Antidoping Solutions for Ultrarunning Part 5 - Dylan Bowman and Mario Fraoli | Koopcast Episode 85

trail and ultra runners what is going on what's happening welcome to another episode of the KoopCast as always i am your humble host coach Jason Koop and this episode of the podcast wraps up a series of podcasts that i have recently produced all on anti-doping solutions in the sport of trail and ultra running if you have not had the chance to go back and check out the previous episodes go ahead and do that they are first episode that was released on may 27th with dr matt fedorick over at usada he is their chief science officer and then paul demio who is the uh author of the anti-doping crisis in sport causes consequences and solutions i always trip over that title for whatever it's just long sorry about that paul but anyway we had a great conversation with paul demio on some of the pitfalls in history of anti-doping policy in sport and then i had a great conversation with lisa roberts who got somewhat entangled in the western states's anti-doping policy really appreciate lisa for coming on the podcast because that's not an easy deal she's definitely being a little bit of a lightning rod in that instance and it's going to come without with some sort of controversy then last week we talked with charlie ware who's one of the few individuals who has actually put some elbow grease into finding a solution and i hope that we can take some of that elbow grease and build upon it so

thank you charlie for the work that you've done and thank you for coming on the podcast and finally this week we have it all wrapped up with two of the people whose opinions i respect most in the sport and as one of my athletes dylan bowman and fellow coach mario fraioli i've always liked mario's coaching framework it's just awesome to talk to him at races and things like that and this is no different i wanted to set up this conversation as a brainstorm of sorts i wanted to get two people in the room and talk about what solutions we could put together knowing what we know and if we could wave a magic wand and just have our way with everything and i think we came up with some pretty good framework it's not the final answer it's not the answer that you can particularly agree with and that's totally fine but it's going to build on something and i hope that this conversation serves as a little bit of a template for future people to have future conversations in order to move closer and closer and closer towards a final solution and maybe even build off the solution that uh that that charlie had one final note i realize that this podcast is a little bit of a sausage fest and i apologize for the vocabulary there is the first thing that came to mind i did reach out to four women and they all of them had scheduling conflicts and we only have so much time to get these things scheduled i tried you guys i really did try to get some gender balance on the panel i will do better next time it certainly

doesn't take away from the conversation we had a really good one let's get right into it i'm gonna step out of the way here it is my conversation with dylan bowman and mario fraoli i literally just left usada like literally 10 minutes ago i drove yep i drove straight back here and i set up my equipment here and i'm doing this so it's all kind of like fresh on my mind well let's do it then let's get in um so i i when i set the series of this up i was the most excited for this part of it because i always felt that it was going to be the most practical because a lot of times when you set these situations up you work from you work from theory to practice right how do you want to set up things philosophically gather all the background information in the vein of a lot of the earlier podcasts that that uh that i recorded that the listeners will have you know access to before this one comes out is it's a lot of information gathering right it's kind of an educational vein where we're just trying to educate a public who doesn't have a whole lot of exposure to these types of issues the the tack that i was trying to take throughout the first several podcasts was just to lay that foundational education work and one of the things that particularly came out with the conversation with dr fedorick was that that has to be a big part of any sort of initial

attempts is you have to educate the athletes first and foremost but also the public at large and you can't ever do enough of it and he gave this great example where when they uh when they took over the ufc program they basically took six months six months of putting the athletes through everything that they would normally go through whereabouts program you got to submit to testing and all that other stuff in a no-fault setting meaning they could trip positive tests and things like that and they would have no fault and the whole vein of that was a big educational piece just so the athletes would learn okay here's what i have to do here's how i have to file my whereabouts here's you know this supplement is going to trip the test and all like just to get the educational framework going which is so inherently problematic so but this conversation to get down to brass tacks i think is going to be really practical right so i'm going to ask two people's who two people's opinions who i respect a lot what does this actually look like like if we could wave magic wands and you know pull money out of our ears and things like that what thing what things would we put together as a community uh to try to to try to get some some efforts going but i don't want to take that as the default right i asked you guys to think about this in advance of the of the podcast i think the the first thing that we need to think about is do we even want to do this is there a need to do it and is the sports better served having some sort of concentrated effort to muster up the will to have some sort of anti-doping

policy towards it and mario i'm going to ask you to go first on this one i think so i think there needs to be and i understand the various challenges involved in setting something up like that especially in ultra running which is so vast and varied in so many different ways but i do think the sport is at a point now and it got to this point in the last several years where it's certainly getting more competitive and robust there's a lot more money coming into it on the professional side of the sport whether that's through sponsorships prize money in different places dylan and i talked this week on his podcast about you know this new world series that's coming in and if they're going to start paying athletes to be a part of that potentially spartan's already doing it and i think because of of those factors and where we are right now there needs to be something cohesive or at least a cohesive discussion amongst key stakeholders in the sport as to what an effective anti-doping program could look like and what parts of the sport it should touch debo your thoughts do you want to do this you're the athlete you're the athlete you'd have to like

piss in a cup and have a phlebotomist come over to your house and jab you in the arm and take some blood away from you like you have to you theoretically have to live the ramifications of this day in and day out which is not easy as an athlete there's a lot of athletes that just don't like this whole process i think it's a sacrifice that you have to be willing to make if you want to have the amazing life of being a professional athlete of course it's not glamorous to get out of bed in your underwear to a doorbell to pee in a cup in front of some stranger but i think the important thing to mention from my perspective as somebody who has been racing professionally now for a long time is that i have almost never been drug tested in a real way and the couple of times that i have been tested have been bush league at best to the point where i actually have been very angry leaving it knowing that my career is in the hands of these people my reputation is in the hands of these people and you guys are much more educated on this subject than i am but when that's the case and you feel as if your reputation is on the line and you clearly see that it's an inept process that's being run it's really disconcerting and um so you know from my perspective i would love to have a very uh sophisticated anti-doping program i would happily do my whereabouts all the time or as much as is relevant and necessary

