper, for example. So it may seem a snap judgment, but I have to wonder.

In related news, three Russian women were banned by the Federation for doping, having been caught with the Biological Passport system.  Two were middle-distance runners - Zinurova (European 800m champ in 2011) and Svetlana Klyuka (4th in Beijing 800m) were banned, along with marathon runner Yulamanova.

Generally, women's middle distance running seems to find its way into the news for the wrong reason, and that makes any spectacular performances fodder for cynics.  Time will tell whether these athletes follow the trajectory of dopers (here today gone tomorrow) or remain as strong in London, under the brighter spotlight of doping controls.

And finally, speaking of middle-distance races, David Rudisha continued his total domination of the 800m event in Paris, running a world-leading 1:41.54.  If you want to know just how good Rudisha is, this is only his fifth best time.  Rudisha blamed weather conditions for not cracking the world record.  Of all the Olympic medals, his seems most "secure" (as far as Olympic gold medals are secure!).  The most interesting thing in the race will be his tactical approach - clearly, he can run over a second faster than anyone else in the world, and so simply running a 1:41.xx wins gold. But front-running in a semi-final (only 2 qualify, and it's a super tough race) and final is a tough ask, but then so is relying on a furious final 200m.

Should be a fascinating race.  As they all will be!

Hopefully, more comment on the week ahead, which includes Tour developments and athletics news.

Ross

The lowest-mortality BMI: What is the role of nutrient intake from food?

In a previous post (), I discussed the frequently reported lowest-mortality body mass index (BMI), which is about 26. The empirical results reviewed in that post suggest that fat-free mass plays an important role in that context. Keep in mind that this "BMI=26 phenomenon" is often reported in studies of populations from developed countries, which are likely to be relatively sedentary. This is important for the point made in this post.

A lowest-mortality BMI of 26 is somehow at odds with the fact that many healthy and/or long-living populations have much lower BMIs. You can clearly see this in the distribution of BMIs among males in Kitava and Sweden shown in the graph below, from a study by Lindeberg and colleagues (). This distribution is shifted in such a way that would suggest a much lower BMI of lowest-mortality among the Kitavans, assuming a U-curve shape similar to that observed in studies of populations from developed countries ().

Another relevant example comes from the China Study II (see, e.g., ), which is based on data from 8000 adults. The average BMI in the China Study II dataset, with data from the 1980s, is approximately 21; for an average weight that is about 116 lbs. That BMI is relatively uniform across Chinese counties, including those with the lowest mortality rates. No county has an average BMI that is 26; not even close. This also supports the idea that Chinese people were, at least during that period, relatively thin.

Now take a look at the graph below, also based on the China Study II dataset, from a previous post (), relating total daily calorie intake with longevity. I should note that the relationship between total daily calorie intake and longevity depicted in this graph is not really statistically significant. Still, the highest longevity seems to be in the second tercile of total daily calorie intake.

Again, the average weight in the dataset is about 116 lbs. A conservative estimate of the number of calories needed to maintain this weight without any physical activity would be about 1740. Add about 700 calories to that, for a reasonable and healthy level of physical activity, and you get 2440 calories needed daily for weight maintenance. That is right in the middle of the second tercile, the one with the highest longevity.

What does this have to do with the lowest-mortality BMI of 26 from studies of samples from developed countries? Populations in these countries are likely to be relatively sedentary, at least on average, in which case a low BMI will be associated with a low total calorie intake. And a low total calorie intake will lead to a low intake of nutrients needed by the body to fight disease.

And don’t think you can fix this problem by consuming lots of vitamin and mineral pills. When I refer here to a higher or lower nutrient intake, I am not talking only about micronutrients, but also about macronutrients (fatty and amino acids) in amounts that are needed by your body. Moreover, important micronutrients, such as fat-soluble vitamins, cannot be properly absorbed without certain macronutrients, such as fat.

Industrial nutrient isolation for supplementation use has not been a very successful long-term strategy for health optimization (). On the other hand, this type of supplementation has indeed been found to have had modest-to-significant success in short-term interventions aimed at correcting acute health problems caused by severe nutritional deficiencies ().

So the "BMI=26 phenomenon" may be a reflection not of a direct effect of high muscularity on health, but of an indirect effect mediated by a high intake of needed nutrients among sedentary folks. This may be so even though the lowest mortality is for the combination of that BMI with a relatively small waist (), which suggests some level of muscularity, but not necessarily serious bodybuilder-level muscularity. High muscularity, of the serious bodybuilder type, is not very common; at least not enough to significantly sway results based on the analysis of large samples.

The combination of a BMI=26 with a relatively small waist is indicative of more muscle and less body fat. Having more muscle and less body fat has an advantage that is rarely discussed. It allows for a higher total calorie intake, and thus a higher nutrient intake, without an unhealthy increase in body fat. Muscle mass increases one's caloric requirement for weight maintenance, more so than body fat. Body fat also increases that caloric requirement, but it also acts like an organ, secreting a number of hormones into the bloodstream, and becoming pro-inflammatory in an unhealthy way above a certain level.

Clearly having a low body fat percentage is associated with lower incidence of degenerative diseases, but it will likely lead to a lower intake of nutrients relative to one’s needs unless other factors are present, e.g., being fairly muscular or physically active. Chronic low nutrient intake tends to get people closer to the afterlife like nothing else ().

