Antidoping Solutions for Ultrarunning Part 3 - Lisa Roberts | Koopcast Episode 83

trail and ultra runners what is going on what's happening welcome to another episode of the KoopCast as always i'm your humble host coach Jason Koop and this episode of the podcast is running right in line with our last two episodes all on anti-doping solutions and issues in the sport of trail and ultra running for those of you that missed the last two episodes go and check them out even before after this podcast it really doesn't matter they are both good ones and they both set the table for the podcasts that are to come those are with dr matt fedorick who is the chief science officer over at usada and with paul demio who is the author of the book anti-doping crisis and sport causes consequences and solutions and we really started to use those two conversations to kind of set the landscape of what anti-doping looks like across all different types of sports this podcast is with a really interesting individual who was a former professional triathlete she had a doping sanction imposed on her during her professional triathlon days and then came into the sport of ultra running she qualified for the western states endurance run and really got entangled within western states's anti-doping policy her name is lisa roberts some of you will be familiar with her

story but if you are not i encourage you to listen to this because it is an interesting nuance and an interesting wrinkle in this whole world of anti-doping and anti-doping solutions now western states came out with a very strong anti-doping policy a couple of years ago i'm going to leave a link to that in the show notes we actually read that policy throughout the course of this conversation i encourage everybody to go check that out at just a simple point of education i tried my best to stay neutral throughout this podcast i have very very strong feelings about this particular rule but i didn't want to get involved too much in lisa's story because i think it's a good one it's a one that it's one that we can all learn from and i would also like the listeners and everybody to appreciate the fact that lisa raised her hand and she wanted to participate in this process it would have been very easy for her to stick her head in the sand and not talk to anybody and just you know shut her ears down and not be part of this dialogue because being part of the dialogue when you've got a doping infraction that's on your record for forever it's hard to come out and talk about it and as we will come to find out she has had to deal with some of the other negative consequences of this that a lot of people don't even really think about so i encourage everybody to listen to the entirety of this conversation as well as some commentary that i will provide

at the end during the outro of this i did not want to entangle my personal thoughts and sentiment and sentiments too much within lisa's story because lisa's story should really stand on its own accord in terms of what we can learn from it as a final point i did let the fine folks over at the western states endurance run know that i was producing this podcast just to give them a heads up because i'm a professional and that's the way i roll and i uh i left it open to them they can participate in this conversation in any way shape or form that they wanted to they can come on my podcast they could have come on this podcast they could do whatever i left it on their shoulders to determine how they wanted to respond they provided me with a statement that i read during the podcast and they insisted that i read it on the podcast so i did what i will say is that invitation is evergreen so any of the fine folks over at western states you have an open forum on my podcast to talk about anything in perpetuity that is an open invitation you can always take advantage of it y'all know how to get a hold of me that's it for the intro that's it for the caveats there's a lot of them the last few weeks i'm sorry you guys let's get right into the conversation with lisa roberts so i want to know right out right from the get-go are you still racing with the baby yoda on your

pack or grogu i can say i can say that because i'm a fan he's with me now i think for the for the long fall so um yeah i mean it started i never it started off as you know a legit kind of thing that i wanted to do um when i first started doing any form of trail running i was getting ready to do a um coast to coast multi-sport race in new zealand actually as a relay with my husband last year and um we got down to new zealand early to do some training on the course and you know as new zealand is very wild and very sort of almost just kind of uh you know native looking and so i'm running through all these mossy forests and trees and roots and my the first thing that clicked into my head was the star wars scene when luke skywalker is doing his jedi training with yoda and he's running with yoda on his back and i just thought wouldn't that be funny if i found a yoda to put on my back so i could kind of run around like luke skywalker and that's that's really where it came from but i mean i am a big star wars fan that's obvious and um i do very much have a you know kind of a i'm sort of a zen type of runner so i'm very much sort of feely runner i go by feel i don't look at really pace very much and so and that's i i do a lot of sort of drawing from what's around me whether it be nature or other people or anything so it is very much the force that i run with so i figured why not it's like your shtick now though because you've been out at several races and i mean this is gonna

this is gonna sound horrible but it's like oh there's there's the girl with the baby yoda on her back there's so many races now i just did um well attempted to do uh the race in whiskey basin and yeah as i'm running along i come by people and they said you were at a recent race i saw you there with baby yoda which one and so we kind of go through you know i said well what was it this one and he saw me at black canyon with the baby yoda um people will come up to me you know just in general at either registration or at the start line and say oh baby yoda's here and so it's actually a wonderful way to make friends and i love it i asked and there was one guy because i actually i had to end up um bailing on unfortunately on whiskey basin and so i'm walking back through the dells to get back to the start line and there was a guy who kind of came running past me and he was pretty well blown but he was gonna make it through the finish flying and all he said as he came by me was man that baby yoda is the best thing i've seen all day that's brilliant i'm sure you give a lot of people who you're in front of because you wear it on the back of your pack right yes yeah you give them a they probably look at it initially because it's a small i saw it at black canyon it's a small baby yoda it's you know four four inches or something like that well the whole thing is about like yeah like six or seven inches but i shove part of it into the pack um to hold it in place but yeah his little head sticks out that's okay so that's what that's what kind of makes it odd visually because you look at it and you're like what is that weird thing on the back of that woman and then you get a little bit closer you're like oh it's yoda that's kind of cool well cool well i'm glad that i hope that sticks around for longer

because we could use a little bit more star wars in our lives in case you know that one kind of gets a little janky from being dirty and sweaty over time i may have to retire one and then enter in a new one but i'll hold on to this one as long as i can yeah you might want to corner the market they might be home collector's items after a while no okay well so that's part of your ultra running stick now or your ultra running career but but um i want to kind of go back to your triathlon career and let me let me kind of set this up a little bit so we're going to talk about um an incident that you had during your triathlon career and how it's played an impact to you on uh and ultra running and specifically with you being denied entry into the western states 100 and i don't want to skip any steps here i think that the whole the whole arc of the story is important to go through because it provides context and so why don't you take take everybody back to like your triathlon days and let's just set the stage with like who you were as a professional triathlete and how long that that that how long that career lasted and what types of events you were doing and things like that yeah sure so i all told um competing in triathlon itself since 2002 so um close to about 18 years or so of triathlon 2008 um i got my professional license um to race in the professional category um through a qualification um system that they have set up um all the time i had um been was working and even at the same time i turned professional

uh working as a landscape architect so um i was a working professional and that was sort of um what people knew about me for the most part and then um not only working for another company but then also having a shift to where i started my own business while i was racing professionally as a triathlete which that was a difficult um period of time but uh so yes in 2008 i not only turned professional as a triathlete but also started my own small landscape architecture company and was trying to do both at the same time um and manage that i'll say as well as possible um there's really no easy way to manage being a professional triathlete and you know running a business but i did the best i could with what i had until i merged my company with another one in 2014 managed to get a little bit more freedom to you know to do some training and some rest that way and then actually in 2016 is whenever i stepped back from my company and act to actually give professional triathlon a legit shot um so yeah i would say i was legitimately a professional triathlete since you know 2016 but technically since 2008 um so i was always known as being you know one that was working and um doing triathlon at the same time yeah which was not which is not uncommon in that world at all still even today um i think it's important i think an important distinction kind of needs to be made here because once again this is going to be primarily an ultra running audience and they kind of don't know

the world of triathlon and in an ultra marathon context you can anybody even me can set a stake in the ground and say oh i'm a professional trail runner because there is no standard but that's not true in the sport of triathlon so can you kind of briefly go over that just so everybody understands what it means to be a professional triathlete in the eyes of usa triathlon yeah so you have to go through a qualification system and place there's a few ways that you can do it you can either place first or second in some sort of national championship race so you can go and do it that way and i think that's basically still kind of like the one way you know deal in so if you peg a race you can then take your pro card um you can also do it by placing i think you're in a two or three races within i think at the time that i did within a year or 18 month period where if you're racing in a race that has has to have at least five thousand dollars in prize money to it and you have to place within 10 percent of the top finishers time so at least it's just kind of proving that you have you know kind of what it takes to race as a professional so that's another way that you can go about doing it and then every two years you have to kind of re-up that and still prove that you've you know been able same thing like you've placed in a certain percentage of time from the top finisher at least at one race i think and then then you can take your pro card again so you have to kind of keep proving that you're

still able to do this reasonably i'm glad that you i'm glad that you already brought up the notion of a pro card because not a lot of people realize it is actually a card like a physical card that you would like carry around in your wallet you know that you can like what does it get you any discounts at any like stores or anything like that yeah they give you some discounts and you have to you know obviously take it to you whenever you go to registration along with you know photo id to match the two yeah so um that's how you um become a professional and that was one of the things that was very interesting to me when um even getting into ultra running was you know how do i do i call myself an elite runner can i just do that yeah but that's the that's part of the story that i wanted to paint here is you went through a process it's a performance-based process that's set up by usa triathlon to where you can kind of go up the ranks and eventually you earn the right to be called a professional or be a card carrying professional of usa travel and so when that happens from uh from a competition standpoint what's different what's different between a non-pro and a pro yeah from the competition standpoint i mean you got the basics of registration you might be able to register for a race up to maybe about six weeks before the race where sometimes it would be already maybe sold out you know for an age group um racer that's kind of a nice thing it gives a little bit more flexibility for the professionals to be able to change plans if they have to for whatever reason um i mean you get

sort of you know you start in front of everybody else um which i could tell a really good story about why that wasn't that great at a race i did in brazil but um you get to start first um before age group athletes go because it then provides a clean race um more clean race for the professionals and you get kind of you know better bike racking positions as well a little bit of perks like that i mean as far as the i mean obviously the training kind of has to you know you have to up your game a bit more um to compete in that professional category because you're competing against other professionals and so there was quite a steep learning curve um because most people kind of go from you know if they've been really very good age group athletes so they're used to winning races all the time or they're used to being way out in front whatever it might be to now all of a sudden whoa i am now kind of swarmed by other ladies or guys who are just as good as i am if not better and so it's it's kind of a gut check um as you kind of get sort of turned around a little bit on how you have to you know sort of look at yourself and where you're at and and your place within the professional field so there is a very steep learning curve with that and i guess the the picture that i'm trying to paint here is that it provides a structure for professionals to compete against other professionals and in the sport of triathlon where you're balancing three we're balancing three sports and you got to compete for space on the bike rack and people are swimming and cycling all over each other on closed courses and things