um but yeah that that hasn't been the case so far and uh i think you know to the overarching question of do we do we need this i think you know mario was right on and that this is a good time for this to actually uh come into existence as the sport is really reaching a new level of maturity and a new level of professionalization and um the question is just you know how we go about doing it uh me personally i um still believe in my heart that the sport is very clean i think there's probably some people who don't feel that way um that's i have confidence in that fact uh that's how i sleep at night and uh i think a lot of that has to do with a lot of the things that mario and i talked about on our podcast this week and just the culture and the spirit of the sport and uh i'm not naive enough to think that that could never be corrupted and that there aren't you know rare cases of people that are are cheating um but i think we're we'd be wise as a community as a sport to get out in front of it and to actually get something like this up and running i'm glad you mentioned that last part dylan because you know you bring this up and it automatically conjures up images or it could lead people to believe that you think something is a foul that you then have to fix and i i agree with you that i think by and large and by by large large large however bigger that is um there they're not

there's not a lot of cheating going on at this moment in time however however that proposition is never static in sport it is always changing and typically when there is typically when the incentives go up meaning the financial incentives the the ego incentives all those different types of incentives of why people compete against each other it's not just financial there's other pieces of it but when those incentives go up the incentive to cheat in its various formats doping just being one of them also go up so your point about the inflection i think is really well taken because it's it's not that's my dog she's gonna interrupt us a couple of times but um it's not i mean it's it could very easily go awry at this point and i do think that there are we're already seeing kind of the writing on the wall of this ship that's not going to be able to get turned around at some point where the professionalism continues to be increased increase increase and increased and i will also say so i agree with both of you guys but i'm gonna ask mario if you want to think about this for a little bit to give us like the devil's advocate perspective because you kind of see it play out from a track and uh mainly from a track and field and marathon marathoning perspective where you know who knows how effective these solutions can actually be but i don't mind saying that getting some sort of anti-doping uh rules and regulation and framework together is a selfish endeavor for me because i make my living

in the sport and i like making my living in the sport i think it's a fantastic career that i just happened to you know stumble upon and carve out and things like that it behooves me as a professional to have more professionalism in the sport i raise my hand and i wholeheartedly admit that there is absolutely economic personal economic incentive for me to try to get these to try to get this and other things kind of in place and i don't mind saying that i think that it's good for the gander i think that the whole sport if we look at 10 years from now we talked about this offline talked about if we look at the whole sport 10 years from now and that's the lens that we have to have with these types of efforts we're going to be better off having done something now than just putting the blindfold on like nothing's going to change so we all agree here we need to do something but i want to kind of like represent the i don't know i don't know what category to put these people in there but there are going to be like skeptics out there that say oh we don't need this the sport doesn't need it it's becoming too professionalized blah blah blah mario can you try to can can you try to like encapsulate that point of view for people just so that we're giving a little bit of a balance to things yeah i mean my initial reaction when i hear you say that i think that's exactly why we need it and i think it's because of that 10-year view and i think those of us those of us who have been involved in the sport long enough as both of you have um and have a hand in the professional side of it as

we all have and for me personally knowing what i know about track and field and road racing and some of the challenges that they faced on that side of things better to get the ball rolling on that now because we can see where it's going to go um and if we don't get ahead of it it's only going to be harder to implement stuff like this in the future and to the point that dylan made which i think is a very important one there needs to be confidence from the athletes especially but also coaches and race directors and everyone else who's involved that this is being done right that there is a comprehensiveness to it that there's a consistency to it across the board because without that there's going to be no confidence and it's going to be harder to put that in place so i think based on what history has shown us in other sports and where we can see ultra running going like now is now is the time to start doing this and i don't know what the perfect solution is and we can talk about that as this conversation goes on and it's not something that's going to be figured out overnight but i do think this discussion needs to be needs to be had and some key pieces need to start being put into place well you see when it goes i don't know if that answers your initial inquiry well i don't know i

mean it's it's hard it's hard to present i don't the we see the shit show in cycling like that in the early 2000s and the mid 2000s was a total shit show even though you know usada started in the year started in the year 2000 and supposedly was going to kind of clamp down on this but to your point mario of it becomes the boulder gets bigger and has momentum the longer it starts rolling downhill and if you catch it at the very top before it gets all of that momentum and inertia it's a whole lot easier to stop and turn around and slow down and kind of put the brakes on and things like that at a certain point it just gets so big that the whole thing needs to get blown up before you can start to create a reasonable dent in things and that is exactly what happened in cycling i mean to the t they had to blow the whole thing up and they're still dealing with it and i think going back to that 10 year lens 10 years from now if we end up like cycling and didn't do anything about it we being the ultra running community end up like cycling and we didn't do anything about it we're all going to kick ourselves just like they're all kicking themselves right now they're all every single one of them and i know a lot of them just because of my employment history and things like that they're all and they're public about it they're like we screwed up this is how we screwed up we all screwed up as a community like every single one of us with very very few exception and we would all be remiss if we didn't look at that and go that could happen in this community very easily because it's got all the telltale signs yeah there's a there's certainly a lesson to be learned there and i think

that boulder analogy is is on the money um we're at a point now where it it's not so big and it's not moving so fast that it can't be slowed down but 10 years from now seeing where this sport is going with the number of people who are coming into it the number of people who are trying to make a professional go at it as athletes um the amount of money that's coming into it as you mentioned ego all of these other things um i mean it's tim i mean i don't want to sound like a like a like i have a crystal ball or i'm a prophet or something like that but i can see where this is going um but i can also i also understand that the sport by and large has not taken any real steps to address this and and i'm glad that we're talking about it yeah with all due respect to charlie and uh he put a tremendous amount of effort into getting some framework which i think is a good framework uh that he initially started out it was like you said there's not there hasn't been a lot of wholehearted attempts at it so let's switch gears a little bit dylan this is like your time to shine because you've been through it and you've already said that it doesn't give you a lot of confidence part of the part of the issue with trail and ultra running right now is that nothing exists if an athlete goes through the collegiate track and field rate ranks and then goes and starts to race professionally they get adopted into the framework that exists at the olympic level at the usada level at usa track and field level they

don't have any choice right they just it's just part of the gig when they take on that profession there's a blessing and a curse with not having to do that right the blessing is is we can do whatever we want to as a community the curse is we have to do everything we have to do everything ourselves so big picture dylan what does it look like like what does the solution like i know this is loaded and you could go on for another two hours on this but like what fundamentally would an anti-doping solution look like in the in the community you know i feel kind of silly having this conversation with you guys because i feel like you guys know so much more about this stuff than i do but you're an athlete you're an athlete like what do you want to see that's my point yeah that's my point my point is that you know as i mentioned in the first uh question i've been tested two or three times over the course of my career in like a real way and both of those times have left me feeling violated in that it was totally unprofessional totally not to the standard uh and even though i just said i'm not as educated on the subject as you guys are i'm educated to know well enough uh how some of the protocols happen for example there needs to be a b sample in my case there was never a b sample there needs to be somebody in the room watching you there was nobody in the room watching me and so when i was handing over my urine and my and they took my blood i thought this is my freaking career in your guys's hands this is my reputation and if this comes back showing something that is clearly not