In this sense, having a BMI=26 and being relatively sedentary (without being skinny-fat) has an effect that is similar to that of having a BMI=21 and being fairly physically active. Both would lead to consumption of more calories for weight maintenance, and thus more nutrients, as long as nutritious foods are eaten.

The lowest-mortality BMI: What is its relationship with fat-free mass?

Do overweight folks live longer? It is not uncommon to see graphs like the one below, from the Med Journal Watch blog (), suggesting that, at least as far as body mass index (BMI) is concerned (), overweight folks (25 < BMI < 30) seem to live longer. The graph shows BMI measured at a certain age, and risk of death within a certain time period (e.g., 20 years) following the measurement. The lowest-mortality BMI is about 26, which is in the overweight area of the BMI chart.



Note that relative age-adjusted mortality risk (i.e., relative to the mortality risk of people in the same age group), increases less steeply in response to weight variations as one becomes older. An older person increases the risk of dying to a lesser extent by weighing more or less than does a younger person. This seems to be particularly true for weight gain (as opposed to weight loss).

The table below is from a widely cited 2002 article by Allison and colleagues (), where they describe a study of 10,169 males aged 25-75. Almost all of the participants, ninety-eight percent, were followed up for many years after measurement; a total of 3,722 deaths were recorded.



Take a look at the two numbers circled in red. The one on the left is the lowest-mortality BMI not adjusting for fat mass or fat-free mass: a reasonably high 27.4. The one on the right is the lowest-mortality BMI adjusting for fat mass and fat-free mass: a much lower 21.6.

I know this may sound confusing, but due to possible statistical distortions this does not mean that you should try to bring your BMI to 21.6 if you want to reduce your risk of dying. What this means is that fat mass and fat-free mass matter. Moreover, all of the participants in this study were men. The authors concluded that: “…marked leanness (as opposed to thinness) has beneficial effects.”

Then we have an interesting 2003 article by Bigaard and colleagues () reporting on a study of 27,178 men and 29,875 women born in Denmark, 50 to 64 years of age. The table below summarizes deaths in this study, grouping them by BMI and waist circumference.



These are raw numbers; no complex statistics here. Circled in green is the area with samples that appear to be large enough to avoid “funny” results. Circled in red are the lowest-mortality percentages; I left out the 0.8 percentage because it is based on a very small sample.

As you can see, they refer to men and women with BMIs in the 25-29.9 range (overweight), but with waist circumferences in the lower-middle range: 90-96 cm for men and 74-82 cm for women; or approximately 35-38 inches for men and 29-32 inches for women.

Women with BMIs in the 18.5-24.9 range (normal) and the same or lower waists also died in small numbers. Underweight men and women had the highest mortality percentages.

A relatively small waist (not a wasp waist), together with a normal or high BMI, is an indication of more fat-free mass, which is retained together with some body fat. It is also an indication of less visceral body fat accumulation.

Olympic buzz: Nike's super-fast clothes, USADA's Armstrong case and on-track action

Olympic buzz: The USADA charges, the Nike Turbospeed Track Suit and on-track action

Three relatively short comments today, as we move into the final six weeks before the London Olympic Games start.  We look today at the USADA charges against Lance Armstrong, then shift to the Games to look at Nike's new suit and the claims it makes for performance, and wrap up with some brief thoughts on Ethiopia's emerging medal prospects in London, including Bekele's return and Ethiopia's women.

USADA charges Lance Armstrong: Pieces worth reading

First, a story that is not directly linked to the 2012 Olympic Games, but is without doubt the biggest news in the world of sport (and sports science and sports law) this week - USADA announced that it would be bringing charges against Lance Armstrong, seven-time Tour de France champion.

Much has been written about this in the two days since the story broke, and anything I write is merely repeating what other have stated in more detail, so I rather direct you to the following excellent pieces for further details and insights:

• The letter sent by USADA to Armstrong and five other "accused" informing them of charges.  In case you've missed it, this is NOT a case about Armstrong and doping.  Rather, it casts the net wider, and most significantly, is pursuing the "conspiracy" (the word used in the letter) to dope by teams of which Armstrong was a member.  As such, those five men accused along with Armstrong include manager Johan Bruyneel, three doctors including the infamous Michele Ferrari, and a coach who worked for US Postal during the Armstrong era.  The letter has some explosive allegations and lists them in some detail.  It also includes mention, but not details of the "numerous former riders and employees" of Armstrong's teams who will testify that they witnessed a range of offences including possession, trafficking, administration, aiding, abetting and covering-up doping offences on the team. 
  
  
• The significant point about the case is that it is not a pursuit of one cyclist for doping.  As mentioned, it is about process, and the best piece I read on this features on "The Inner Ring" website.  It describes the case, and the focus on doping system, rather than on one case.  It also introduces the important point that the absence of a positive test is relatively meaningless (see: Ullrich, Basso, Jones, Montgomery, Valverde), and it explains what happens next.  If you have time, go through the comments section as well, they're very insightful and thought-provoking.
  
  
• Finally, a concise summary of where this has come from, and where it may lead, comes from Bonnie Ford and TJ Quinn of ESPN.  It explains the link to the Federal investigation of Armstrong that was dropped in February (that was a criminal case, this is not, and more), issues around jurisdiction and sanctions, the intriguing mention of the samples from 2009 and 2010 tests which were "consistent" with doping, and speculates on who might testify.