like that that's a necessary component to have a professionalism cat or professional category or professionalism defined within within that particular within that particular sport and triathletes kind of like almost i don't know if they take it for granted but they don't realize that that kind of formalized structure may not exist out kind of outside of their sport so to to to play off of that a little bit can can you take everybody through some of like the highlights or try to like try to explain like how how good were you as a legit in your words professional triathlete like what kinds of races were you do how are you placing the races and stuff like that yeah i mean it still took quite a while um to once i turned professional to where i kind of started landing on some podiums at least those coming top three um there was a good couple years there where you know you kind of struggle along maybe you know placing in the top 10 and kind of get your feet wet and get you know more experience in what it's like racing and with the other pros um but i would i always tended to do the more technically difficult races so i like i was a very bad swimmer um in terms of racing against other professionals not the greatest swimmer and i struggled with that still due to this day of trying to get my swim up to where it needs to be and it never quite got to that point of where it really needed to be so i was always giving up a lot of time in the swim to get onto the bike and then the run i was always a much

better runner than anything else so i would just choose my courses wisely i guess um so choose the hillier bike courses um run course yeah if it's hilly or if it gets really hot on the run even better because i live in arizona so i got very good at choosing the right courses that suited me and my strengths better so if it was a wetsuit legal swim meaning the water was cold enough to allow that um to legally race in a wetsuit i'm there so those are the races i chose so there's some pretty iconic races that i did in europe um over the years um several of them in france and in switzerland and germany again because they have some pretty legit um hard hilly mountainous bike courses and runs um and then i started my first podium that i landed on was a race in um ironman los cabos and that was in 2000 and i think it was 14 or 15 and that was the first podium i landed on after many many years of work um to get there and i just kind of thought i finally have kind of cracked this and from there it was you know multiple podiums um and actually did not even peg my first win in a long distance race until 2017 so many second places a lot of third places never quite able to crack that to that top step um and then finally hit it in 2017 um which ironically enough was about the 10 year mark of me you know training for triathlon specifically which i've always heard that it's about 10 years or 10 000 hours of training

before you can really master it and um i thought well that's odd because that's about what it took um to get there so yeah then from 2017 um until i've kind of finished in 2020 managed to uh rack up six wins um on the ironman circuit so i was more more of a long distance um triathlete so there's a lot of variation in the distances you've got sprint triathlons which might take people around maybe an hour to complete up to what i did was the ironman or the iron distance races which you're looking at a nine hour event um plus depending on the course so that's where i was where my bread and butter was mainly because i had a long enough run um as part of the race to make up for my really poor swim so i love the honesty okay this is this is perfect and i want the i want the listeners to understand you're you're you're being very humble in this you were a very good triathlete you weren't just a legit yeah you weren't just a legit professional or a professional like you were a good triathlete any any triathlete who's getting to the podium or winning in any of the ironman races they're good they're great athletes they're at the top of their field they're within the top one percent of you know everybody competing and i don't think i think that that's really important in the context of this of this whole story that it's not just you're you know with all due respect you're just some triathlon schmuck you know coming over to ultra running and trying to you know like

take over the world or whatever like you're a good legitimate experienced also to your tenure point athlete that decided to to to to take a crack at trail running yeah um okay so now that we've got the now that we've got the career kind of painted sufficiently enough for everybody to understand where you're coming from let's kind of get to the meat and potatoes of it so we're going to talk about uh a doping sanction that you had stemming from a race and before that before we get into this i just want to let you know that i appreciate you coming on a tremendous amount i've you know i i've been involved in elite athlete elite athletics for almost 20 years now and this is a when athletes have sanctions it is a really difficult thing to help them work through and they have sanctions at all different levels and all different sports and all different circumstances and it's it's difficult for athletes to like come come up front and like actually kind of expose themselves and talk about the whole thing because they want irrespective of how wrong they were and we'll talk about some of that in a little bit they just want to they just want it to go away you know yeah and some athletes have legitimately made mistakes and said hey listen i made a mistake i did this this is wrong some of them ended up coming afoul of the rules through no you know ill intent of their own and a whole host of things in between but irrespective of any of those situations i've always appreciated the athletes that kind of raise their hand and say listen i want everybody to learn from this

i'm going to go out and use a platform and do it because that's hard that's difficult so i appreciate you coming on i'd realize it's not the most um i realize it's not the most uh uh funny topics not as fun as star wars talk about right but it's a good one i think that the the audience will definitely learn a lot from it and just to let the listeners know you know i've let i've let lisa know that i'm going to give her a fair platform and the the listeners of this podcast will realize that i call a spade a spade and i'm not afraid to say hey listen you need to think about this like this i don't give people free passes or anything like that and i'm going to treat you the same way and you agreed to and you agreed to that that dialogue and and once again that's part of the reason i appreciate it so let's go to roth germany because this is the kind of the epicenter this is the epicenter of this of this whole sanctioning thing before we get there though where was this in your career let's kind of time stamp this a little bit you mentioned you've been a triathlete since you know the kind of early to mid 2000s took you 10 years to get a win where was this particular race in that whole career arc yeah this was kind of well sort of toward the end so we were in 2017 for that race i was i had like i had gotten on my first podium in 2014 or 15 so i was really kind of picking up steam and kind of getting the hang of what i was doing here and really hitting my stride on on how i was racing and what i was doing so um you know kind of toward a little bit toward the end but

i mean timeline wise as well my age i think also played into it that i was sort of uh that mid to late 30s age group which for women um in endurance sports especially even in triathlon that's a pretty um sweet spot right there for for a lot of reasons women are you know pretty dang strong in these endurance events and as well as sort of the whole sort of build up to it as well so it takes a lot of that training to finally get to that point as well so a lot of things were converging that point yes but you'd been good by then right i mean you'd seen podiums you'd seen success yeah you weren't you didn't like all of a sudden lift off like a rocket ship into the atmosphere and find yourself at the top of the sport i mean you you had to kind of yeah well everybody wishes that but that never happens in endurance sports you had to kind of grind your way along and as you mentioned this might have been you know if we're drawing kind of the arc of your career maybe just over the very top of it and kind of like towards i always hate to say twilight but you definitely weren't at the apex right i mean it's past the apex it's fair yeah exactly to the point where because i had several other women friends of mine who were competitors who were also kind of similar athletes to me like bad swimmers you know pretty decent cyclists and could run really well and a few of them had they had just recently retired maybe if it wasn't that year maybe the year before so there were a few of us who were already kind of like okay i've had my shot i probably need i probably need to kind of reassess what i need to do but i kind of i stuck in there for whatever reason i stuck in there and started

pegging a few races and i remember kind of even responding back to them going like oh man you guys you just stick with it a little bit longer maybe you could have so so i'm like i'm doing this for you now and so so yeah so it was i would say that's it that's a totally accurate way to paint it is sort of i'd hit the peak a bit maybe starting to come down a little bit yeah i wouldn't have said that to you at the time but now with a little bit of hindsight i don't feel bad okay so i know there's a little bit of backstory before roth so you can go as far back as you want to lisa this is your story i'm going to turn the floor over to you go okay yeah so i'll build up and into roth it wasn't too far behind um when i went to go race in roth it was actually earlier that year um where i had well actually even just a little bit before that i'll go um late the previous year um i actually suffered the one and only major injury that i had racing as a triathlete and i got a stress fracture in my fourth metatarsal and so i had a broken foot um sort of october november time frame and um was dealing with that and healing that up at the same time i had also switched to a to a new coach as well arguably probably the most the hardest coach out there um um brett sutton and actually teaming up along with mary beth ellis who um was retired professional triathlete and um called the honey badger so because honey badger gives no shits and those those are my coaches now so and even that that um sort of step that i took was uh it took me a long time to make that step because i know what i was

getting into and i but i was ready to make that take that step to really dig into some really hard training and give this last few years everything i had so i was willing to just do whatever they told me to do in training to make myself as best as i possibly could before i thought basically i'm too old to kind of continue on doing this so that was kind of the the mindset that i was in and what i was dealing with with the broken foot which i'd never deal dealt with anything like that before um which was really disappointing for me because i was feeling probably in the best shape that i ever had um going into that stress fracture um i had qualified i ended up qualifying twice for the world ironman world championships in kona as both times as a professional um and went into that race in 2016 october 2016 in what i would say it was the best shape of my life um by far and got sick a few days before the race so i had a pretty subpar race um which really kind of set me back a bit but i kind of resurgent again um with this new coach and now with a broken foot but um so with that new coach he's based in in europe so as i kind of turned into the beginning part of 2017 planning a summer long uh trip to train with him and the rest of the team um in switzerland and had lined up a number of races to do while i was in europe um training with them and one of them being the challenge roth race in germany in july and what what type of what type of triathlon is that since people aren't going to be familiar oh that one's

also a long distance triathlon so it was a 2.4 mile swim 112 mile bike and then the marathon to finish it off for the day so and it's it's an absolutely epic race i would say even on the level of like kona like sort of popularity and eyeballs on that race it's a big race um and actually wasn't even really one that i had i it was sort of on the list to do just because it was such an epic race to to actually to kind of a bucket list race to do but with the broken foot i wasn't quite sure exactly what i was going to get to do that summer so we had some tentative plans so um in the prep to head to europe for for three months um to train and race um you know getting everything lined up and ready to go um in tucson before i need to leave one of which was to check back in with uh my asthma doctor because i was diagnosed with asthma actually back in 2013 um after a very bad experience that i had um well it was there was a lot leading up to that that i just sort of shook off as maybe um allergies that i was having as far as the symptoms were but i was complaining to my coach at the time that i was having troubles breathing and and um you know kind of having mild panic attacks with um some of the harder training that i was doing and it kind of culminated i sort of brushed it off brushed it off and it culminated with um a major panic attack to the point where i thought i was going to drown in a swim that i did in in saint george utah as part of a half iron distance race where i started off