true and you guys have done this in a way that's unprofessional my life is ruined right and it's profoundly upsetting in in that circumstance and so i don't know the way that i would answer the question coop would actually maybe be to to ask you a question and so obviously for me as an athlete i would love to see the real testing happen right out of competition random whereabouts all that stuff so to your question of how how does it look it'd be great if it could look like that i have no idea what that costs i have no idea what the implications are and who does it or whatever but you guys are just talking about cycling and i think you know coop you and i are both fans of the ufc and the ufc had a situation several years ago where they clearly had a problem with performance enhancing drugs and they and i sort of see this similar obviously ultra running at a much smaller scale but that was a moment in time when the ufc was really struggling to be taken seriously as a sport and i feel like trail and ultra running now is in the same place where okay we've got this growth we've got these new partnerships etc and we're starting to want to be taken seriously as well and in order to do so you have to have trust that the results of the competition are fair and so the ufc implemented a very high budget very high tech uh very rigorous anti-doping program and i'm sure coop you know more than me so

really i'd love to hear you maybe talk about that because i mean honestly the analog i think is is is kind of similar i mean it's not obviously ultra running is not at the same level that ufc was when they did this but ufc had a bit of a problem and uh you know people talk about those wild west days when guys were all on you know whatever they were on it was messed up and i mean i've had a little bit of a front door seat to you know how that program went down with a lot of my mutual colleagues and it was not it was one of those things that's very hard at the beginning because there was a cultural there was a big cultural problem within that sport um let's face it it's not the most educated group of athletes i think they would readily admit that and i think the kind of results of what they went through uh demonstrate that as well and there was a lot of resistance to uh to to implementing those policies so you combine those in the concoction of it it was it was just very hard but we look at it now once again with a 10-year lens look back on it and the degree of professionalism that do that doing something like that raised that wasn't the only thing but that was a big thing in that sports trajectory where we can now look back on it and go yep they went from kind of backyard brawling unregulated and adopted all of these regulations not just the anti-doping thing and put them on a sporting pedestal where it's the it's the first thing i click on when i go

to espn because it's on the top bar it's on the top bar of espn who would have ever thought that five years ago nobody was thinking that but somehow this was that was a big part of it what i'm hearing from you dylan though is that it the athletes have to have confidence in the system and this is a big thing that has been brought up in some of the earlier attempts from charlie and actually got brought up in my conversation with dr fedorik over at usada where the athletes have to have confidence on both sides they have to have confidence in the results and the results management process as you were as you mentioned dylan but they also have to have confidence in the efficacious nature efficacious nature of the anti-doping controls that they're actually catching cheaters and those two things are both simultaneously very very very difficult to do but it's a key part because you don't the athletes and this i received a lot of this feedback from previous anti-doping efforts they want to feel that all of the pain in the ass stuff that they have to go through waking up at 6 a.m having somebody stab them with a needle peeing in a cup from in front of some stranger having the worry in the back of their heads of if this medication is going to produce you know some adverse finding and having to go through that process they want to have confidence that all of it all of that is worth it and part of the educational

process that organ organizations like usada go through and i'm not advocating that usada is the end-all be-all answer or anything like that but part of the process they go through is to educate the athletes on that trajectory on what happens when this whole run of show starts to starts to go down in order to enable confidence in the athletes so that they know that they're taken care of they're going to be well represented that they're catching the people or trying to catch the people at least there that are legitimately cheating that whole thing and it's such a big part that i think a lot of the hesitancy doesn't have anything to do with i want to trip a i'm going to trip a false positive or anything like that the hesitancy a lot of it comes from is the effort going to be worth it at the end of the day and that's a big that that's a just a big unanswered question um mario you've seen it from track and field and road running side and you've seen like the failures and the successes of these programs all of which publicly play out in every salacious manner possible we can have a blank slate right i mean trail and ultra running doesn't have to get adopted into usa track and fields rules we don't have to get adopted into usa cycling rules or anything else we can kind of like do whatever whatever the heck we want to do at the end of the day so i mean if you had the blank slate seeing all the successes and failures like what does it look like to you i'll answer that but i'll preface it by saying this is where i get confused and i'm at a little bit of a

loss because in let's just call it ultra running i think that includes trail ultra running but you've also got to include you know road racing where you've got national and world championships um you know you've got private series and corporations now multiple ones that are going to operate independently of one another and have their own path to their own you know private world championship um ostensibly you're going to have athletes who are committed to one of those series maybe they bounce back and forth you know between a few of them and at least as of right now there is no central governing body of any sort that can say to all of these different constituencies hey this is the program here's how we're going to implement it across all these various domains so i i think something needs to be established for for ultra running which admittedly and i think this is a big difference from track and field and road racing is a much bigger umbrella you've just got i mean numbers wise in terms of you know the participants and professionalization of the sport yes it's a lot smaller but in terms of just the different disciplines and events and how different the sport is in europe

versus here in the states versus in in asia and everything bodies like i i think that's where it gets that's where it gets hard so so i think just identifying like what that what that governing body or that unifying organization is going to be that can say you know hey here here here are the rules um because it is just so it is just so all over the place i mean i was looking at you know the the western states policy which i think we we're going to talk about later in in this conversation and they're going basically by you know i think it's it's usada wada and usatf guidelines if i'm if i'm not mistaken as as i read it i like basically wada you know wada guidelines and usada guidelines which are um fairly consistent so i think there needs to be first like an establishment of an ultra running governing body with buy-in from all of these different series and disciplines and i don't think that would be a real easy thing to do um but i think that's where it needs to start because that's how you're going to have some consistency and i think from consistency comes confidence from the athletes as you just talked about in terms of not only what's happening to their sample or how the program works but that it it's it's a worthwhile thing for them um so i i think that's the i think that's the most important piece of the puzzle and everything else is going to stem from there in terms of you know who's who's in the testing pool um because i do think there needs to be an out of competition