There are many other good articles on the subject, but I'm sure most have seen more than enough by now!  I have also used our Twitter account to send those links out as I stumble across them myself, so if you haven't followed us, and want to keep more up to date, Twitter is where it's at.

I'll say the following three things about the Armstrong case:

First, many people are saying that it's time to move on, that too much time has elapsed and that the focus should be on the future.  I disagree, for a number of reasons.  The first in principle.  Saying "it's too late, let it go" is saying that if you can get away with something illegal for long enough, then you can get away with it forever.  That doesn't work.  And yes, I appreciate the concept of a statute of limitations (see the ESPN article I linked to above for more on this), but I would take the view of John Lancaster in this piece, where he argues that "determining the truth about Armstrong's past is vital to the well-being of cycling's present".

This is particularly true in this case, because, for the third time (sorry to labour the point), this is not exclusively about Armstrong.  It is about the system, and the most "exciting" thing about it is that the evidence presented may expose the internal doping system from the top-down.  That is something that has long been lacking, because the sole spotlight always falls on the doped rider, when it's the organization that enables doping that needs to be carved down.  So my view there is that any cycling fan who wishes to see the sport advance even further should celebrate the opportunity to fully expose the corruption that put it there in the first place.

The other important point there is that UCI stand to lose considerable face if the verdict goes against "the conspirators".  That is, part of the allegation is that the UCI contributed to covering up Armstrong' doping positives.  Prof Michael Ashenden, always outspoken about doping cases, including this terrific interview where he states the science behind Armstrong's EPO positive in 2001, alludes to this in this article, saying that a finding of a cover-up would be fatal for the UCI's credibility.

Returning to the case, I'd say that anyone interesting in seeing cycling move forward should probably take very seriously the prospects that the sport is run by people who would cover up the tests as is alleged.  So this is yet another angle that makes these charges relevant today.  Bottom line - don't believe the PR machine that says this is a "vendetta" and that everyone should leave the retired rider alone.  There's more to this than that.

Second point - there need not be a smoking gun.  A lot of people are still pointing to the "more than 500 tests" that Armstrong passed (since rounded up to 600).  That's all good and well, but again, see: Ullrich, Valverde, Basso, Jones, Montgomery.  This is a point we've laboured in the last few years here on this site, but the truth is that a positive test does not necessarily equal a ban, and a negative test does not equal innocence.  Such is the climate of anti-doping these days, so the sooner we leave this dependence on a clearly beatable system, the better.

That, and realize that witness accounts, particularly from direct witnesses rather than hearsay, are often used to convict people of murder.  So doping?  It's not the weak evidence that is argued.  One person making an accusation?  That can be dismissed as a disgruntled former employee (a bike mechanic, perhaps).  The second accuser? Dismissed as malice or vendetta.  But when the slow drip turns into a raging torrent, then even with the right incentive to testify, you can't just discount them all as malice or jealousy.  Of course, each witness account must be corroborated, and there's still a standard to uphold, but it's too lazy to simply dismiss everyone with the same strategy.

And finally, I hope that the evidence emerges.  In all likelihood, much will happen behind closed doors at first, and perhaps with every intention of keeping it that way.  But this opaqueness has long been part of the problem, and I'm all for more transparency.

The Nike Turbospeed Track Suit: Technological doping or marketing games?

The next story is that of Nike's unveiling of its Olympic track kit today (see pic right).  They claim that it will improve 100m sprint performance by 0.023 seconds, the importance of which they illustrate by pointing out that it would have been the difference between a bronze and silver medal for Walter Dix in Beijing.  Their secret is strategically placed dimples on the fast-moving arms and legs that improve aerodynamics in much the same way that a dimpled golf ball flies considerably further than it would were it smooth.

There are two interesting questions arising out of this story.  First, does the suit actually work?  It's all good and well to say, as the Nike Olympics Creative Director has, that "We've tested them over 100m, 200m and 400m and couldn't believe the numbers".  Call me a skeptic, but until I see the results of that testing, and perhaps more importantly, the methods, I'm not convinced about a 0.2% difference.  The only mention I am able to find of the testing is that it comprised 1000 hours of wind-tunnel testing.  The fact of the matter is that this kind of claim is made every four years - the marketing battle between Nike and Adidas ensures that every new design is "revolutionary".  And this seems further advanced than most, but given the financial stakes here, the default response is "believe with caution".

Performance-wise, the advantage they are touting, the 0.023 seconds, amounts to just over 0.2% in a 100m race.  The improvement over longer distances would be even smaller, if this suit behaved in the same way that swimsuits did, because as the speed drops, so too does the relative aerodynamic benefit (For example, the breast-stroke events got the smallest advantage from the suits, freestyle and fly the largest).

This 0.2% is a tiny improvement, and while it can indeed make the difference between gold and silver, it's small enough that even the slightest "error" in the testing methods (either deliberate or unavoidable) could easily undo it.  I'm no aerodynamic engineer, of course, and so I'll bow to those who have specific expertise, but I do worry about the validity of testing a garment in a wind tunnel.

The second issue relates to technological doping.  Of course, this issue assumes that the garment works to begin with - I have my doubts, but many in the media seem to have swallowed the science whole.  But if it does, then the inevitable questions and comparisons will arise - remember the swimsuit sage of 2008 and 2009?  Back then, super-fast, buoyant suits helped swimmers break 25 World and 65 Olympic records in all but two events in the pool in Beijing.  They then saw 43 world records fall in the 2009 World Championships.  In the three years since those World Championships, we've seen a grand total of two world records!