swimming water was kind of cold had a major attack um had to stop and hold on to like one of the pontoons or the buoys and regroup and then just kind of you know muddle my way through the rest of the swim so that was the catalyst for me to then go maybe get checked to see something's not right here um and then was diagnosed at that point with um asthma not only just exercise induced asthma but just i guess you'd call it sort of everyday asthma i don't know it was a it was an everyday thing so um that was pretty surprising to me and at that point started on um i had a rescue inhaler for to stave off any particularly in cold situations cold water cold air situations um to do that if i was um getting into an attack and um also had um an everyday inhaler um that i would have to do use twice a day and so i was going along with that for a couple of years and you know that seemed to to kind of help a little bit with the you know attacks and and keeping things a little bit more moderated um for myself um and then so then before i was getting ready to head over to europe that summer i checked it back in with my asthma doc because i was still not quite didn't feel like it was totally meeting my needs and i had a lot of you know this is probably gonna be gross maybe too much detail but like a lot of phlegm issues that i was having you got an ultra inner crowd phlegm is like one of the least benign things you can talk about especially on this podcast so okay because there was a really gross phlegm stuff that was going on i thought this can't be right and i thought it was

maybe from the inhalers that i was using because it was that sort of the everyday one um that i was using was um like a powder inhaler so it was a twist inhaler and i had like a little powder i just thought what about this like inhaling some sort of fine micro powder into your lungs for asthmatics makes sense i just never really quite got that and so i thought you know before i go to europe for the summer and and do this training so i want to check in see if there's maybe some different options that might help with this phlegm issue and so um that was my meeting with my um asthma doc and to where we then made a switch to a different um inhaler twist inhaler was a you know another one of the the powder ones unfortunately um but um so we switched to this different inhaler that was called brio and it was a fairly new inhaler um on the market at the time and it was um a bit of a game changer one because it was one of the first ones that came out where you only had to do it uh uh inhale it once a day which for me as a long distance athlete that does multiple trainings in a day has races that are nine plus hours to not have to carry around another inhaler and remember to take it you know halfway through the day or halfway through the event to save things off was was huge um so we decided to switch to that particular um inhaler um being that it was um my perception kind of part of the um you know same family of inhalers um just a different brand of inhaler um and moved on um from

that point you know got the prescription um was more focused i think on getting the prescription and making sure i had it enough for while i was gone for three months because i can't refill prescription while i'm in europe and kind of went on on my way um i'll also add to this um part of the story is that um i at that point in time had also been part of um usada's uh or iron man's registered testing pool um which basically puts on puts on to me as an athlete to provide 24 7 whereabouts um to usada so they have an app for that where i have to tell them where i'm going to be every day um and then also in addition give them a one hour window where they know that they can find me at home um to test um at any point in time were you ever subject to that to the random testing yes yep yeah so um and i can't remember the actual year that i got on um to that testing pool i think it was 2014 but don't hold me to that okay um but but at some point this is important so at some point you're in the testing pool right and you're in the whereabouts program concurrently with your previous asthma medication yes okay yeah and um what with that because um so it was definitely around about that same time i was diagnosed with asthma because i distinctly remember that when i was diagnosed i um got from my doctor all the um documentation for that to apply for a therapeutic use exemption

which people just call it tu e um and i sent that into usada um just because i thought well asthma you know inhaler i just thought send it over and so i sent it over all that you know the spirometry tests everything that came from my doctor that basically said you know i am asthmatic and this is you know what i need to take for it and um got back from usada that um what i was using and that particular doses didn't require a tu e and so but i kept doing that every year um for several years just checking to make sure um i know because i know they update their rules every year that we have were required to you know read those rules because you know medications and and and um you know uh substances and even methods um you know kind of change over the years so uh what may be you know regarded as prohibited one year might not be the next year um and vice versa so um so yeah so as part of that registered testing pool we go through kind of an education um portion um as to you know what's you know allowed and not allowed um and we have to provide these whereabouts um to usada so yes i was i'm subject to random testing um any point in time um and um had that happen on multiple occasions while i was at home or otherwise okay so you you had a previous prescription for inhaler of which you declared a tu e for usada and they said you don't need it yep you decided to change through the advice of your doctors through your physician through a process hey this one's going to be better than this

one people change medications for things kind of all the time the new one is brio yeah i think that's that's important for everybody to remember so now take us to the the relocation and then racing and roth yeah yeah so i got the brio inhaler um and then you know went on to to europe to do my racing and then um jumped into the challenge roth race and uh up to that point hadn't had any out of competition tests um despite the fact of you know providing whereabouts and making myself available to that um so my first test after that switch was um after i finished the race at challenge roth in which i got third place um so they have obviously for top three they have testing and then i think it's usually like maybe a random you know chosen one um who also finishes so when you get tested in in competition actually even out of competition there's a process that you go through whereby you um you declare everything that you have taken i think it's within 24 hours it might be 48 hours they say i think it is it's technically 24 but they tell you maybe just write down everything you've taken within the last 48 you know just in case so i go through and hold on the reason let me step in here really quick the reason for that is that there are there are substances that are prohibited in competition and substances that are prohibited out of competition and in competition has a specific window associated with it and it can be different per sports in some sports it's like up to six hours

after the competition or something like that but the reason that that that the time like because everybody's going to why why do they why don't they give you a specific timeline for it the reason they don't give you a specific timeline for it is because of this in competition and out out of competition uh designation and that some every once in a while there are sub substances that cross the barrier from being legal out of competition to illegal or illegal within a certain threshold within the competition they're just trying to cover all their bases essentially to have a story to paint for if they have to go back and check something so that that's why that's important yeah yeah so you go through and you list i mean i you just list everything so i list every multivitamin that i've taken everything you know how many of them i mean usually it's just they just say you know put you know if you took one multivitamin pill you don't necessarily have to have at the top because you've literally just finished you know an ironman distance race and you have to kind of pull all this stuff from your memory and make sure you get it all down so everything that i've put down um every any supplement that i've taken um i will put down everything that i've taken as far as the types of gels that i've eaten or um drink mixes or even anything that i took on course um because there have been history of things like that as well um being issues so everything i can possibly think of um you write down this list um obviously including um the brio inhaler and if i did have to take my rescue inhaler for some reason i would list that as well and how many puffs that you would take of that

so you list out you declare everything that you've taken and then you go in and it's what you know it might be a urine test it might be a blood test um it does require somebody that has to well the immediate the instant that you cross the finish line you have your representative comes up to you and says you know what you you got to do your drug test that person cannot let you out of their sight until you do the drug test so they're following you around while you're talking to people or getting pictures taken or doing interviews or anything with their little clipboard um until you go in you write down all your stuff and then you're kind of within the realm of the usada testing person um to the point where they then the person also comes into the bathroom with you um if it is a urine test and they watch you pee in the cup um so they have to come on in and and uh there you go so you provide your sample and then you know you're pretty much done um with that and so i did you know my testing um did the race you know you go on and it's usually by the time they get through all the testing and stuff um because usually it coordinates with whenever you get your paycheck um for the race um because they have to go through all the testing before they actually cut checks to people um for obvious reasons so um that is kind of my lead up into doing the race and my test at roth um i then got a call from usada about i would say i think it was maybe about two months later or so i'd already been back in in the united states so yeah two maybe two and a half months later um notifying me that there

was an adverse finding um from my stamp my urine sample um at challenge roth and so in that time frame even from challenge roth until i got home i had done you know a couple other races as well so um with you know i don't know if i was tested i actually was tested at one of the other ones too but never got any call back for an adverse finding which is kind of interesting because i pretty much did the exact same thing that i always do yeah so um yeah so they told me there's an adverse finding i proceed to absolutely panic because i have no idea what it could possibly be they at that point mentioned that um it was for volantarol was a prohibited substance that showed up on my urine sample and they said it's pretty we're pretty sure it's gonna it's from the brio inhaler that you declared on your drug test whenever you got tested at challenge roth in germany to which i kind of panicked at that point and realized oh my god i did not submit my medical documentation to usada when we switched to this inhaler and that was a royal mistake that i had made um and so i panic thinking okay they said um at that point they said look just can you get us the medical documentation um for you know that switch to brio and we'll get that in the system and you know process it to get you a therapeutic use exemption to use it and brio again at that point in time being a fairly new inhaler on the market um was one of those where you couldn't just sort of rock up and be that that would be the

first inhaler that usada would let you use because it was they needed to see kind of a history of being asthmatic and trying other inhalers um before they would let um basically allow that and so because i had that history um i think that's i think that's why you know the tui was approved a week after i got the initial call from usada so the very same day when they called to tell me the adverse finding i submitted all the appropriate documentation that i should have um submitted back before i even left to go to europe to race okay so let's pause a little bit i know this is kind of like peeling off all the wounds here so i'll give you a little bit of break let me encapsulate this for a second so you're in your professional triathlete triathlon career you've been a part of uh dope anti-doping control at various formats race formats whereabouts formats random testing and things like that you're used to the running show you've declared to you ease before therapeutic use exemptions before you switch up coaches you switch up uh medications you fly abroad to a race you forget to declare a therapeutic use exemption for a new medication you're you're taking and you get an adverse finding for a metabolite of that i think that's the correct way to to uh to describe it i think dr federic who will have on the podcast uh in a little bit uh might uh he he might uh he uh he might correct my vocabulary on that but it's metabolite of the inhaler uh that you took you then went back to usada and said hey listen i declared

this as a medication that i was taking at the end of the race when they were testing me but i failed to declare it as a tui beforehand it's all that timeline correct yes that is absolutely correct yes so at that point in time once you go through the whole paperwork and the whole adjudication process with usada which we might have to gloss over parts of that because i know how painstaking in detail i mean that's that like i think that's that's too much detail for this podcast yeah what did you saw to decide to do with you like you've got a really interesting use case but not unique right what so what did they do yeah so um we they told me that finding and then i asked them at that point if i had the ability to get what's called a retroactive tui because once they were saying you know we will we will definitely have to disqualify you from your race at roth because that's the competition where you tested and we found this prohibited substance um so i knew that that was happening and i asked to get a retroactive tui if that was possible um which i did try to do and they did not allow that which is kind of an interesting thing because and i get it um that the retroactive tui process is not for some idiot who forgot to submit their tui documentation it's for like an emergency situation where if somebody had to get like an emergency iv for something or whatever that you know exceeds