testing pool like what events are going to have drug testing on site post race for the top finishers what does that look like um and and also i i don't think athletes and you've alluded to this a few times should be surprised by any of this like i think anyone who you know could potentially be uh up for up for drug testing like it shouldn't come as a surprise for them like they should they should know that this is part of the sport now and it's part of their jobs as as professional athletes and because of that they can they can trust in the the system and the people and protocols that have been put into place so mario wants consistency dylan wants professionalism i'm gonna ping off of the consistency piece a little bit and you guys might be too young to remember this but i i am not um but way before usada it was up to basically each individual sport in each country to figure this out so you can imagine a world where usa tennis says okay we're gonna we think that these things are prohibited and then you go over to south african tennis or british tennis or whatever and they think oh well we think that usa they've got a pretty good program but we're going to add on these things and we're going to change the sanctioning a little bit you multiply that inconsistency across hundreds of sports and across hundreds of countries it's extremely problematic for the athletes to try to comply with

that level of inconsistency when their careers are on the line to to dylan's point exactly so to have this i i 100 wholeheartedly agree with your sentiment mario that this overarching umbrella that says here are the rules that are going to be applied consistently across all of these different race formats it might not be the perfect set of rules initially but a consistent set is going to be more effective in the long term than the perfect set because you can get everybody on the same page and then if you need to insert a line item on one of those pages great everybody can get on the same or you gotta get everybody in the same book i'll use that analogy since i just got done recording my audio book you'll get everybody reading from the same book and then if you need to change a page in the book you say just like water does every year we're going to change this page in the book we're going to get everybody on the same we're going to get everybody reading from the same playbook okay this is the new this is kind of the new set of rules if you start out fractured and then bring it back and then try to bring it back together that's when everything is it's really really really problematic and it takes another 10 years yeah i think that's exactly right and that's the important thing to remember too it's not going to be perfect out the gate nothing is and and as time goes on and various things develop to your point like there are going to be addendums that need to be made there are going to be adjustments for you know

a world championship road racing ultra perhaps versus the finale of a private series just to use a totally random and now i don't know exactly how they they differ but i i imagine that they they certainly would um so i i do think i do think you're right if it starts fracture it's going to be impossible to put all of those pieces together but if you have something that's cohesive when it comes out you can identify various flaws in in parts of it and and adjust and people are going to know when those adjustments happen because they they should be well documented and established the the playing devil's advocate on the consistency piece of it one of the issues that that inherently contains is the initial filter is is not fine enough you're not going to catch all of the cheaters because you're trying to create an overarching set of rules that can get watered down when you have that consistency i mean that's the ultimate balance between trying to get everybody trying to compromise right getting everybody on the same page versus exactly what everybody wants i want to know what dylan thinks about that particular aspect because that's an athlete practical thing if you start out with a solution that you know has holes in the filter to give you confidence to to to your point dylan how does that then affect that well i mean i agree with both of you guys i think something is always better than

nothing and the anti-doping efforts that are taking place within the sport are largely symbolic and that i think to your point is better than nothing right like this is a salute like a solution a band-aid on a potential problem uh but a band you know a band-aid over a wound that uh probably needs uh an extra bandage but at least it's something right so i guess my point is like western states has an anti-doping program right but anybody who's sophisticated enough to cheat is sophisticated enough to know how to show up at western states being able to pass the test right but at least it's something right and so it's not perfect but at least it's something and i mean yeah to mario's point i think having a governing body some sort of authority uh that has credibility that um you know people could look to and trust that they've got the sport's best interest in mind would be a hugely hugely valuable thing and for them to take the leadership role in putting something like this together would be a dream come true for the sport and so like the question is just how do you go about doing that how how does a governing body come into an existence and how do you take various stakeholders and get them to agree on who that governing body should be and how is it funded and who's paying for it so it's a hugely

complex issue but i guess you know the something is better than nothing approaches is definitely sort of the way i see it and the courts program which we haven't talked about but is sort of like the most well-known anti-doping program within trail and ultra running is very much like a symbolic thing then telling me for those who are unfamiliar who are listening for example um when i was traveling to to race uh usually on the ultra trail world tour i would get an email about a week before the race usually to say hey go to a local lab within the next 48 hours and get basically a cbc blood test and if there's uh sort of suspicious findings in the blood test which i then would email to them then potentially i would get a targeted doping um actual real drug test not just a blood test and you know for me it made me feel nice it was like okay well at least they're this is something but again the point is that for those who are sophisticated enough to cheat it'd be very easy for them to get around that very unsophisticated symbolic level of quote-unquote anti-doping so i would love to see consistency to uh what you guys are talking about the problem is just figuring out how do we agree on

what that consistency is and who's paying for it my issue with that story dylan though not with the story itself but with like this series of events in the way that courts is set up and i'm not saying this to throw courts underneath the bus i'm not a fan of theirs i don't mind admitting it i don't i don't think that they have very good policy or practice nor people behind that organization and i don't and i don't mind saying that i've been very very openly critical about them for a long time now but my real issue is for you as an athlete you don't know what an adverse finding is you have no idea because they have no publicly recognized standards for that so if i go on wada's website i go on the global dro right the drug reference online i can look up any drug in the world and say you know what it's tolerated within these limits it's not tolerated at all it's tolerated in or out of competition i can find that framework very easily for courts to say and this is my biggest issue with them if you have an adverse finding of which there is no definition that you can find that is very problematic and that does not give athletes a lot of confidence and i would look at that and go well what's adverse i'm not cheating but i still want to know what's adverse or not because i don't want six months from now you guys coming back and saying oh we found something adverse what does adverse mean right like what is that i think what they're probably what they're looking for is the textbook example you

read from the old cycling books of your hematocrit being over 50 which would be which would be fine if they said this is what it is and that's my issue is like there's no definition of quote unquote adverse and that goes back to the consistency aspect yeah listen i totally agree it feels bush league it feels low budget and it feels symbolic right um but coop i guess it brings up something that um you know you kind of brought into my life as my longtime coach and that is the wada um database of banned substances and stuff and i remember i can't remember what it was i think it was like when i got bit by a tick and they put me on antibiotics or something and i called you or something just to let you know that you know i was gonna take a couple days off from training or something and you said so what did they give you and i said oh well you know whatever it was i forgot triumph or what was it i can't remember the name of the antibiotic but you yeah you said hey you need to develop the habit of going and looking on this website to see what these drugs are and if they're banned in competition i would have never occurred to me because it was just prescribed to me by a doctor and it didn't feel like something that would have been a performance answering drug it turned out it was not on the banned substances list but you helped me to develop that habit not that i really have ever taken many uh prescription drugs this was a unusual uh case of being bit by a tick but i think it's important for