Inevitably, these running outfits are being compared to the swimsuits.  That's a misplaced comparison, because this advantage (0.2%) is nowhere near what the suits seem to have provided.  For example, the difference between 2009 (suit-aided) and 2011 (non-suit aided) performances in the swimming sprint events was about 1.6%, so that's almost 8-fold greater than the running suit.  Bottom line - the swimsuits were another level of technological assistance, Nike's Turbospeed suit may or may not work, but by comparison, it's a tiny benefit.

There is the philosophical question, however:  Should the suit be banned in the same way that doping would (and should) be banned, even if it produced a debatable improvement in the range of 1%?  As I see it, a ban on a substance is for numerous reasons, and performance advantage is only one of them.  One such reason is a health risk - a crucial reason doping control exists is to protect athletes who don't want to risk their health in order to compete and win.  Then there is whether the device creates an unequal playing field because it is inaccessible or unobtainable for some.  Certainly, the latter issue can be debated here.  It was a problem for many swimmers, who were tied into sponsorships that prevented them from getting into the super-fast suits in Beijing.  The same would probably be true of the Nike Turbospeed Suit, but then it's not a health risk.  And again, I'm not convinced about the performance advantage.

Taking an even broader view, one can argue about modern tennis rackets, cricket bats, baseball bats, golf clubs, starting blocks, gymnastics apparatus and just about every piece of equipment which has morphed (or transformed) over time into what we now accept as 'normal'.  So do we need to draw a line?  As far as I'm concerned, with the CAS ruled that carbon-fiber prosthetic limbs conferred no advantage, they opened a door on many technological advancements.  In this instance, I'm just not convinced of the performance benefit.

One last thought - I was watching the Beijing Olympic highlights today and couldn't help notice that Usain Bolt doesn't even run in a tight-fitting skin-suit.  And that's true today - Bolt races in a vest, which flaps around in the considerable wind that he generates as he hits 44 km/hour!  The creative designers at Nike would be aghast!

On-track action: Diamond League takes a break for trials, but London is building nicely

And finally, much has been happening on the tracks around the world with the Diamond League athletics series crossing the Atlantic between Rome, Oslo, Eugene and New York.  There have been a number of notable performances - David Rudisha cruised to a sub-1:42 in New York, Usain Bolt had a bad run in Ostrava, then bounced back with two sub-9.8s to remind everyone that he remains the alpha-dog of men's sprinting.  Yohan Blake's statement ended rather flatly in New York as he ran "only" 9.90s, hours after Tyson Gay returned to racing with a 10.00s into a 1.5 m/s wind.  Gay attempts to qualify for the USA team this weekend, but the men's 100m has some questions against it yet. 

Kenenisa Bekele continued his comeback, quietly finding improvements in all the right areas.  His debut didn't exactly light up the track world, as he ran only 7:40 for seventh in the 3000m in Doha.  Then he ran 13:13.89 in admittedly poor conditions in Shanghai, finishing sixth.  He then got down to 13:01.48 for fourth in Eugene, where his lack of final lap speed was exposed again.  And finally, he ran 13:00.54 in Oslo.  That was in an erratic race, badly paced, but his final lap was faster than in Eugene (around 56s vs 57s) and augurs well for Bekele.

Elite athletes are elite precisely because they respond so rapidly to training, and given eight weeks of training from that race, Bekele cannot be ruled out as a medal favourite, particularly in the 10,000m.  The attribute that he seems to have lost, and which is often most difficult to regain, is that ability to shift gears at the bell, and to sprint.  The fascinating question for Bekele will be 1) can he continue the current rate of improvement, and 2) how will he race, assuming he doesn't have the ability to control the race in the final lap as he did so brilliantly in Beijing four years ago?

The biggest "change" in the world order, however, has been the emergence of Ethiopia's women.  Only a month ago, it seemed that Kenya had all the women's distance events cornered.  Then came Fantu Magiso in the 800m, Genzebe Dibaba and Abebe Arigawe in the 1500m, and now the return of Tirunesh Dibaba in the women's 5000m and 10,000m.  Of course, Vivian Cheruiyot awaits in those events in London, and that may well produce the races of the Games.

In New York, Dibaba was spectacular in defeating Meseret Defar - in an admittedly slow race, she hit the front with three laps to go and ended up running the final 1500m in about 4:05.  Defar was crushed by 50m, and Dibaba didn't even look troubled.  Given that Defar had been challenging Cheruiyot, Dibaba looks like a real problem on the horizon for Kenya's medals.  And so remarkably, the return of Dibaba and the emergence of middle distance stars means that where one month ago, Kenya looked good to win four or five gold medals, they now face a struggle to win one!

Such is the pull of the Olympic Games, and the raised stakes it can produce.

With six weeks to go, there is undoubtedly more to come!

Ross

Four quick thoughts on Comrades 2012

Four quick thoughts on the 2012 Comrades Ultra-marathon

A more "South African-centric" post today, since it covers a very South African race.  Hopefully, one that promotes or encourages more international presence for the race though.  Here are some thoughts on the Comrades Ultra-Marathon.