sort of the limit or whatever it is that's what that's for although i did try to get a retroactive tui and was not allowed to do that so they i you know continuing to talk through them they have some athlete ombudsman's as part of usada um so they put me in touch with some of them to to kind of talk some of this through you know a few of the options and and you know what to expect from usada as far as you know what sanction comes down from them and so my whole thing throughout the whole process was just obviously be as compliant and as quick with whatever they asked me to give them i gave them as soon as humanly possible and so um it came down through a process of that over a couple of weeks where they decided that my particular sanction um for this rule violation was to get a public warning um so there was no um they decided to have no racing ban um placed on me so i didn't was never not allowed to race i was basically um i don't want to yeah slap on the wrist i guess some people would call it um you got admonished i mean you got admonished they said bad lisa i mean that's sorry i didn't want to step on it but when i read the when i read it which i'll put a link in the show notes to the actual rule violation anybody can go look it up that's what i that's what i'm like oh she just got admonished yeah yeah yeah so they just make this publicly aware that this happened um and then because the test was taken and they found it at that competition i was disqualified from that

competition um which i mean for what it's worth cost that cost me about 15 grand um that i lost there and um again throughout the whole process because this is part of it as well is that you're trying to think oh do i need should i seek some legal um advice on this and get lawyers involved and i mean let's face it triathlon is not i'm not making a lot of money doing this um at all i mean it's very much you do it for the for the love of the sport really and if i can just limit my losses while i'm doing this as well as having some fun and learning about myself you know that's that's all that's all good so we literally just kind of came down my husband and i you know decided it's probably not worth it money-wise to really pursue this legally i mean i'm i'm basically i have admitted and said yeah i this is what i took um this is why and so i didn't really have you know much to stand on there to argue so we just figured okay the public warning you know we'll take that and you know kind of move on from that just disqualified from that one race you get the public warning continue on your way lisa and that was about what it came down to okay i'm going to pause here again and just for clarifications for the listeners the the entirety of this press release because people don't realize this as well you saw the issues basically a press release anytime there's any adverse finding after all is said and done after they've gone through everything they they release this and some of them get buried on the back page of the news and some of them end up making big news depending upon

how big the athlete or how high profile the case is yeah um so there's a there's like a public record of this for for everybody for forever as long as you saw decides to put it up there but i want to read two paragraphs in particular if that's okay with you lisa sure yep i think this really points to the to the the sanctioning component of this whole ordeal which is very important so i'm going to skip the first couple paragraphs which is just boilerplate legalese yeah here here's here's the here here's the crux of the uh of the sanctioning piece after in usada says after a thorough review of the case including the examination of medical records provided by the athlete which is you lisa you saw to determine that robert's positive test was caused by the prescribed inhaler that she declared and was using in a therapeutic dose under the care of a physician although the substance was taken at the direction of a physician the world anti-doping code requires athletes to obtain a therapeutic use exemption or tui before using a prohibitive substance roberts has since obtained a tui for the use of the inhaler in addition to a public warning roberts has been disqualified from all competitive results obtained at the raw challenge roth including forfeiture of any medals points or prizes it makes it seems like there was like 10 events during roth there's one triathlon one race one race okay i just wanted to clarify that too because it just it reads plural but it really was yeah it does okay so that's the gist of the sanction and i think like colloquially we was you can use slap on the wrist but basically they said hey listen you you were a foul of the

rules you were a foul of the rules from a technical error you weren't trying to do this to cheat and you saw it as mind right so what so after this what happens next from you is it for from you as an athlete like you had this happen did you what did your sponsor say how did you like handle your racing career and stuff like that yeah i mean it was obviously for obvious reasons a huge hit to me emotionally mentally you know even physically to a certain point because i consider myself a completely fair athlete and person in general um and so and given this kind of the state of just you know now anyway anything that's public um you get onto social media kind of things that to me is almost might be even as worse as or worse than um you know other things that could possibly happen so you know understanding the severity of that just from the social media and perception standpoint um was really very difficult for me um not that i necessarily feel like i want to have everybody like me but it's just sort of i didn't think that that portrayed me as who i really am because i know some people read into these things and are very sort of black and white with them and i thought i'm going to get painted into some sort of picture into some sort of corner by some people um but basically kind of had to focus away from that and just realize you know i am who i am so there was a long period of of that and also again getting a little bit older in the sport going you know what do i want to deal with this should i just retire now and just be done but i still just had this you know desire and love

to continue to race i thought man i still have i still have some gas in the tank here and i want to try this out so it was very conflicted there for a while and still had a few other races that i was doing that year too so there was there was that perception of you know what are people how are people going to treat me at races i was i will say that one of the races that i did i was because i despite trying not to read social media um things about the the thing i did anyway um which i shouldn't have done so i knew there were a few other athletes out there that um were kind of bad mouthing me in this whole process that were going to be at one of the races that i was getting ready to do and i was so terrified that they were going to mess with my equipment somehow or do something to sabotage my race that the day before the race when you had to rack your bikes and put all your stuff basically out to sit out all night um i sat outside the transition area where i racked my bike um and just sat there on the curb until the transition area closed watching my bike to make sure nobody touched it um before the race um so i was very paranoid um and my sponsors that i had um my current sponsors that i had at that point in time i had to before even the public warning came out i was given plenty of time to give all of my supporters and sponsors um some some notice of this obviously so they knew what was going on they knew when it was coming out and to a certain extent knew what it was going to say at least in general so i was basically making

everybody aware that you know was hugely important to this um aware what was going to happen so there was no surprises there um they all my current sponsors continued to support me um you know it may continue to sponsor me even as well because i'd been with most of them for many years and so they they knew they could see it for what it was and continue to support me which was great um on the other hand i was because i was you know doing a bit better um and you know winning a few more races i was in negotiations with some newer sponsors for the upcoming year and i did lose all of those um i basically kind of got the standard you know we can't with this out there i get it you know you can't you're sitting around a table figuring out which athletes you're going to pick up for the next year and you got one of them that has this recent public warning that's a hard sell to support that person so while it was disappointing um it was still you know very upsetting to me that i was kind of reaching this thing that i'd worked so hard for for all these years and kind of seeing it crumble in front of me um so it was a very difficult time okay so here here's where the conversation is going to get a little bit tough and i'm going to play the role of all of the skeptical really hard eye rolls that are going on the audience right now who's listening to this they're listening to this story and they're saying to themselves i have heard this a thousand times i've heard of athletes that get popped for something that run afoul of some sort of anti-doping control they claim that they were

taking some medication all along and then they get a slap on the wrist at the end of the day and it looks like there's some sort of appearance of you know that they're that they're that they're that they're doing something wrong and very unfortunately so if you look at the land if you kind of look at the competitive landscape of everything both the athletes that are cheating and the athletes that are not cheating and just run afoul of the rules they use the exact same excuses and that's really tragic i think that that is really really really tragic but they all use the well i've never tested positive excuse right yeah um and so on and so forth but but but in your case once again this is this is something that produces like it produces a pause from people that are looking at it from the outside in because they've heard and they've seen these stories before of athletes that run afoul and they kind of weasel their way out of whatever sanction via any means necessary and one of those loopholes and it has criticism for good reason is the tui loophole so what i mean what is your what kind of what's your reaction to that because you've lived through it right what's your reaction to kind of that collective sense that ah she's just telling us the same story that everybody else has told us yeah i mean that's a hard one because in in some ways i can i see that point of view i mean i can see where there's a black and white point of view um of you know tui you know regardless if it's allowed by usada or wada you know still shouldn't be allowed if you're going to

kind of compete in a professional sense and so i understand that view um however you know given my personal experience with trying to solve an issue that i have um medically i was just trying to do the best that i could um with what i had at that point in time i would say if there's anything for my specific case i guess um if there's anything that may sort of clear that out a bit is the fact that um as of this year or yes as of this year 2021 um brio the medit the asthma inhaler that i was taking i'm not even taking it anymore actually um but um is no longer on that list um to have to get that requires a tui as long as you're taking it in a therapeutic dose um so i don't know if that you know helps to clear it um for people in that i don't know i mean there's there's always going to be science is always kind of catching up i think in a lot of these um situations like i said it was a new inhaler on the market probably hadn't gone through or had a chance to go through whatever testing that usada needs to do i don't know how they come up with these determinations as to what's on the list or what's not that requires a tui but if that makes people feel any better that that that exact same inhaler no longer requires a tui um i hope that does it well you and i we're not going to solve the tui thing here we're not domain experts on it i'm going to bring

on a domain expert probably two to talk about this and in other podcasts that's definitely one element of it but there's this other there's this other element of it and i as a coach of of professional trail runners or elite trail runners however we're going to call them today i'm very well aware of this because i've had to you know counsel my athletes on this and this is your professional and you were a legitimate good professional and had been a legitimate good professional for a long time you should know better right and so yeah to me putting my skeptical competition hat on again i've got an athlete that's been through the system that should know better that's applied for tui's before and for whatever reason she didn't do this one that just doesn't sit right with yeah that skepticism so you can you can you can respond to that and i think that's reasonable yeah so i mean it's the only i mean i i asked myself to this day i still ask myself that question why it's a very simple process you can go to global dro.com yeah and type in anything that you want to take now supplements not included because they don't cover the whole supplement industry that's a whole other ball of wax so any kind of you know prescribed drug or anything that you can type in to global dro to see if it requires a tui if it's prohibited in or out of competition very simple 30 seconds of me standing there in that doctor's office with him typing it in none we're not having this conversation because i would have submitted my paperwork and none of this would happen i still would have had a tui

to use that particular inhaler uh i probably still would have taken it because of its ability to only have to take it once a day which was very important to me it eliminated pretty much eliminated my use of having to take the rescue inhaler which was also very important to me you saw it would have still had to approve it though that's important yes it's not like they just like pencil whip it or whatever they still gotta look correct um i don't know why i didn't decide that the only thing that i can the only thing that i can give you i don't have a good excuse for it i can i can explain to you kind of the build up to it as to why i was so absent-minded to it and from that i have learned to not take on so many things at once not get so overwhelmed with trying to figure out you know what i need to have packed and what i need to have ready to go to go spend three months away from home to train for a very you know difficult sport that requires a lot of equipment and gear and setup and everything and i just think that i was distracted and not thinking correctly at that point in time i was trying to check a thing a box off the list yes got my asthma medication sorted out got the prescription figured out so i could have three months of it while i was away done let's move on to the next thing and that's that's the only thing that i can come up with as to why it is such a simple thing that i could have done and i didn't do and i just hope that people can relate to that on whatever level