people who are listening you know who are aspiring professionals they want to approach the sport in an honest way to develop that habit as well so maybe that's something you could put in the show notes just whatever that uh that resource is on the wada website where you can look those banned substances up 100 it's called the global dro every athlete should have it bookmarked in their phone online it's very easy to use across all sports it has all of the scientific names of any drug that you want and all the colloquial over the counter uh names of any drug that you would ever want it is a great resource and even if you are not underneath official anti-doping whatever but you might be athletes need to get into that habit and i've been consistent with that with all of my athletes even though very very very rarely do they fall underneath the that type of umbrella because as you mentioned people get tripped up in that a lot i mean that's part of the whole educational part for athletes is they just don't think oh my you know my uh i'm going to use an example that's outside of elite sport that is actually going on right now so usa cycling has this citizens program and if you're registered usa cycling athlete you go to your local criterium you're competing in the 50 over you know category three you know race or whatever they will randomly test people in those races it would be the equivalent of going to the saint patrick's day 5k and and usada picking out people you know that have you know green

beer you know stains on their shirt or whatever and testing those people those athletes those citizen athletes even though they know that there's a remote possibility that they might get tested they get tripped up all the time for just benign heart rate medications that their doctor prescribed them something that you know that they don't even even kind of think about and i use that as an example for elite athletes anything that you take you got to run through the dro it just don't don't even think twice about it anything over the counter anything your doctor's prescribed you run through the dro and the listeners will remember my conversation with lisa roberts which will be either one or two podcasts before this one i can't remember that's the mistake she made that's the exact mistake she made she got prescribed a new medication she didn't run through the dro she got popped for you know having that medication in her system she you saw it then came back and realized that that's what the mistake was and then sanctioned her appropriately mario can probably speak to that because that happens a lot in the track and field world but it's it's not without uh uh it's not it's not without its controversy because things like that are subject to be abused yeah it's super controversial i mean it happened this week a big piece came out just yesterday or the day before in the new york times about brenda martinez who's a world championship medalist at the 800 meters and she tested positive for a banned substance which is banned because it's a masking agent and turns out it was because of a

medication that she was taking to treat her depression and and as far as what i'm reading into it and travis teigart's explanation of it like it's completely legit and like one of the big discussions about that is like well if that's the case should these things even be announced publicly because it was announced publicly as like hey she tripped this test but we're not giving her any kind of a ban because it was found after doing the research that it was not that she wasn't trying to dope like she you know she was on she was unaware she was on this other medication that had nothing to do with you know athletic performance and didn't think twice about it so i mean it's it's definitely a a controversial and complicated issue and apparently at least reading reading this article i haven't dug too much deeper into it this sort of thing happens i don't want to say all the time but more often than you would think and you know these these announcements get made that you know joe smith tested positive but it was found to be i don't know contaminated meat or something like whatever whatever it could be um and and he's not going to face like a violation or something like that so i think that's just a that's another element of it that adds to just some of the the messiness of you know of all of this um and we've certainly seen instances of it you know in track and field cycling as well uh and you know any pretty much you know any other sport where this sort of thing happens well we've

kind of batted back and forth a few of these key parts where it's consistency integrity um solutions that can be implemented in a reasonable in a reasonable fashion so that we can all get on the same page not to put too big of a pun in the room but there is now the issue of who pays for it all right because it's not like money grows on trees or you know we're going to find a grant or anything like that i mean there's going to be some burden of of of finances that somebody or some entities are going to have to incur and once again we can put that financial burden anywhere we want to we can make the athletes pay for it we can make the races pay for we can't make the athletes pay for it the athletes can choose to pay for it the races can choose to pay for it the sponsors can choose to pay for it nobody can pay for it and then nothing gets done but somebody's got to pay for it in order for anything to get done because nobody's going to do it for free right this stuff is depending upon your level of solution is varying in expense so mario like knowing what you know about how the ngbs work where's a reasonable place to start who's going to kick it who's going to kick in for this stuff it's such a complicated question because again like there's nothing to unify all of this so i think it could feasibly be paid for in different ways so one example like i think of right in track and

field in road racing you've got world athletics which is the sports governing body here in the u.s you've got usada um other countries have their own version of an anti-doping association it's under the umbrella of of wada um you know and that system because people are competing at largely like global championships and they are under under this umbrella there is like a cohesiveness to it there and i'm not totally sure exactly how that gets paid for i believe it's by i believe it's by the events but i'm not i'm not totally confident of that going into road racing i mean you've got i'm thinking about this with some of the recent developments in ultra running you've got the world marathon majors series which is a series of of independently owned events but there is at the professional level someone who can be the annual champion of that and there's a you know there's a huge bonus that that goes along with that um and then obviously each individual race has prize purses and and whatnot but there is a within that series there is a a consistent anti-doping program and there are criteria that are in place you know for for those athletes and and i again like i don't know exactly who pays for it but i believe it's i believe it's it's all of the events collectively who are like yes we're all in on this together and we're each contributing a a certain amount of money i mean i think with a series like

that if you're going to be committed to anti-doping and having a program you get all the events on the same page and you make it part of you make it part of the registration fee for the events or you take it from some of the sponsorship money that that comes in um if there were something like an athlete's union and they're paying dues to go into that i mean that's how the athletes could pay for it too i think there are multiple ways to do it i don't know what the perfect solution is um and i think there needs to be an even even wider discussion amongst you know race directors anti-doping officials athletes themselves maybe even some representation from you know common participants who are like well why is there you know another five dollars on my entry fee you know to go pay for you know for for anti-doping um and having that you know getting some understanding from all of all of these different players so i i know i'm beating around the bush to answer your question i i don't know who pays for it um let me ask you this let me ask you this mario i don't know there's an easy answer to that question let me ask you this directly though right you're i would consider you a stakeholder right you coach athletes in the ultra marathon space would you pay for it would you yes would you pull would you pull money out of your pocket and say here put my you know put my hundred bucks into the pool to test people yep wouldn't even hesitate i think that i'm going to skip ahead of