Yesterday saw the 2012 running of South Africa's biggest ultra-marathon, the Comrades Ultra-marathon.  This race, for those who don't know, takes runners between Pietermaritzburg and Durban, a distance of 89 km, just over 55 miles.  The race alternates direction, so that one year, it's called the "up" run (Durban to Pietermaritzburg), and the year after, it's a "down" run (Pietermaritzburg to Durban).  The 2012 race was a "down" run, and the profile of the race is shown below (courtesy a runner in the race), just to illustrate the challenge faced by the 15,000 odd runners who typically start.

Added to this are typically warm temperatures and humid conditions in Durban - yesterday was a relatively mild day, with a temperature of about 23 degrees celsius in the shade, and bright sunshine for most of the day.  The temperature in direct sunlight, incidentally, was about 28 degrees for the warmest four hours of the day.  These are temperatures that come with health warnings in standard marathons in the USA and Europe, I must point out!  Cut-off time is 12 hours, the winning time is typically 5:30 for the men and 6:15 for the women.  It's a race that has managed to weave itself into the running DNA of South Africans, and for good reason - it is an epic race and if ultra-marathons are your thing, then I'd highly encourage you to come along and run this race one day!

But yesterday, my involvement was with the television broadcast, as I was part of the commentary team.  I've done the odd stint before, more as a guest contributor, but this was the first big involvement, and I thought I'd share some insights on the men's race, the women's race, the TV broadcast and the race in general.  So herewith, four quick thoughts on one of the world's great Ultra-marathons.

1.  The men's race: Some trash-talk, a lesson in realism, and a race of attrition

Understanding the men's race requires going back to a press conference held the Thursday before the race.  At this conference, the race became all about three men, who influenced the race more by their words than their strides.  Defending champion Stephen Muzinghi, course record holder Leonid Shvetsov and SA marathon record holder Gert Thys produced one of the more memorable press conferences leading up to a running race, and ensured that all eyes would be on them.  For example, it was revealed that Muzinghi has already been driving a sponsored car with the words "Comrades champion 2012" emblazoned on it.  Leonid Shvetsov said that his only previous defeats at Comrades (2009 by Muzinghi among them) were more because he lost the race, not that they had been good enough to beat him.  So the two of them were set up as the heavy-weight contenders, with a little more trash-talk than we're used to seeing from ultra-marathon runners!

Then there was Gert Thys.  One of South Africa's marathon legends, he now talks as fast as he used to run.  He claimed that a sub-5 hour Comrades would be "easy".  Not "possible", but "easy".   Just to give you the context, the current record is 5:20:49, and taking 20:49 is the equivalent of lowering the marathon record from its current 2:03:38 to 1:55:36....

Even if you think that the Comrades record is a little weak, you just don't knock around 3% or more off a record at once.  The basis for Thys' claims was that he's South Africa's fastest ever marathon runner, and a legend of the marathon discipline - back in 1998, before the days of 2:03 marathons, Thys was a world class performer, there is no doubt about that.  His 2:06:33 in 1999, along with a few other sub-2:08s made him the most consistently fast marathon runner in the world at the time.

So Thys was of the opinion that if you can run a 2:06, then running a 2:20 would be easy.  And if that was easy, then doing another would be possible.  Add on 5km and you have your sub-5 hour Comrades.  One might point out that the 2:06 was 14 years ago...  And that when you're training to run an 89km race, you don't keep that kind of marathon shape, but he felt confident.  It might also be worth pointing out that earlier this year, Thys raced in the 56km Two Oceans marathon, where he finished in 3:09.  To run a 5-hour Comrades would require that he ran the SAME pace for 89km as he had done for 56km.  It was just never going to happen, but it was this claim, and Thys' attempt to deliver on it, that set up the pattern of the race.

So to his credit, he did exactly what he said he would.  When the first pictures from the course were beamed through the darkness at the top of a famous climb called Polly Shorts at 8km, Thys was already ahead of the pre-race favourites.  The gap as early as that was over a minute, and the hammer was clearly down.  There may have been a gap, but everyone was being pulled into this super fast early pace.

Thys wasn't the early leader, but he did assume the lead inside the first two hours of the race, and then all the talk was whether he was actually capable of sustaining this pace.  And of course, the answer would be no, for the obvious reason that he was running pretty close to his personal maximum speed for 50km, and hoping for another 40km at the end of it.  He went through halfway in 2:35, projecting a 5:10 finish, but by this stage he had already slowed from the fast early pace.

Behind him, something of a group had formed, but they were also beginning to pay for a fast early pace.  The big chase group went through in 2:43, eight minutes behind, which may seem a big gap, but this is with a marathon plus 5km still to run, and much can (and does) happen.

Sure enough, at around 50km, Thys got the invoice for his early effort, and paid heavily.  He stopped to walk, and alternated walking and running for the next 30 minutes, as that eight minute lead was steadily cut and eventually completely eroded.  Shortly before the 60km mark, Thys abandoned the race.  He would later say that it was problems with blood sugar (he has had these problems before, and has some 'peculiar' ideas about energy replacement and glucose during exercise, but that's another story).

Nevertheless, Thys' fingerprint remained on the race, for his early aggression had done damage to the main field.  The dilemma they faced was that while none honestly believed that he would stay in the lead and actually run the pace he promised (the three podium finishers all hinted at this in the post-race press conference), they were nevertheless drawn into that pace.  Thys was an enigma, a first-time Comrades runner who talked confidently and called on his 2:06 to back him up, and that unknown quantity sucked everyone into a fast start.