professional i mean if there's anybody out there who hasn't made a mistake at work that has made their boss upset that has cost the company money or themselves money then go ahead and and they can throw that stone and that's totally fine but i have a feeling that most of us have had things like that happen and that was my one time that it happened and unfortunately it's um haunted me ever since well i i appreciate the honesty first off i know that's not an easy question there's a lot of people that are asking that and when i read stories like this which i do quite frequently people send them to me and i come across them in various formats that's one of the first things i think that professional athlete professional athletes should know better and especially coming from my perspective where you mentioned the global dro i'll have a link to that in the show notes as well and you are right it is really easy they've done a fantastic job of designing that where it takes you maybe not even 30 seconds maybe 15 seconds to type in this is the sport this is what i'm taking boom you've got your results right there it takes a little bit of interpretation around the medical you know jargon and things like that but that's neither neither here nor there but the point is is as a professional a card carrying professional it's not that big of a leap of effort to do that correct and it's something it's definitely something as you've admitted as you should have as you should have done but i can also appreciate the fact that you're relating it to your work and everybody's had a bad day at work and i've you know worked with professional athletes that have a bad day at the office they have bad

workouts they have other bad aspects of their professional lives this one had high consequences yes and you know you take i'm sure i'm sure you you would take you would take it back if you could but you can't but i do think that as we're talking about solutions which is what we're what i ultimately want to get to uh after the series of this podcast as we talk about solutions it's important to keep in mind that many of the professional trail runners in this ultra and ultra space are just that they're professionals in that vocation right trail running and ultra running is their vocation it's what they do for a living it's what they do every spare moment of their day and things like that and they're going to make mistakes kind of along the way and it's important when you're coming up with solutions and rules framework to keep that context in mind that p that you're dealing with people and it's people's professions that you're dealing with and those people are not infallible at the end of the day they're going to they're going to make mistakes from time to time and the rules need to be constructed in such a way to accommodate for all of all of those different levels of humanity that's the end of the solo for right now but i think it was an important important part of it so let's let's jump forward to the trail and ultra running the trail and ultra running specific part of it which is this is what the audience is going to be the most interested in so you've gone through your card carrying professional member of your triathlon career you've run afoul of the rules you got a sanction from usada you're

still allowed to compete in the sport you had to relinquish those that specific race result as well as all the earnings from that race your sponsor stuck with you the whole time you then get the trail running bug like a lot of professional endurance athletes should because it's such a cool sport so take us into that and then we'll lead into black canyons after that yeah yeah so it was always in the back of my mind to switch over to ultra running and trail running in particular after i was finished with triathlon again coming from a running background i've been a runner pretty much my entire life i was definitely known as being a runner in triathlon and having kind of all the endurance background and work up to that point i thought this would be a really great and fun switch for me once i'm finished racing professionally as a triathlete um i also liked the idea of it because to me it seemed a bit more triathlon professional triathlon can be very high stress um and it is and it's getting more and more high stress the athletes in the athletes in the sport perpetuate that the athletes in the sport definitely perpetuate that you know it's true yes i do know it's true yes it's very type a kind of sport there's a lot of equipment and gear and things that can go so you have to be very anal about that stuff so um it to me just kind of being able to still compete as sort of as an endurance athlete um get out into nature a little bit more and maybe let's like let's step it down a few notches from the high stress of triathlon was very appealing to me and wait wait you're telling me you're not racing with baby yoda on your back on in your triathlon days it's not part

of the aerodynamics of your aero helmet and everything actually be a pretty good foil yeah it probably would yeah it probably would run afoul of one of the rules actually now that i'm thinking about it probably it'd be some sort of uniform rule or something and it could potentially run afoul from so yeah actually that is a little part of it was like this is so far outside of triathlon that this is great you know um so yeah so i was looking to do that switch and i was looking at 2020 being my last um full season of racing as a professional triathlete so i was lining up kind of the last few kind of either bucket list races that i wanted to do or in particular actually ones that i was going to do that were closer to where i grew up in illinois so that some of my family members who really had never been able to even see me race because i was busy doing races kind of around the world um hadn't had a chance to actually see me race a triathlon so i was trying to kind of check off these boxes um so that they could have that experience so i could have that experience and just basically kind of make 2020 this this last sort of really fun blowout year in triathlon and then go cool you know i'll switch on over after that and um i did actually um despite um having really no races in north america for 2020 um i had um with my husband had gone to new zealand earlier well actually at the end of 2019 and then into 2020 um i was planning i had three triathlon races i was going to do there and and then we were also doing a relay race um it was my first kind of a multi-sport adventure off-road running race um so it was sort of my dabble where i started to dabble

into trail running um which was called coast to coast in new zealand and um so i went managed to go we did that we came back um to the states in march um and so i'd gotten three triathlon races in um got the multi-sport race in and then that's when everything kind of shut down in the states obviously so no races happening on the triathlon front and so i mean kind of seeing that obviously i mean i wasn't quite sure how long the whole thing was going to last but just decided i mean literally i think maybe the within a week of the first races being canceled for triathlon um decided i'm gonna pivot right now and i did like that very next day i decided i'm gonna do the four by four by 48 goggins challenge something else i can blame david for oh that's so great lisa i had no idea so i just went off the rails and went yep here we go so i did that and um had some fun doing that yeah this is a totally different challenge and just decided i was gonna pivot i mean my you know i still had my same coach at the time and they kind of gave me sort of my next sort of you know wave of training i looked at it and literally had zero desire to do it i had zero desire to go and on the bike or you know swimming pools were already closing and i just went you know what i'm not in for doing this and i just said you know what guys that's it i think i'm done i'm i'm moving to ultra running and

trail running and you know they said are you sure about this are you sure i was like yep i'm i'm so ready and that was it i pivoted hard um after races started shutting down so from about maybe like end of march or beginning of april um just got back into doing some running and started hitting trails um in tucson and it was great it was it was the perfect sort of pivot from that high stress environment it was a perfect pivot from all the uncertainty that was going on with covid and it was the greatest thing ever um for me i think just you know kind of mentally and even physically to kind of get back into just the running scene um and so got into doing um lucky to live in arizona where we've got air viper running who has enough of their shit straight and together they are actually to pull off a number of races you know kind of in the you know late summer and fall um in arizona so that gave me an opportunity actually to i mean still because i still have you know my sponsors that i had already signed on for that year and so i that was actually part of it too i was trying to find some sort of outlet to provide them as much exposure as i could um during this time where we didn't have any triathlon races so it was kind of a you know double thing that i was getting out of it um mentally it was great for me and it was also giving them enough exposure or at least some exposure for that year so um jumped into doing my first um ultra race was the 54k big pine ultra um up in flagstaff so that was i think they eventually got that one off they had to reschedule it a couple times but it

was i think september was the first one that i did so um did that one and then um i met a few people i had a great time at that because it's just so different than any of the triathlon stuff that i'd ever done didn't look at pace anymore didn't actually my whole race strategy and that was that especially being at flagstaff at altitude was that i don't want to ever feel like i'm going you know kind of in that red zone at all like i want to be able to talk to people the whole time i had baby yoda baby yoda came with me on that first race made some friends that way and um i thought this is great this is a great approach to like i just want to kind of chill and have some fun and run a long time and so that was a great event um that i did and was asked immediately after that oh are you doing this as training for the javelin 100k and i said you're absolutely nuts i'm not ready to run 100k you know maybe eventually i'll get to that um and and and we'll see so no i'm not doing javelin 100 what are you nuts and then of course that little that planted a little seed in my head about 100k let's see um hey i've got you know about six weeks or so to get ready for it if i want to do it yep within a week i signed up to do havelin 100k so i'm pretty much in at this point because we're going full in and you know this is without ever having run anything over a marathon i mean i thought the only thing that um i thought was at least reasonable was i thought okay 100k i looked at kind of what some of the women's records were i'm like okay it's all around nine

hours or so that's in my wheelhouse because all my ironman races were nine hours i thought okay aerobically i can probably do this i go my legs might have something else to say about that being on my feet for that long but um let's see what we can do for that and so there came my second ultra race was 100 100 kilometer at javelin 100 um and so so that was it i was in from that from that point forward that's an easy that's an easy race to uh become uh to to become indoctrinated into the sport of ultra running because it's so fun it's just such a fun race they do a great job great atmosphere shout out to jamil and jubilee who do just a just a really really great job it's one of my favorite races to go to every year yeah yeah and so yeah from there just kind of then i'm starting to get into a little bit more looking at some of the other races that are out there as as options and you know like you know things like UTMB some of these sort of like qualifying kind of races started to creep into my mind because people started asking me oh are you gonna you're figuring out the landscape you're figuring out the landscape yeah yeah yeah yeah so um the next thing that crept in was you know the qualification to do western states 100 which i'm thinking oh man you know 100 miles that is like a whole other kind of threshold that i thought that's definitely out of my wheelhouse that's going to take a fair bit more lead up and preparation for so that kind of entered the conscious of all right what's the process of trying to qualify for that to to do that race but was it but to to look at western states what captivated you about it like was it the competition was the fact that you had

to qualify was everybody like putting a bug in your ear that you had to do it like what like why western states and not some other race to focus on yeah i mean actually a little bit of of all those really i mean it was people were kind of asking me if i was you know getting ready to do that and so i look into it a bit more and and see it is one of the most you know kind of iconic and epic and biggest races out there um for sure in north america if not maybe even worldwide i'm still very new in this whole realm so i don't know like what level i know it's at a pretty high level because there's qualification involved it's hard to get into but there's also other races that are i think are just as hard like hard rock 100 that one's legit i mean i've run portions of that course and i think that's absolutely nuts to do that but it's kind of out there as sort of one of those things like that's pretty nuts i wonder if i can do it so the curiosity aspect of it um being 100 miles um is one part of it can i do that um you know the difficulty and the competition that's there um obviously are all very um intriguing to me to kind of be a part of and all of this is just kind of curiosity based really i don't have any um thoughts of you know kind of dominating the ultra um trail running world i'm just kind of here to have some fun and sort of see where um this can take me and what people i can meet and and what places i can see not too much different than my triathlon uh my approach to triathlon racing as well again knowing that i'm not going to get rich doing any of this so i better enjoy it and have some fun and have some good experiences otherwise what's the point yeah so at a