you on this one dylan that feels like the solution that feels like the solution honestly is crowdfunding it because i think most of the athletes would be happy to kick in a few hundred bucks i know you're talking to charlie ware about his idea which was basically the same thing getting athletes to to chip in to pay for their own testing that feels like the solution to me is getting stakeholders to crowdfund i i i agree i think initially it has to be a good faith uh a good faith fundraise and what i mean by good faith is is we're kind of like you know building the bicycle as we're riding it type of deal it has to be a good faith fundraising by the stakeholders in the community and what i mean by the stakeholders in the community i mean everybody i mean the athletes and coaches myself mario i'll put i'll match you dollar for dollar we can keep doing that until until we get this thing done um the athletes the coaches the the races without i would add the i would add the part without the burden on passing that buck down to the common participant i think that that's important early on maybe they do it in an artificial way and we can argue economics around that all day but i think the brands need to play in this if you're making your money i guess what i'm trying to say is is if you're making your money or you have a stake in the space part of your obligation is to ensure the health of the entire ecosystem for years to come i think that that's an obligation

that everybody has in the space who plays in the spaces you always have to leave it better than you found it right and this is an effort where everybody can leave it better than they find that then then we found it when we came upon it and part of it is is getting this started and literally putting our money where our mouth is so i think it's anybody and everybody doesn't that feel like the ultra ethos very beautifully said coop i mean it's like yeah if you make your money in this sport it's up to all of us to invest our hard-earned dollars to make sure that the overall health of the ecosystem lives on and to the next generation in a in a really healthy and vibrant way and that would be a beautiful thing where do i where do i venmo my money to i i don't disagree with that i mean i think you're right i i you know we don't have every competitive athlete in the sport here on this podcast but i think if you were to ask them do you want a clean sport if you want to ask the coaches do you want a clean sport in a level playing field i can't imagine anyone saying nope don't want that at all i mean i think everyone everyone wants that especially as a sport continues to grow and it gets more lucrative in a lot of ways and we should all have skin in the game um if you know if we don't have skin in the game it's a lot easier to be tempted to to cheat the system for for some people um and you know i think that makes everyone

feel like they're also a part of it as well so well so here's a challenge we're already throwing it down if you're in the space and you have the opportunity to help this whole thing out put your money where your mouth is and do it i think one of the things that came out of um the conversation that i had with charlie which i know you guys haven't haven't listened to you yet but i've kind of given you the little bit of a rundown part of the reason that hasn't got traction isn't necessarily the financial side of it like i think they could initially bootstrap it and get that and get that piece of it together but there wasn't enough horsepower behind the whole effort so it takes money and willpower and if anything if i'm if we once again if we look back 10 years from now and nothing happens the biggest thing we're going to kick ourselves in the butts about is that we didn't have enough collective willpower because i think we can get the funds together initially i'm i'm not concerned on the financial side i think people put their money where their mouth is like you mentioned dylan it's part of the ultra ethos to all chip in and help each other out but let's let's not mince any words here doing something like this is an incredibly difficult thankless job that doesn't pay shit and is rife with criticism who wants that like that's what it kind of comes down to like who wants the job of organizing this yeah nobody's speaking out here and i've got my finger on my nose for those of

you watching the youtube version yeah so i mean that's basically the the digital version of that was happening in charlie weard's email group in which i was a part of uh he sent it to people who had finished top 10 in ultra run of the year and people who had finished top 10 at western states and he had taken a lot of the initiative and it came to a point where sort of somebody had to take the leadership role and do the hard work and everybody's busy you know everybody's got other stuff going on nobody's the one that uh wants to step step up to the plate and take that thankless job and um that's a hurdle we'll have to cross eventually you know my my very good friend um john frothingham who was usada's uh coo and he would not mind me mentioning this this story either um who was really influential on usada's development in kind of the early 2010 time frame he booted up the ufc program and things like that um when i initially talked to him about this maybe four or five years ago he said here's your failure point coop nobody's going to want to do the job everybody is going to get super enthusiastic because they all want it to you know mario's point earlier if you ask everybody do you want a clean sport you want a level playing field everybody's going to say yes you're going to be able to get people on board conceptually but you still have to have a ringleader who's going to drive all of the nuts and bolts and cross all the t's and dot all the i's home and that is a thankless shit job that is rife with with criticism because everybody thinks it needs to be done a

little bit differently and it's not going to pay anything and who's going to want to take that up when everybody's busy with other stuff i'm not saying that it's impossible but i do think to our earlier point that's the pinch point right that's the pinch point and this whole thing is the collective will and then the will of what i would envision is a few select individuals to get something like this not only to the start line but across the cross the finish line charlie's got to the start line it's good framework it's getting it to the finish line and ultimately like implemented that is going to be the the huge the huge huge it's a human challenge right we get it's a it's a it's a willpower type of challenge so who does it that i didn't ask you guys to think about that question right who does it like we can come up with all the theoretical we everybody pays for it and it's got integrity and things like that at the end of the day somebody's got to do the work somebody from the community is going to raise their hand and say oh i want this i want this crap job that coop just went through who who actually tests for things right so i guess my question is like i know there's been some efforts to do kind of like just have the athletes send their own samples in just in good faith just to prove things proactively or whatever but i guess to the question of like who who does the work i guess we have to first understand like how does

testing actually even happen because that's something that i don't really know myself and and so if if it's as simple as you know we just do a simple crowd fund and then every week randomly pull five different pros out of a hat and say hey you're up you know send your sample to this lab um or go to quest lab or whatever they're called um like is that is that a model well i mean i think that's all tbd right i mean we've we've used we've used usada and usa cycling and usa triathlon is kind of the frameworks but the reason that they're the frameworks is because they're the only they're the only game in town now they use their own people the accredited labs to send the samples to and things like that i that's a good solution that's not the only solution out there there are other there are other anti-doping agencies vada is one of them that's pre that's kind of prevalent in the combat sports particularly on the west coast that has a different very similar but it's a different or similar framework but different uh different organization and but i guess my point with that dylan is is there's a lot of to answer your question there's a lot of different mechanisms for how to do the testing and the governance and the sanctioning process and things like that there's a lot of different frameworks out there that you can kind of pull from from things that exist at the end of the day somebody's got to look at that landscape and say okay here's the proposal let's