That would tell in the second half of the race, which became more about survival than it was about attack.  Given the profile of the race (see above), the Comrades Down run is normally run with a negative split, the second half being much faster than the first.  This is the optimal way to run it.  But pulled along by Thys, the main field started incredibly fast, reached halfway in 2:43 (already slowing down considerably from the first 25km) and then ground out the second half.  Ultimately, not a single top ten finisher managed to run a negative split.  Even those who finished strongest were running big positive splits and for that, Thys can take much of the credit.

The result, at the sharp end of the race, however, was that time gaps were established very early, and the strongest runner of the day found himself in the lead with about 35 km still to run.  That man was Ludwick Mamabolo, who had come second the last time the down run was held in 2010, and this year, committed to going one better.  He assumed the lead from a walking Thys and never relented.

The only thing that changed was the identity of his challenger.  One by one, a potential threat emerged from the chasers, but soon fell away.  And then there was the ever-present threat of a Stephen Muzinghi challenge, the Zimbabwean hovering back at about 2 min down pretty much the whole way. That challenge never materialized, as Muzinghi too would fade at the end, probably paying for his own early pace, and the Two Oceans title he won in April.  No man has won both the Two Oceans and Comrades in the same year since 1974 - it's just so physiologically demanding to race both within 8 weeks.

So what we eventually got was a solo run to the finish line, which appeared to lack the usual drama of Comrades, where a bunch splits up progressively after halfway, where leads change hands, athletes fold and the excitement builds in the final 20km.  This race, in hindsight, was created with 89km to go, and then it was decided with 40km to go.  That's not to say there wasn't drama behind.  The top 10 at the finish line was completely different to the top 10 with 15 km to run - it was as if the cards were being shuffled in the pack.  Some runners went backwards, some came through strongly, then blew, others did finish strongly, most notably Leboka Noto who got third, and Shvetsov, who grabbed fifth and beat Muzinghi, a mini-victory of sorts for the Russian.  None of this was seen on TV, unfortunately, because only one motorbike camera was on the course and so much of the drama happened "anonymously" (more on this below).

But in the end, the ace in the pack, and the only man who didn't change positions in the final 20km, was Mamabolo, who won in 5:31:03.   Second went to Bongmusa Mthembu, and third to fast-finishing Noto.  As for the big three pre-race favourites, a DNF, a fifth and a sixth are reminders that when you race over 89km, the margins are small.  So perhaps best not to talk before you run.  And invest in a new coat of paint for your car if you're Stephen Muzinghi.

Women's race: Same outcome, different process, as Nurgalieva wins.  Again

The women's race, as has become tradition, was won by Elena Nurgalieva of Russia.  This was her tenth race, and she claimed her seventh win, to go with two second places and a third.  That level of consistency is remarkable given how much can go wrong in a race of this length.  She's managed to avoid, or overcome, all those factors, as well as rivals, who it must be said, have been thin on the ground in many races.  Usually, the biggest threat is twin sister Olesiya, who missed the 2012 race after having a child a few weeks ago.

This year, however, she did find herself in a race.  Here too, the identity of the challengers changed.  First it was America's Devon Crosby Helms who showed strongly, but soon faded.  Then Natalya Volgina pressed at the front, but dropped off after halfway.  And then it was Eleanor Greenwood, an accomplished ultra runner from the UK, now living in Canada, who really did extend Nugalieva.  She linked up with the Russian around halfway, and showed more than enough aggression to drive what had been a sedate early pace faster and faster.

That would get rid of Volgina's challenge, but unfortunately, the pace would also tell on Greenwood, who started to feel cramp coming on with about 20km to go.  It reduced her to a walk on Cowie's Hill, though I have to say it was one of the more aggressive walks I've seen.  She may have had to walk, but she was going to minimize any time losses by power walking up the hill.  In the end, she succeeded, remarkably managing to keep the gap to just over one minute, despite a mix of walking and running for the final hour and a half.

Nurgalieva has the race perfected, however, and she went on to record her fastest ever time, a 6:07:12. She showed her quality, to resist a very good challenge from Greenwood.  The women's splits show how the race should be run - 3:07 to halfway and 3:00 for the second half.  The gap between second and third was enormous, fully 23 minutes, which does reveal that there is still something of a lack of depth in the women's race, despite its ever growing appeal.

As for the South Africans, first was Kerry Koen in sixth place, and the usual post-mortems about why our South African women cannot compete with the Russians (and now English) women.  The simple truth is that our women Comrades runners are too slow over standard marathons.  Most of the SA women in this race have marathon bests of around 2:50 to 3 hours.  So here again, if the Comrades winning time is going to be 6:10, you need to run back-to-back marathons in 2:55, with an extra 5km.

Can you do that, when your best marathon is 2:50?  Simple answer, no.  So in the same way that Gert Thys demonstrated that a 5-hour Comrades is not possible, SA women reveal the key principle that running distances are inter-connected, and so you need to recognize that just because your performance at the Comrades distance is the problem, the root cause lies elsewhere.  In this case, it's the lack of marathon credentials that our women bring into the race.  Until SA can develop a group of 2:30-something women marathon runners, who then turn to Comrades, it will continue to be a good day for the GDP of Russian athletes.

And the same principle, incidentally, is true for anyone reading this.  If you are stuck at a longer distance, my advice is to turn to the shorter distance to find the improvement.  It's not always true, of course, particularly among the elites, but for most, get faster shorter, and build on that as you increase the distance.