certain point you targeted western states right you got the bug in your ear you did some research or whatever there's two ways you can get into western states you can wait in line through the lottery process right yeah which takes people you know anywhere between one and 20 years to get it a long time it's hard to get it right but the point is you have to wait for the lottery or you you can earn a golden ticket through one of the races so at this point do you are you take us through like how you're trying to figure out how to get into western states yeah so i guess i was looking more kind of the through the golden ticket um aspect of it um to see because yeah i wasn't sure how long i could potentially be on a wait list and i thought well you know i'd done well enough at some of these other ultra races i mean arguably knowing that it's kind of a different in an off year as far as you know competition might not have been as as you know stiff at some of these races than in others but um i thought okay i'm close enough um to some of the women's records that they'd set on some of these courses so that i i must be at least good enough so that was my gauge was what are these other women running at these races i'd look at you know previous years um runnings and kind of go okay if i'm in this range then i might have a good shot at doing this so i decided i'd go kind of the golden ticket route and um came across the black canyon ultra which again another 100k um again another one of ara wiper's races i mean at this point i'd kind of realized that that's a really i i'd never heard of ara wiper running um before i did one of the races had no idea i had no idea it's just like some sort of like bogus weird company that you know has like these really shoddy races i'm so

serious and then when i did i'm like wow these guys really know what they're doing and i'm sure jamil appreciates that i know i'm sorry jamil i'm sorry jamil's been on the show before everybody okay so i was impressed with how they put on races that is you know very well put together so i was really having fun doing those and thought yeah i mean obviously black canyon it's literally just up the road from where i live anyway so very doable race um for me to do and so i kind of targeted that one as that would probably be like the first legit ultra race that i kind of put on the calendar and had a legitimate kind of training um build up to to get ready for because i knew the the competition would be stiffer there um wasn't sure how it was going to be golden ticket wise because i knew that they didn't put and have the race last year so there was other people who had already qualified to do i wasn't quite sure how that was going to work i thought i'm just going to rock up i'm going to try to do the best i can at this race and if i get a golden ticket great um if i don't then that's fine too and so that was sort of my take on um leading into black canyon was give it get a darn good shot and see where you see where you shake out when maybe some of the the bigger girls show up i guess to play yeah yeah so you did black canyon you breezed through the results right yeah yeah yeah so i got yeah i got second there at that uh at black canyon so that was that was pretty good and that was that was even that was fun on a different level for me as well because again very new i don't know i don't know very many names in the ultra trail running world i know you know a

few of them but even with the ladies that showed up to that to that race wasn't quite sure kind of what to expect from that so i spent a lot of that race um kind of sussing out the competition and going like okay who do i think can do what um and just trying to figure out where i fit in all that and then as well as just kind of trying to stay within myself so um but you went to that race this is the important part you went to that race with the express intent of trying to qualify for western states i did yes okay and you did by and i did by per their rules right you finished within the top two you thought you had earned yourself a golden ticket at that point yes now comes then second inflection part of the story which we're going to talk about because western states has an anti-doping policy on you you did not well go ahead did you know about the policy beforehand yeah so i did read on their website because obviously i looked through the qualification thing on their website um and did read they'd have a page right there on their website about their um stance on anti-doping and as i read it um i read it like i did most every other thing that i've read over the years in leading into a race was that by entering the race um you subject yourself or you leave yourself you know open to drug testing or um you know whatever they would like to do so that is how i read their website and now of course obviously when i go back and read it i go oh yeah well that wasn't exactly what it meant so but again i and i think when people are going to go my god like this like now she has another thing where it's like she's so absent-minded um and i think the same

thing about myself as well um but i guess probably the only thing i can bring up with that is that i don't read i don't have a bias toward trying to find ways to cheat or to game a system so when i read something that has to do with anti-doping or cheating or rules violation i read it you know from the standpoint of yeah sure whatever if i need to test test go ahead that's great you know whatever we need to do um to keep this clean and the other part of it too being that i had never once um had a race where there was a barrier to entry um based on any sort of previous um sanction or anything like that so it just wasn't it wasn't how i read um that statement so can i read it really quick yeah can i read it really quick just to give context yeah if anybody wants to go and read through the entire thing there's going to be a link in the show notes but i'm going to read kind of some of the important parts of this without taking up too much time so your point lisa the the paragraph for question is the first one i'm not gonna let you get away with that that's pretty bad it's the very first paragraph it says the western states 100 mile endurance run has a zero tolerance policy regarding the use of performance enhancing drugs or peds any athlete who has been determined to have violated anti-doping rules or policies whether enforced by world athletics the which is what governs track and field the world anti-doping agency wada the u.s anti-doping agency usada or any other national sports federation is ineligible for entry into the western states 100 and so let me caps encapsulate

that paragraph really quick if you've ever violated any anti-doping rule from any of those agencies world athletics which governs uh uh which governs track and field wada which governs all of the sports or the or usada any type of any type of violation you cannot receive or you are ineligible for entry into the western states 100 doesn't matter how big how small and you're you know in your in your case you got a you know a pub what do they call a public i'm losing public warning public warning thank you very much public warning or you're banned from life those are the let me and let me let me be clear those are the two extremes public warning is the bottom end of the kind of rule sanctioning process or the most lenient end ban for life is the most extreme example doesn't matter in western states eyes you're ineligible for entry into the western states 100 irrespective of where you fall within that spectrum within those organizations wada usada or world athletics which is kind of weird because there's some like weird loopholes in there that you can probably kind of conjure up but anyway um that's the first part of it so if you are underneath these umbrellas and you've served any sort of or you had any sort of penalty or violated anti-doping rules or policies you can't receive entry the second part of it has to do with their in-competition testing and the the gist of that states as follows wser which is the western states endurance run reserves the right to conduct post-competition testing for any and all

performance enhancing drugs listed on the current wada prohibited list any athlete selected for drug testing who refuses to submit to testing shall be disqualified and subject to a lifetime ban from the western states endurance run all final determinations regarding anti-doping violations under this policy shall be made by the western states endurance run for purposes of this document's performance enhancing drugs and quotes are those listed on the current wada prohibited list which basically means they're they're using wada's list right they're not making up their own list they're using wada's list yep all runners are encouraged to check the wada website the most current list of bands for the most current uh list of banned substances drugs prescribed by physician to treat specific medical conditions are excluded unless it is determined that a prescribed medication is being used for non-medical purposes see appeals process which is a process later in the document i'm not going to read that for more information on the prohibited substances including whether specific medications are on the water prohibited list check the the global dro which we referenced earlier uh or see supplement 411 which is another resource for information on dietary supplements including usada's risk of high risk dietary supplements on and on so my point with reading those first two paragraphs is twofold first off is what i just mentioned it's a you know a ban irrespective of the type of violation i think that's important for people to understand second thing is is they're doing in competition testing just like you're subject to but they don't have the they don't have the full army of resources at their disposal

like usada or wada does so what there's what they're basic how they're basically handling tues is very similar to how usada or wada would handle it and say listen you have to provide medical documentation if you happen to run afoul of these rules they don't there's no room for uh to to apply for a tue in advance within within the structure it's all in arrears very much similar to you this is why this is part of the reason why this situation is so ironic because the rule structure that they have that they have put forth doesn't allow to get approved for a tue in advance it's all done in arrears so so i wanted to paint that picture first so you go to black canyon you're second to black canyon you're eligible for a golden ticket you say yippee you know i'm going to the chocolate factory and then the hammer comes down yes yeah so within gosh a day or two um i got an email from uh western states um and they basically saying you know lisa are you we have uh i don't know if you're aware but we have a zero you know basically kind of what their website says there's zero tolerance policy about this um because of your um sanction in 2017 um we cannot allow you entry into uh western states um and they said you know kind of follow up with you know if you've got any further questions give us a call and that was that was basically the gist of the email um and so

to which i read and went oh you know yeah i'll definitely call them like i'll tell them sort of what went on with that like what kind of you know sanction is technically still like the word yes it's still a sanction even though it was a public warning um but i'll just i'll tell them the situation i will also tell them that that particular inhaler um that i was using no longer requires a tue um kind of painting the you know giving the whole story of of this you know story or giving the whole story of what happened so i did that um basically within an hour or so called them um and then managed to talk to them and you know told them the whole story and um you know they they they stuck their ground um and it was i think in a lot of ways it's sort of a waste of my time to tell them the story because that was it they just said well you know it's still zero tolerance we can't get into specific um cases or you know basically the story or lead up or any there's essentially there's no gray area or any variance in that so um they're upholding their rules right i mean they they came out with a set of rules and they're sticking the the flag in the ground and saying these are rules we're going to stick by them yep which i totally respect i absolutely respect you know a strong stance on on anti-doping so there was that i was torn again between this like i totally get where you know you kind of you can't get into you just don't have the resources or do you really want to get into individual stories where you get into somebody who's trying to game the system or lying about

this or not and so i get it and i think they to a certain extent i think kind of understand that as well they kind of realize that there will be people like me who will get caught in kind of this wide sort of net that they've cast out or web that they've cast and um and not be able to race their race and so they kind of they stuck their ground on it you know got to give them i guess kudos for that um and you know they just said you know you know best of luck and we got to roll your slot down so that um was that hammer that fell and the first uh my first reaction to that was because they did tell me that um they had obviously talked to jamil and to jubilee because they needed to tell them it was their race they needed to tell them that they needed to roll down to the next available person to take the golden ticket and so my first reaction was oh my god i have just done you know basically three or four of their races i've just gotten to know them this is very similar to kind of like the sponsorships that i was trying that i was negotiating when the other one came down it's like these people don't really know me very well you know i'm coming across from this other sport like they're now they're kind of wondering who the hell is this person and like my god really so my first reaction was i need to talk to jamil which western states had talked to him so he knew that i had had a previous um sanction and i said i just need to tell him the story because i don't know what he thinks of this whole thing like for all he knows i could be yeah absolute you know doper and cheater so called jamil and told him the whole story of um my sanction with usada and um he was immediately you know he understood kind of

