Alberto Salazar won the New York City Marathon three times in a row from 1980 to 1982, setting a world record in 1981. He has set six American and two world records, at distances ranging from 5000 metres to the marathon distance of 42 kilometres. In 1994, he became the first American to win South Africa’s 90-kilometre Comrades Marathon. Nike researchers plan to publish a paper featuring some of Salazar’s results next year.
No native-born American has won a major international marathon since the early 1980s. Why have things got so bad?
Americans are becoming less fit. Fewer talented runners are coming out of schools. And there’s been an explosion in distance running worldwide, especially in Africa. Americans weren’t as good as before and were facing better competition than before, so we saw a downward spiral. For example, the record I set back in 1981 in New York was 2 hours, 8 minutes and 13 seconds. Now the record is 2:5:38 but few Americans have run under 2:10.
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How will the Oregon Project help?
We are embracing the science, but the main thing a marathon runner needs is to train very hard for long periods of time. African runners have done so well that now some people are asking whether non-Africans can be competitive. They’re wondering whether it’s a genetic thing.
Do peoples who have lived for thousands of years at high altitude inherit a metabolic advantage? If that’s so, we can’t do anything about it. What we do have to worry about is that these guys are very talented. For American athletes to reach the level we’re shooting for, we’ve got to combine intense, focused training with the most up-to-date scientific knowledge available. We’re going against such talented athletes that we can’t leave any stone unturned.
One key part of your programme is an “altitude house”, designed to mimic life at high elevation. How does that work?
How fast you can run is limited by how much oxygen you can get to your muscles. Living at altitude increases your red blood cell count and your haemoglobin level. There are other effects which are very hard to measure, such as increasing the number of mitochondria in muscle cells. This could result in increased performance. But basically, altitude increases your oxygen-carrying capability.
The altitude house is an attempt to simulate living at altitude, to get the benefits in a controlled environment, without having to move shop. It’s complicated, because you have to figure out the best altitude for each person, and what sort of programme works best in terms of weeks in and weeks out. We’re measuring how long the effect lasts, and how your training has to be changed to accommodate it. It’s an extra stress on the body, so you need more recovery time between hard workouts. Finding the best protocol for each athlete is going to take time.
How do the altitude rooms work?
They have equipment that extracts oxygen from the air. So we get the effects of altitude on respiration without having to reduce the air pressure. Normally, 21 per cent of the air is oxygen. These athletes are living with about 15 or 16 per cent oxygen. But because the air is at the same pressure as the air outside, you can open and close doors and only change the air inside by the equivalent of perhaps a 200-foot drop in altitude.
Why not just move somewhere high up?
You’re better off doing your training runs at sea level. There, you can get in longer, higher-intensity workouts than you can at altitude, where the lack of oxygen limits you. Doing training runs at altitude can actually “de-train” your muscles. The ideal formula is “live high, train low”. The bedrooms are set at whatever each athlete feels is best. Some like 8000 feet, others like 12,000 feet. There’s a TV room set at 10,000 feet or so, as a kind of happy medium.
Some runners see the altitude house as equivalent to the banned practice of “blood doping” where athletes boost their red blood cell counts by removing blood and storing it to be re-injected later. Why isn’t this banned?
You’re not doing anything different from someone who moves to altitude to train. There are people who live at altitude in training camps, and three times a week they drive or fly to sea level to do their intense workouts. This is really no different. It may even level the playing field. Altitude camps cost a lot of money, but you can buy an altitude tent which mimics this for only $7500. And what do you do if you set up a training camp at altitude, then find your athletes work best at different oxygen levels? Do you have people scattered up and down a mountainside?
The house also allows “clean” athletes to get the same effects that “dirty” athletes get through injections of erythropoietin (EPO). That’s a hormone that increases haemoglobin levels – it’s given to cancer patients, for example. EPO is the biggest dilemma in running right now. They’ve just come up with a direct test for it, and they’ve already nabbed a couple of people.
There’s a rumour that your athletes figured that if “some” was good, “more” was better, and jacked the altitude setting up to a Himalayan level.