3.  The TV broadcast:  Criticisms and experiences

Right, so on to my involvement, the TV coverage.  The feedback from the viewing public has not been great - the Twitter comments were not great, and neither are those on the running boards here in SA.  In fact, they've been scathing, of the production more than the commentary (we pretty much worked off the concept "Here are the pictures, talk").  I hope that my own commentary wasn't too much part of the problem (if you have suggestions, especially criticism, then I really would love to hear them.  In a positive way of course, but please don't hold back - how else can anyone improve without criticism?)

I think the bigger issue, which is regrettable, is one of budget.  Followed by politics.  I don't know much about either, but it's quite clear that there are limitations in what can be achieved.  I'm loathe to be too critical, because having now been part of the machine, I recognize the challenges faced by people responsible, who are, for the most part, working hard with good intentions to deliver a quality product.  And honestly, I think it's relatively good.  It can always improve, yes, but some of the criticism is just destructive, and I'd again encourage you to be constructive with your views.  There are many global races that have at least a similar standard to what I saw yesterday.

And yes, there are problems.  I mentioned above that in the men's race, a lot of the drama was happening off camera, because there was only one motor-bike for the elite men.  That's because the second bike had a mechanical failure, and so where normally, we'd see the chaser and the changes in position behind, yesterday we only heard about it and watched the eventual winner.  That's a budget thing, through and through.  If you watch the Tour de France, realize that there are three helicopters and four motor-bike cameras, for a race of 180 cyclists bunched tightly together.  Here's we're on one helicopter and two bikes (one men, one women), for a race with time gaps of many minutes.  And yes, "budget" is a frustrating excuse, but it's the reality.  I do wish it were better, however, and I sympathize with this frustration.

But commentary-wise, my thoughts.  First, we don't seem to appreciate the value of silence.  Sometimes it's good to let the pictures do the talking.  Not for minutes at a time, but sometimes a pause is more powerful than forcing comment.  What happens instead is that there's a lot of direct pressure (there's a director in your ear) to keep going, keep talking, and the result is that people often start saying things because they're pushed to, not because they want to.  That adds up to inane and meaningless commentary, sometimes.  I did it myself yesterday, on numerous occasions, though it was better than usual.  There've been times in the past, depending who else is in the commentary team, that it feels more like a competition to see who can say the most in the shortest time!

Then one of the issues we have in SA is a language one.  We need, quite rightly, to take this race to all followers.  That means the commentary team has to have English, Afrikaans, Zulu, Sotho, Xhosa.  It also needs males, females, and because this is SA, it needs black, white in each category.  Reality of SA, unfortunately (if you are international and bemused...welcome to SA).

So the team is put together this way, and it swells under the demographic pressures.  Add another white male, another white female etc and eventually, it's too many people, and the quality is inevitably to be diluted, even if only because they chop and change so often that as a commentator, you can't tell a story, work with characters.  There is a belief in the SABC that variety is better, but that's only true when it does not come at the expense of quality.  And yes, Comrades is a mammoth day, 12 hours of talking, but five or six excellent commentators will do better than ten, if they have more quality.

This also introduces the problem with what many of you suggest - you can't have split audio feeds because then you would need a team of commentators for each language, because it would be boring to have the same person for 12 hours.  So rather than have a squad of 30 commentators (imagine the quality then), they go with alternating language.  An english commentator, Zulu (or Sotho or Afrikaans) insight and so on.  A lot of people got really irritated with that, but it's a reality of SA, and I don't have a problem with it at all.

Next, is the training of commentators.  Now, I'm one of them, and for all I know, it was painful to listen to.  I got some feedback, some good, some bad, for which I'm grateful, but here's the thing - there is no training, no mentorship.  The way it works is improvement by experience.  That is, you mess up, you practice, you hopefully get better.  Problem is, unless your learning is guided by someone outside, you adapt in the wrong direction.  Maybe get more verbose, more monotonous.  So it really requires some investment to teach people the basic skills, and review their performance.

I don't expect to get any official professional feedback from my own commentary performance, for example.  I may get the odd comment, which is usually a compliment (because people throw out compliments in passing, but rarely divulge criticisms because they're scared of hurting feelings).  And I hate this, because I had to have made mistakes.  I was either unclear, too verbose, too monotonous, inaccurate, irrelevant.  Not eloquent enough. Something will always go wrong, but unless you know specifically, how do you improve?  So I beg for someone to criticize, be negative, make suggestions that will help me improve.  Constructive criticism is hard to come by...

And I use myself as an example, but the point is that every one of us is in the same boat.  There's no official platform for self-improvement.  I'm begging to be criticized so that I can get better, but that facility doesn't exist.  So when you are watching and tearing your hair out at the commentary (and trust me, I can relate), just understand that everyone bar one or two in that Comrades commentary team is an amateur, who is knowledgeable and doing their best, but they're soldiers without weapons.  This lack of attention to quality is not unique to this situation - it's always easy to do something, it's much more difficult to do it well.  Recognizing the investment in people and that quality matters is the difference between average and good, good and great.

Finally, the other big criticism is the number of inserts and interviews that they run in the last part of the race.  Once the elite runners are in (by 7 hours), they have another 5 hours of TV coverage to show everyone else finishing the race.  I hope that we realize how special this is - it's unique to have a full day of TV broadcast when it's "only" the public running.  But this is Comrades, and this is what makes it special.