get everybody on board here's what i think here's what i think that we should do that that that person it's kind of got to emerge out of nowhere you know i mean charlie took it on his own shoulders to to do it through i didn't even ask him what his motivation was but i don't think he knew what he was getting himself into but a person or a core group of people is something that has to emerge to really get it to really establish those things it's not easy yeah is is the point i'm so right yeah so as you say that i mean it feels like a job for more than one person too it feels like it needs to be kind of a small team who's managing the logistics and then the sanctioning and the sanctioning obviously is a very sensitive thing where there would have to be some consensus as well about what the penalties are what they should be when you can come back because i don't know one of the things that i think is is interesting is just culturally and this i think is our greatest savior at the moment where the anti-doping thing is concerned is that if you are cheating you're basically excommunicated from the sport um within trail and ultra running i mean we saw what happened at the north face 50 a bunch of years ago where uh elisa desco who had failed a doping test and served a suspension came and raced tnf 50 and there's basically like protesters on the course you know i think culturally people are very averse to welcoming in people who have been found to break the rules

and i think that's a preventative step though that's not going to be sufficient to keep the sport clean forever but then you look at the ufc where you have the example of uh tj dillashaw is his name remember him he was a world he's built was world champion um just an absolutely phenomenal fighter uh one of those you know 125 pound 135 pound just powerhouses and he was known for having like incredible endurance right and then he pops positive for epo like super high octane shit and it's like well and he's known for having a an engine and he's the world champion right but culturally within the sport it's not the same right like he will come back and fight when his suspension's over and it and people will love him the sport and and the sport will support it i think that's totally not the case with ultra running and so i think that is is definitely something that uh we can hang our hats on knowing that you know that that's a disincentive though not not something that uh will keep us safe forever as i said dylan what do you think about i mean this is off topic but it's going to be relevant at a certain it already is relevant it's going to be more and more relevant i think what do you think about the crossover athletes because we are going to have crossover athletes from cycling and from triathlon and maybe even from running that have had some run in lisa was a great example that that kind of just happened but it's

i think it's only going to go up from there that's a benign case it's only going to go up it like it's only going to get more controversial where you have somebody that is currently serving a four-year ban for whatever and then starts entering races what what do you think about that as an as an athlete so it's complicated i would say first and foremost i'm a definitely a big believer in second chances i've volunteered for a bunch of years inside of a prison have become friends with guys who have committed violent crimes and who are at their core good people and they deserve a second chance i believe that's the case in every aspect of life that being said i can't say that i don't respect western states's position to protect the sanctity of their race players to say if you've ever had to serve a doping ban or tested positive you're not welcome in this race there's other races that you can do but you're not welcome in this race i feel like that is their prerogative as an organization to have that position even though i am a believer in second chances but to the crossover athlete question i i think this is going to be something that we will have to deal with and actually i was running this morning with my friend andrew bumbelow here who's recently retired uh nike athlete pro marathoner he was a 5k 10k guy before that

uh an amazing runner an awesome guy and we've talked many times about over the course of his career him being able to point to races where guys have either tested positive who've beaten him or who he's just very very suspicious about and i just feel so grateful in my career that i can't look at a single race where i've lost and come up short by a small amount or whatever and thought that guy is suspicious and i think that's an absolute gift and uh something that i should be enormously grateful for because it's really sad that unfortunately bumby has to be somewhat skeptical cynical about uh some of the people that he's raced in his career but this is the big question as we move into um the future of the sport when there will be real financial incentives and we might start seeing people coming in from other sports where maybe the culture is not like it is in trail running um and um and so yeah i mean the it's going to be a hard problem to solve and and that's why as we've talked about it's better to get in front of it before that becomes an issue well the the analogy i think that's go ahead maria i was gonna say i think that's exactly right because track and field's just so far ahead of ultra running in that regard and what bumby was describing i don't want to say it's going to be the norm 10 20 years from now but especially if nothing's done there are going to be more professional athletes who are wondering

about who beat them in a given race i mean it's just it's inevitable i think um and then to the topic of the crossover athlete the first thing i thought of this was probably i think it was like 2015 2016 it's almost like the ultimate example you had lance armstrong who entered the like woodside 50k and then i think there was another race up here in marin that he was going to run and then he was pacing his buddy at western states and i mean he's a very polarizing figure as it is but there were a lot of people in the community who were like he has no business being here because he cheated to win all his tour de france titles and then you had people who were like well he's not even going to be a factor so why should we you know why should we even care and that's a that's a tricky situation i i don't know that there's a there's an easy answer to that i mean i you know i agree with dylan and like western states and events i mean it's their prerogatives to say like hey if you've ever tested you know in another sport like you've tested positive and service suspension like you're not welcome here um i don't know that every race has to take that that stance but i'm supportive of them if they do um world marathon majors has that policy i mean if you've served any sort of suspension you you are not welcome in the elite field that a world marathon majors race that's the difference though that makes the elite field in the world marathon majors at western

states it's everybody yeah i'm sorry to cut you off maybe in the race itself the biggest issue i have not yeah not the biggest issue but one of the biggest issues i have with the western states race is you have this sport that is culturally very accepting right we love people from all walks of life right it's just a very accepting a very accepting sport you have somebody who tested positive for something in table tennis 20 years ago and you're telling them they can't run the western states 100 like that inconsistency or incongruity with the culture i have a hard time wrapping my head at wrapping my head around once again admirable i realize that they're kind of planting a very hard flag in the ground and there's a lot of right they have every right to to to do so but i think the maximalist way of doing it of saying irrespective of any sport in any level of sanction you are never ever welcome to come run our race is bad policy to put forth when you're in a leadership position that's my overarching thing is that it's a maximalist policy from a leadership position because you can't change the only way you can change is to get more lenient like i just think that's a horrible corner to back yourself to like back yourself into anyway there's a monologue in another podcast that go all