where that was on the scale of um severe severity i guess with with the sanction from usada being probably the lowest in severity um and then i think the kicker that really kind of pushed him over maybe pushed him over the edge was the fact that again that that that particular inhaler is no longer required requires a tui as long as you use it in a therapeutic dose which usada themselves said that i was was using um even at the time so yeah it's a i mean it's a weird story it's like you said kudos to western states for sticking to their guns and i would expect nothing less of the race director craig who have the utmost respect for in their entire board it's a it's a it's a very hard line policy it is it has its flaws absolutely 100 it is a big line in the sand um yep it's not something that i would have done it's something that i would have advised against if i were in that position it's something that i would advise other race directors and other organizations against something like that but they that's kind of what they chose to do i in in all fairness um i gave i let i let uh the western states board know that i was going to have you as well as a representative usada on the podcast and that part's gonna and that part's gonna come later just as a professional heads up because i'm a professional i'm not gonna you know yank the rug out from underneath them or anything like that i said hey listen but you were invited to participate in this discussion in any way you want to i left i left the door open for them they can come on podcast later after this comes out

they can come on they can email me tomorrow and come on they can come on in conjunction with you in conjunction with usada they can provide a statement i left it open to them how they wanted to handle it but i wanted to give them the professional heads up uh uh that i was that i was going to do this because their policy is going to come under criticism after this whole dialogue is over that's just natural there are going to be some people that are going to say rah rah this policy is awesome it sticks a clear you know sticks a very deep very clear line in the sand and they're going to be some people that look through a little bit of nuance and i'm one of them that say this is we need to think about this a little bit a lot more carefully um it i'll i'm just going to leave it there so i gave them the opportunity the opportunity that they that that the western states board decided to take me up on was to provide a statement and they wanted me to read it in its entirety and i'm going to take the opportunity right now to read it i know i'm reading a lot of stuff from websites on this podcast i don't normally do this so i promise i promise this is the last one but this is a letter from uh craig thorntonley the race director i'm going to read it in his in its entirety per his request and it states hi jason thanks for giving us the opportunity to provide a statement before you interview miss roberts and the usada representative about her finish at the black canyon 100k in february at the golden and the golden ticket to the western states endurance run western states is a zero tolerance policy regarding the use of performance enhancing drugs our policy is clear quote an athlete who has been determined to have violated anti-doping rules or policies whether enforced by world athletics the world anti-doping

agency uh u.s anti-doping agency or any other national sports federation is ineligible for entry into the western states 100 that's directly from their website and then they provide a link to their uh to that particular policy in 2017 you saw to determine that miss roberts violated wada's anti-doping rules by testing positive for a banned substance without having a therapeutic use exemption or tu e in place as required during doping control during a doping control session at the challenge roth in roth germany on july 9th 2017 miss roberts accepted a public warning from usada from her from her anti-doping violation in addition to a public warning she was disqualified from all competitive results obtained at challenge roth which is that one race it always sounds weird yeah it's not all yeah um from all competitive results obtained at challenge roth including forfeiture of any medals points and prizes accordingly uh according to the usada website her positive test uh determination was made quote after a thorough review of the case including the examination of medical records provided by the athlete end quote and they provide a link to uh the the press release from usada right miss roberts anti-doping violations fall squarely within the language of our policy which does not allow for any discretion or review of the case instead we rely on usada wada and other high level national sports federation to review the underlying facts and circumstances and provide the athlete with with appropriate processes and appeals prior to making

a final determination due to that violation we are unable to offer miss roberts an entry into the western states 100 the golden ticket rolled down to the fourth place finisher at the black canyon 100 craig 100 k craig so that's their statement i'm gonna offer i'm gonna turn the floor back over to you lisa because this is your story i'm gonna offer offer one what kind of one piece of uh color commentary for this before i get into the uh uh the color commentary of the outro and there'll be a lot of commentary on that when you're relying on usada and wada in quote other high level national sports federations to determine what is banned and what is not banned which is what western states is doing they're saying we're going to follow their rules for what are banned substances but you're not going to follow their rules on the sanctioning side of things that is inherently problematic because you're saying because you're saying you know better you're the experts in this area but we know better in this other area which you have the expertise in that's messed up i'm sorry from a policy perspective and that's just one i'm going to get into a lot more on the onset of this but that's just that's just one of them and think what you will i appreciate western states for for providing this statement and for drawing a line in the sand but the but a very clear issue in all of this is you're relying on

expertise on one side and not relying it on the other side and that's problematic so anyway that's commentary on that we're going to turn it back over to you lisa because i don't want to get i don't want you to get more involved than you need or want to with criticizing the rule structure that exists in this new sport that you're just figuring out that's not fair to you i can take that on because i've been in the sport for a long time so so now now i want to know like what's next for you i mean you you've come into the sport kind of like with wide eyes oh my god this is awesome you got involved with a really great race organization air vipa they absolutely do it right you're right the sport is super cool you can wear yoda on your pack and all these other things you meet cool people but now you've had this like you know like shadow from your past kind of like hang over you in what some people will say in an unnecessary way yeah what's next for you i mean for me it's kind of continuing on doing what i'm doing uh getting into as many you know of the ultra and and trail races that i can um get into for variety of reasons for however difficult that race might be or you know the the setting if it's a different place that i can go and do i mean all all those same things i'm going to continue to do um with obviously the exception of western states at this point um and so because i mean to me it's i mean that's another big reason why i wanted to come on and to actually have a discussion in a dialogue about this so if people go and they look at you know my

social media profiles and in my posts i don't have a post about this after despite the fact that i've known for a while that i'm not racing western states um a few people that are close to me know and you know obviously know the whole story behind it but i thought that something like this required not only because of the controversial nature of this topic um and the importance of this topic i thought it required some discussion and some dialogue on and for people to actually hear me um talk about it and tell the story about it and i don't think that comes across in a social media post that's one reason the other reason is because i do like the ultra running community and i would like to be part of it and this is part of my story you know this happened to me and i worked my way through it and so it's part of my story whether people like it or not um but it's but i don't want it to define who i am and what i enjoy to do and so it's i will continue to kind of move forward and as much as i possibly can in this space whether it's ultra running and adventure racing and keep having fun and push myself and have it you know adventures and explorations as part of it so that's that's kind of what's next i mean i'll continue to target um races that interest me and kind of make me a little curious as to how i'll how i'll do with them or how i'll handle them um it just won't be western states um so yeah well i mean kudos to you for sticking your neck out i mean you literally have a target on

your back with baby yoda and you can't hide in the crowd right everybody's gonna unless you've abandoned that uh unless you abandon that that piece of memorabilia everybody's gonna kind of know they're gonna know who you are and they're gonna know kind of part of the story not only it'll make its way through i mean i remember when this happened i was at black canyons and i drew the lines together very very very quickly afterwards and i knew that irrespective of statement or no statement from whoever it would eventually weave its way into the you know into the soul of ultra running and into the rumor mills and things like that that's part of the reason i want to have this podcast and part of the reason you you agreed to it is that there's no it's like history in fact there's no reason in kind of like hiding from it we might as well go ahead and tell the whole story um i want listeners to remember that we're we're kind of at a crux right here with this the ultra running competitions are coming back online we got a break from this in 20 in 2020 but ultra running especially competitive ultra running races are going to come back online we're going to have to face this issue of how to handle anti-doping policy within the sport in an absence of an overall governing body and those issues are really complex to come down to answers to it takes a lot of hard work a lot of elbow grease you know a few broken eggs and unfortunately lisa you might be one of those broken eggs i can't tell you how many times a story is going to be told as these policies start to uh as these policies start to unfold because i would gather over half easily over half of the people listening

this podcast have no idea that a public warning is part of usada's sanctioning process no idea they just think that it's going to be a one-year ban two-year ban three-year ban take away the results they think that those are the levels of sanctioning that exist in this thing that is a public warning isn't even on even is not on half of the listeners uh radars and i and probably half the race directors radars for that matter yeah so um i appreciate you i appreciate you coming on lisa um like i said at the onset it's not easy um but this is going to do a service to uh to all the athletes out there we're also going to have you as part of uh then it's either going to be the next podcast or the next segment this podcast kind of ran a little bit long so i'm thinking right now it's going to be the next podcast for those of you that don't realize i record things and then put them up asynchronously so sometimes i'll record one before the other and you know the one that i recorded yesterday will come out six weeks from now that's just the way this thing works yeah but we're going to bring on uh lisa with a representative uh from usada to not only we're not going to rehash this story because it's already been told but we're kind of going to go through some of the mechanics of the testing and things like that to once again paint the picture of how can a sport with no governing body start to come up with some sort of uh some sort of framework so you're gonna have to tear the band-aid off again lisa i appreciate you going through that that's okay and i guess i would probably add that to my list of sort of what's next is that if this can be a catalyst to you know facilitating some of that change um i would i would put my hand up um as the first person to kind of help

with that so um you know coming over from another sport that has and being one of those athletes in that you know sort of testing regime um you know maybe i can provide some additional insight or um help with that and i'm more than happy to offer that well here's going to be the challenge you brought it up i wasn't planning on bringing this up until a later a later podcast but since you brought it up this is really poignant the solution to this is going to be earned through elbow grease it's not going to be earned through hashtag clean sport or signing you know a petition or whatever putting a sticker on the back of my car things like that people are actually going to have to come together without pay and work extremely hard and be subject to a lot of criticism and egg throwing in the peanut gallery to try to come up with with very imperfect solutions and that's that's that's a key point they are going to be very imperfect they're always imperfect but they're going to be very imperfect from from from the get-go just because it's going to be going to be bootstrapped yeah we need more horsepower there and anybody who's out there listening that wants to contribute to that horsepower freaking get your pen and paper ready and start catalyzing athletes and brands and reach out to me and reach out to lisa and whoever else because it is going to take a collective effort amongst all of the different constituents athletes race directors coaches sponsors the whole nine yards to try to come up with something because we don't have it as easy as getting a pro card and being subject to the rules

that were laid out before us right yes it took a lot of work to get to that usa triathlon is a big organization and wad is a bigger organization above them we don't have that luxury charlotte running does does not have that luxury and i think that that goes forgotten amongst the sport that we can just wave a magic wand and say oh start testing people tomorrow it's not not nearly that simple so your horsepower uh sentiment lisa is absolutely warranted and i think everybody would appreciate it if everybody if more people came to the table and and were willing to do that great yeah absolutely yeah we've gone through just recently um there's organized what's called the professional triathlete organization and that was many many years in the making many failed attempts at it to band at least the professional triathletes together to take a little bit more control over you know kind of how some of these races go on the professional side of things and i i foresee it as a very similar kind of endeavor um to get this as well so but yeah it just it took a handful of people actually great group of people um a lot of time a lot of sweat and you know a lot of um starts and stops to get that going but it is possible so all right well there we go there is hope and we have a little bit of a blueprint i think there are more blueprints uh lisa thank you you're gonna come back on in another uh another podcast that we just determined on the fly it's gonna be a separate podcast and uh for those listeners out there stay tuned for the outro because i'll have a little bit of color commentary that is way different than my normal outros and you guys won't want to miss it but thank you again lisa for coming on you're welcome