The result of this, however, is that there is footage of thousands of runners finishing, and the pressure is really on the commentators to provide some kind of audio to the image.  Appreciate how challenging that is for 5 hours.  What do you say?

So in answer to this, the SABC puts together a range of short inserts on stories within the race.  A man running for charity, a guy doing his 40th run, a historical reference of some sort.  And they show these in this five-hour period.  All good in principle.  Some of the inserts are good.  But the problem is that it really angers the viewers, because they are watching specifically to see their loved one finish!  So having sat in front of the TV screen for 2 hours in the hope of seeing that loved one for 2 seconds, they suddenly find that they're taken to an insert or an interview with a sponsor, or dignitary, or a charity, and that causes them to miss the footage they've spent hours waiting for.

It's rather like having the power fail as that key moment in the match is about to happen.  And it's here that it feels that perhaps we're a little out of touch with what the viewer really wants.  I wonder if the viewer wouldn't be happier just watching footage, getting the stadium announcer for long periods?

The best compromise, of course, is to have a split screen, and have your insert or interview playing, while you keep the camera on the runners as they finish.  And when doing interviews, don't show the presenter and interviewee, rather cut to the footage and keep it going.  I'm not sure whether there are financial implications to the split screen idea, but it does seem an easy win, based on the feedback I was seeing on Facebook and Twitter yesterday.

Anyway, that's a very South-African discussion topic, and I welcome your thoughts, as always.

4.  Comrades has a quality that must be experienced

Last point, and it's a short one.  The Comrades has a quality that really does need to be experienced to be understood.  Even if you just watch it.  It's part of our DNA in South Africa, this race, as it is so ingrained in our running culture.  Zola Budd, South Africa's famous barefoot champion of the 1980s,  ran Comrades yesterday and said tongue in cheek that she had to do it because in South Africa, you aren't recognized as a runner until you do!  (She ran with legend Bruce Fordyce, incidentally, and they finished in a respectable 8:06.  Fordyce was aiming for silver in 7:30, but had a difficult day.  Maybe also glucose problems with insufficient carbs...)

But until you experience the day, and in particular the last two hours, when over half the field finishes, you don't see the appeal. The most agonizing part of the day, but also the hook for most (consciously or not) is the 12-hour cut-off, when a gun is fired and whether you're within 3m of the finish line or not, you get no medal.  It's amazing to think that over 12 hours, 2 seconds can make the difference between a happy memory, a medal and contentment, as opposed to frustration and heart-ache when you have failed.  But that is the point, the challenge, and it's the reason to run the race, regardless of your ability.

 I was interviewed yesterday on TV and asked when I'd run it.  I dodged the question then, but I know it's the future, just because it's an event worth being part of.

Perhaps next year, this article will have been the seed that brings you to South Africa!

Ross

How to make white rice nutritious

One of the problems often pointed out about rice, and particularly about white rice, is that its nutrition content is fairly low. It is basically carbohydrates with some trace amounts of protein. A 100-g portion of cooked white rice will typically deliver 28 g of carbohydrates, with zero fiber, and 3 g of protein. The micronutrient content of such a portion leaves a lot to be desired when compared with fruits and vegetables, as you can see below (from Nutritiondata.com). Keep in mind that this is for 100 g of “enriched” white rice; the nutrients you see there, such as manganese, are added.

White rice is rice that has had its husk, bran, and germ removed. This prevents spoilage and thus significantly increases its shelf life. As it happens, it also significantly reduces both its nutrition and toxin content. White rice is one of the refined foods with the lowest toxin content.

Another interesting property of white rice is that it absorbs moisture to the tune of about 2.5 times its weight. That is, a 100-g portion of dry white rice will lead to a 250-g portion of edible white rice after cooking. This does not only dramatically decrease white rice’s glycemic load () compared with wheat-based products in general (with some exceptions, such as pasta), but also allows for white rice to be made into a highly nutritious dish.

If you slow cook almost anything in water, many of its nutrients will seep into the water. All you have to do is to then use that water (often called broth) to cook white rice in it, and you will end up with highly nutritious rice. Typically you will need twice as much broth as rice, cooked for about 15 minutes – e.g., 2 cups of broth for 1 cup of rice.

You can add meats to the white rice, such as pulled chicken or shrimp; add some tomato sauce to that and you’ll make it a chicken or shrimp risotto. You can also add vegetables to the rice. If you want your rice to have something like an al dente consistency, I recommend doing these after the rice is ready; i.e., after you cooked it in the broth.

For the white rice-based dish below I used a broth from about two hours of slow cooking of diced vegetables; namely red bell peppers, carrots, celery, onions, and cabbage. After cooking the rice for 15 minutes, and letting it "sit" for a while (another 15 minutes with the pan covered), I also added the vegetables to it.

As a side note, the cabbage and onion tend to completely dissolve after 1 h or so of slow cooking. The added vegetables give the dish quite a nutritional punch. For example, the cabbage alone seems to be a great source of vitamin C (which is not completely destroyed by the slow cooking), the anti-inflammatory amino acid glutamine, and the DNA repair-promoting substance known as indole-3-carbinol ().

The good folks over at the Highbrow Paleo group on Facebook () had a few other great ideas posted in response to my previous post on the low glycemic load of white rice (), such as cooking white rice in bone broth (thanks Derrick!).