through that so the listeners will have to refer to to to that one i asked for the record i'll say it again i gave western states the opportunity to comment on this in any way shape or form that they wanted to they gave me a statement to read and i read it during the lisa roberts uh podcast so the listeners can kind of go refer to that so continue on before i uh before i interrupted you mario with your train of thought there i lost my thought right there um sorry about that but but you know but i mean i think this is but to something we said earlier i mean i think if you were this is where i disagree with you you a little bit in terms of having a harsh policy that can only get more lenient i i don't think that's necessarily a bad way to go i i think it's tougher to go the other way to have a real lenient policy that all of a sudden you make extremely harsh but i think if you have a harsh policy in place at least initially and it becomes clear like hey this doesn't work for every situation then you can figure out like what situations it does work in global toward and then where you have to be like okay well for someone who is not in the elite field and and maybe this is like you know as the sport becomes more professional like maybe this is something that needs to happen in higher level trail and ultra distance races where it's like hey this is the elite field like there's a very clear boundary like who's who's in there and i mean there's there's debate about that like when you have people you know can you win the i mean the boston marathon went to a separate elite start to

basically you know eliminate this possibility of like you know someone being able to win from behind but maybe you need to have like a clear designation for an elite athlete so that you can say like hey it is not tolerated here but if you're just going to to participate and you know you are open to retesting and you know you've you've done everything right and you deserve that second chance that opportunity like i'm fine with that but i i feel like you almost have to start with like a harsh policy and then and then figure out like okay well where does it not need to be so harsh yeah i we're gonna have to disagree or agree to disagree on that one because i i think that from a policy perspective when you start you have to try to thread through the middle versus trying to be on the edges of the bell curve because i think that the maximalist policy of any infraction in any sport at any point of your career results in a lifetime ban from this particular race is just as maximalist as just let everybody compete dope to the gills right those are the two maximalist positions in in anti-doping any result results in a lifetime ban or let everybody dope free and just kind of compete i don't think that you should start policy from either one of those end points you have to start somewhere in between them now that could be more harsh or more lenient or whatever but you i just think from a pot like an

overall policy perspective in anything you never start at one of the end points and try to work your way up or down you start in the middle and then adjust as the situation goes along that's my personal take on it we're we're gonna we're gonna end up with a five-hour podcast if we keep going down that rabbit hole well i think we both we both agree that there needs to be adjusting yeah that you're open to it's just where where is that starting point and we can definitely debate that it's hard because everybody wants i wouldn't say everybody wants but most reasonable people most reasonable people want harsher sanctions but they need to be balanced with the athletes rights who have made a legitimate mistake and that happens that happens a shit ton like way more than most people realize athletes run follow the rules they're not intending to and the really unfortunate part is the athletes who do that and the athletes are cheating have the exact same excuses and it's hard for the lay person to determine and all the lay people just want to like throw you know throw criticism around things like that it's almost impossible for the lay person to determine that person was actually cheating or no that person is not it's almost a smell test and it's very very very difficult for the public to kind of decide decide between those two because the presentation of the people that are cheating are is exactly like the people that are not cheating i got you know i was prescribed this medication my whatever was contaminated uh dr fedorik and the podcast that that i just recorded with him said i had

sexual contact with this person and resulted in a it resulted in a positive test i mean all those situations come up with both people that are trying to manipulate the rules as well as the people who general genuinely had no ill intent an honest mistake right did you see the one in horse racing oh god oh just a few days ago the the the horse tested positive yeah that's a shit show and the trainer who is like the legendary trainer ever now his reputation is gonna total shit is uh teetering because uh he said that the horse ate hay that a different doped up horse had peed on total shit show man like you talk we talked earlier about the ufc having problems when they instituted uh doping controls horse racing actually had more way more it's a really really really dirty sport really dirty sport kind of rife with all of the cultural things that went on in cycling times 100 but anyway we're gonna have to end it there guys um thank you guys for coming on man i know there's a lot of banter um i do hope that at the end of the day the community starts to galvanize partially through the some of the content that i've mentioned on the last uh several podcasts but partially on their own accord i mean i encourage people after listening to this have conversations with your friends colleagues sponsors brands um race directors anybody who is vested in the long-term health of the sport needs to come to the table

and start to proactively make solutions and create solutions because nobody's going to do it for us we're going to have to do it ourselves and if we can get that started with just the three of us on this humble podcast hopefully it's a good start just start sending money to debo's yeah there we go we're going to publish debo's that will be in the show notes and debo can collect all the money and only siphon off a little bit of it bitcoin yeah there we go thanks you guys i really appreciate it um any any final notes dylan no coach thanks so much uh for taking the leadership position on this i'm really looking forward to listening to the entire series mario also great to have another awesome discussion with you and uh yeah i'm optimistic with good people like you guys in the sport that we can find a solution yeah thanks coop for hosting this conversation hopefully it spurs further conversation conversations throughout the community amongst all the the stakeholders there that you just mentioned because as dylan and i talked about in his podcast this week like the the sport is definitely at a turning point it's undeniable and it's only going to get more professional from here and i think you know anti-doping um is certainly a key component of that and we need to get ahead of it before it steamrolls us you know 10 years from now as we've talked about throughout this episode very well said mario appreciate the heck out of both of you guys and uh yeah man we'll do it again soon

all right folks there you have it there you go much thanks to mario and dylan for coming on the podcast today that's it for this series of podcasts all having to do with anti-doping solutions in the sport um i hope that people came away inspired to help out um i laid out a lot of different educational topics as well as aspects that hopefully illustrated the need that we need to do something now i wanted to provide an initial effort in producing these podcasts towards that solution but that effort doesn't end here and in fact to ping off of an aspect that we mentioned during the podcast with mario where i asked him if he would pony up as a coach and he wholeheartedly said yes i'm going to do the same thing i'm going to put not only my actions producing these podcasts and being a part of the solution but i'm going to put my money where my mouth is i am going to allocate ten thousand dollars out of my personal operating budget i'm an independent contractor i have to run my own show pay the producers of this podcast pay the editors of the book and things like that i'm going to allocate 10 grand for my personal budget and put it in a box as a means to provide an initial solution within this sport i realize that that's not going to fund the entire thing that there are going to be other parties that have to join races sponsors athletes things like that

that we've talked about throughout the course of these podcasts but i hope that it's a start and i hope that inspires others to take other types of actions you might not have the means to contribute financially that's totally fine but if you want to get in and contribute some elbow grease as charlie has tried to do we went over that with him and his podcast absolutely you need to be a part of the solution so i'm going to do my part i'm going to be a part of the community i'm going to leave this thing better than when i found it that has always been my modus operandi and if it can serve as a point of inspiration for other people to do something similar all the better people i appreciate everybody joining in on this conversation it's been humbling for me and really amazing for me to go through i hope you guys find it as well and as always folks we will see you out on the trails you