It wasn’t done on purpose. One day, the carbon dioxide level got too high and an alarm went off. The athletes shut the system down, but they didn’t realise you had to vent the room before restarting it, because otherwise it calibrates itself assuming it’s at sea level. When they turned it back on, it went up to 18,000 feet and the athletes complained of headaches. Now we have a safeguard so it can’t happen again.
One of the most challenging tasks is measuring the total quantity of red blood cells in a living human being. How do you do that?
My colleagues Loren Myhre and Ian Muir have the athletes breathe air containing a small amount of carbon monoxide. This binds to their blood cells, and the tagged blood mixes through their bodies. Then the researchers draw a blood sample and measure the carbon monoxide in it. By comparing that to the total amount of carbon monoxide the runner breathed, we know what fraction of his blood the sample represents. From that, we can calculate the total blood volume. The only other way to do this uses a radioactive tracer, and the athletes wouldn’t be keen on having something radioactive injected into them. Most other studies use extrapolations from red blood cell and haemoglobin counts, without measuring the total volume of blood. We believe that’s much less accurate.
How do you measure the amount of carbon monoxide in a blood sample?
You put the sample into a vacuum chamber, add a chemical that destroys the red blood cells and releases the gases they contain, and measure the amount of carbon monoxide released. The traditional apparatus used mercury to create the vacuum, but that’s now illegal in the US for environmental reasons. We had to import new equipment from Denmark.
Do you have any problem convincing the athletes to breathe carbon monoxide?
No, it’s a small amount – the equivalent of smoking one cigarette. But in the week before major competitions the athletes are leery about giving blood, even though the amount is minuscule. I remember being the same way before major races. There’s no way it could make a difference, but for athletes at this level, you don’t want to do anything they’re worried about. The number one thing is for the athletes to perform well, so we usually test them two weeks before or a week after a competition.
So far, we’ve talked only about men. How much of this applies to women?
For whatever reason, African women didn’t emerge on the international racing scene until recently. Maybe for some reason the differences we see between African-born men and other men don’t apply to women. In the Chicago Marathon, on 13 October, British runner Paula Radcliffe broke the women’s record by nearly 90 seconds, in 2:17:18. So at least we know a Westerner can do it. Radcliffe does altitude training.
Some runners say, “Coach, tell me what to do, and I’ll do it.” You seem to start with the hows and whys, then apply them. Have you always thought that way?
I’m naturally interested. I took chemistry and biology in high school, and my major subject for a while in college was pre-medicine. I don’t read science magazines as a hobby any more, but I’m very interested in how science interacts with health. If you understand why you’re doing something, the chances of succeeding are much higher than if you don’t. In my second year at college some of my team mates were always questioning the workouts. But those guys never did well, and I had doubts and didn’t have a great season either. Then my best friend encouraged me to have more trust in the method. Within four months, I was able to run much, much better.
In addition to coaching world-class runners, you’ve taken a part-time job coaching at a local high school. What prompted this?
I like working with kids. Coaching both in school and at what amounts to the Olympic level reminds me of how intertwined the two are. The better American guys do at the Olympic level, the more motivation it gives the kids. The better the kids can become, the more chance they have of someday competing at Olympic level. It gives me an opportunity to see first-hand how to produce not only better athletes, but fitter kids.
I see kids who are really introverted, who don’t have much confidence or self-esteem. Perhaps they aren’t doing well in school. Then they find something they’re successful at. It’s a grounding thing for me, so I don’t get so involved at the top end that I forget what sports should be about.
In September Dan Browne, a runner from the Oregon Project, beat two Kenyans to win the Twin Cities Marathon in Minneapolis-St Paul in 2:11:35. How did you feel about that?
We’re proud of his performance, but we’re not saying: “We have arrived”, because we haven’t. Dan is capable of running much faster. In the Chicago Marathon, five people ran below 2:7 – in one race. We have a long way to go.
What can we expect in Athens in 2004?
In terms of medals in the Olympic distance races it’s going to be tough. Khalid Khannouchi was the world-record-holding marathoner before he became an American citizen. He is without a doubt the best marathoner in the world. But in terms of American-born athletes – I’d say 2008 is a more realistic goal.