all right folks there you have it there you go much thanks to lisa for coming on the podcast today as we mentioned during the podcast this is not easy and i know that she's going to release receive a lot shade for just being in the position that she's in making some of the mistakes that she's made and kind of owned up to my point with this podcast was not necessarily to cast judgment on lisa specifically in her situation specifically but just explain one of the complexities of anti-doping structure if you have learned anything from our conversations with dr matt fedorik and with paul demio and with lisa and with some of the future conversations that i'm about to have with other individuals is that this shit is really complicated it's really complex and the current system of rules that exist within wada and usada that we're trying to use this framework they're not as simple as most people are led to believe that you piss in a cup the piss turns hot and we're gonna ban all these dopers there's a lot of nuance in between there and i hope we're starting to illuminate that through this podcast so that we can all think about that and move forward with reasonable solutions now i promised some commentary on the specific policy with western states 100 and i'm going to get into that in a second

first off i want to make it clear that these are my opinions the reason i wanted to do this during the outro and not during the podcast itself despite my best intentions i tried really hard is that i wanted it i wanted everybody i wanted it to be clear to everybody these are my opinions and my opinions alone not lisa's so that's the first thing second thing is i like the people at western states i think they do a fantastic job with that race i have nothing but respect for them they have always tried to be leaders and on the cutting edge of the entire sport and by and large they do the sport far more good than harm because of the care that they take in crafting the race experience for the athletes and what people all around the world get to look on the western states 100 as this gym of an ultra i have the utmost amount of respect for their board however i don't agree with this policy at all so let's let's separate the people who i like a lot from the policy and this is nothing personal but i do think this policy needs to be scrutinized and more importantly we need to learn something from this and so i'm going to take you through what i think my what what are my issues with the policy and also i hope that that serves as a learning lesson for people out there as we're scrutinizing all of these aspects the first issue with this is the races shouldn't be responsible for creating anti-doping policy out of

nothing in the first place that shouldn't be a race's responsibility they should be focused on running their race in adopting policy from some other umbrella organization what happens when races start to come up with their own policies is this fractured rule structure western states 100 is going to have this policy UTMB is going to have this policy run rabbit run is going to use the water band list but we're going to add these drugs ultra trail australia is going to use the water list but we're going to subtract these drugs and that's hard for the athletes to navigate and more often than not when that type of fractured rule structure exists more athletes get caught up in the paper pushing bureaucracy of it than the athletes that we're actually trying to keep or that we're actually trying to keep out of the sport and they're intentionally running afoul of the rules and that is tragic i mean for god's sake people when all the europeans come over the u.s and they think the course is open and they can cut the switchbacks we can't even communicate that we can look at examples at pike's peak and at the speed goat 50k where we can't even communicate a very simple rule change from the from europe to the u.s is the course open is the course closed do you have to follow the course or can you cut the switchbacks we have a hard time communicating that just imagine

how complicated it's going to be if we have different anti-doping rules across different races it blows my mind so that's the first thing although it's admirable that western states try to come up with this policy and make no doubt about it it's admirable i give them a lot of i admire the fact that they are trying to draw a line in the sand but i can separate that admiration from the pieces of the policy that actually matter and where there are holes and flaws in it so although a lot of people out there will say that well this is something better than nothing we really have to scrutinize that particular statement when we're looking at this is it really better than nothing but the first degree of the first reason this is problematic is simply put the races shouldn't be responsible for it because it results in a fractured rule structure that the athletes are ultimately going to get tripped up and the bureaucracy of and then the athletes that are trying to cheat they're gonna probably get away with more than than they should the second issue with this policy is that it's inherently problematic when you're adopting framework from who is recognized as a worldwide leader and expert in this area and then you ignore the framework that that worldwide world leader expert has established in other areas and with this western states policy they're taking wada's banned list these substances are banned we're going

to adopt the banned list we're going to adopt who is sanctioned and who is not but on the punitive side how long those sanctions should last for we know better wada has the expertise over here with what should be banned and what should not be banned but we have the expertise on the punitive side with all due respect to the fine folks over at the western states 100 you don't have that expertise you have to rely on the experts so you might as well rely on them wholeheartedly and yes that has flaws but you have entirely more flaws and greater flaws when you're trying to create expertise out of nothing so that's the second issue it's inherently problematic when you're taking framework from what is a worldwide recognized leader in one area and you're making up or disagreeing with that framework in another area when you do not have that expertise the third area that this particular policy is problematic is really a technical area and I would refer everybody out there to go and actually read the policy I promise I'm not going to read it word for word again I've done that too much during this podcast but there's a couple technical issues with the policy as it's written the first of which is that the only way to accommodate for therapeutic use exemptions is retroactively so an athlete runs the western states 100 they pee in a cup something shows up in their urine and say oh this is a medication that I was taking they go to their doctor they get all the

doctor's notes western states 100 convenes they say okay yeah this is we can see that you were using this medically beforehand we're going to grant you a retroactive TUE there's a certain degree of irony that we just went through the Lisa Roberts story where she got tripped up in that and failed to apply for a TUE in advance of a race and that's her error that she admits but they granted her that TUE after after she filed for it there's a certain degree of irony in this particular policy and us going over this situation right now some actually might say hypocrisy I'm not going to go that far but that's going to be a criticism that is leveled after this podcast for sure but the fact of the matter is is the only way that you're accommodating for TUEs is after the fact it's problematic and I get it western states doesn't have the resources to manage TUEs beforehand at all but the fact that the only way is after the fact after all is said and done presents this huge gaping hole in the system the second technical area that is just not which is just was not very well thought out to be honest with you is they leave accommodation for if an athlete has something adverse in their urine the athlete can challenge it they can go to western states and say here's why this was in my urine at a contaminated

supplement you know I got you know this thing showed up because of this reason all these things that we see all dopers and all the non-dopers say they're all the same within western states rules they will convene a quote a board of quote medical experts to determine this if we've learned anything from the conversations from dr fedorick from paul demio that is really complicated and it's almost hilarious to me that the western states 100 which is a 5013c non-profit by the way can find the medical expertise necessary to adjudicate those situations that expertise is few and far in between wada and usada have a hard time figuring that that expertise and even when they get all those experts in the room they still disagree so if I were an athlete looking at this I would be really concerned I would look at that statement and say who are these medical experts do you have the resources to pull together actual medical experts that understand the pharmacology of doping and what is going to trip the rules and what simply shows up in urine because of whatever other reason that's really freaking hard and I highly doubt

that western states can pull together the medical expertise necessary in a lot of those situations and we can go through the annals of wada and usada ad nauseum and pull example out of example out of there of where even the best medical experts have a hard time finding this so once again the fact that we have this piece of we have this piece of adjudication where medical where western states is trying to pull together medical experts I just have a hard time believing that you can find that expertise because it's so few and far in between and I don't think that anybody's thinking about that that's the second technical flaw and let me also mention that there needs to be an avenue for athletes after the fact that have an adverse finding to state their case there absolutely needs that absolutely needs to be part of any process but what I'm saying is is that part is really really freaking hard and go back to the conversations that I had with dr fedorik and paul demio and we go through how complicated some of those can be the last problem the last problematic area of this policy though is actually the biggest and this is the one everyone should start thinking about far bigger than the technical pieces and should the races be responsible for the framework and how do you handle TUEs and things like that this is a philosophical one and make no doubt about it this is a

maximalist policy it treats all athletes who have run afoul of any anti-doping rules stemming from any sport at any point in time no matter how egregious the offense you forget to foul paperwork or you're a part of some doping conspiracy like we have seen play out many many times before it treats all those athletes equally and all of those fouls equally it would be like in any other sport a holding penalty is the same as a personal foul and we would never do that this is a maximalist policy you're banned for life from the western states 100 irrespective of any infraction from any sport at any point in time and when you have maximalist policies you have no room to negotiate and make no doubt about it this is just as maximalist as a policy as saying we just need to let everybody dope to the gills and create a playing field there both of those are equally egregious and both of those are equally maximalist and neither one of them should serve as the basis for creating rule structure period we need to be ignoring the very far edges of the bell curve in this particular situation what we really need

are practical pragmatic implementable and reasonable solutions to start out with because it's never going to be perfect and we're trying to create perfection and boil the ocean proverbially speaking with this one singular policy by banning everybody for life regardless of the infraction regardless of the sport regardless of the time frame and drawing this big hard line in the sand once again the big hard line in the sand is admirable i get it but it's not where we should start and i don't think it's where we should end either the maximalist policy trivializes the complexity of anti-doping policy and don't get me wrong it is complex we learned that from the last two podcasts we're going to learn that in a few more podcasts by casting this maximalist blanket over the entire situation it's almost as if you're ignoring the complexity and hope and hoping it's go away if anything it's going to get more complex in the future so why would you start out planting the line in the sand or planting the flagpole in the sand whatever analogy i was trying to use at the farthest point possible knowing that things are going to get more complex versus more simple that's my spiel once again i don't like this personally i don't think it's good for the sport i do think that we should i think

that we should not be looking at this as framework we should be looking at this as a learning lesson for what not to do if we can learn anything this is a mistake in my opinion and a lot of other people's opinions to be honest with you not everybody is going to have that uh same uh same take as i do i get it i'm going to have a podcast in a couple weeks with a couple good friends of mine that will probably disagree with me and that's cool we can disagree i want to hear what you guys have to think what you guys have to say about the whole thing y'all can hit me up Jason Koop with a k on twitter or on instagram continue to have this conversation because this is not the end of it if western states is the only policy that we've got in town and it's this policy and none of the other races and there's no organizations as i said a million times before we're going to look back on this situation 10 years from now we're going to kick ourselves so let's look at this with a critical eye let's learn something from it and let's come together as a community using this as part of the learning lesson for how to move forward i appreciate everybody listening to this podcast as always we'll see you out on the trails you Thank you.