A Year of Running — Time To Reflect On Your Running Credo
The lengths one goes to in order to achieve their goals is often reflected in the sacrifices made to prioritise what is important. But is a little cheating acceptable?
Reflection:
The end of a calendar and lunar New Year presents a natural running coda. A chance to review your effort and to set new challenges. Whilst there may be some (or hopefully many) targets in the past year which have been reached, others may remain near or distant dreams. For those uncomfortable or driven by their unfulfilled goals, ask yourself: Were your targets actually realistic? What can you action now to bring you closer to these goals? What sacrifices are you willing to make to improve your (running) potential?
Each individual has personal (running) goals, but what lengths should an individual resort to in their quest for achievement? We can be guided by personal circumstances and constraints, which define our resources available to achieve our limits. Redefining what we think our limits may be, and not setting preconceptions of what our limits may be is perhaps the alluring attraction of being a runner.
With the ability to track our progress, and the wide availability of advice on coaching methods, running technique, diet and scientific knowledge that helps optimise potential, we love to run because of the possibility of achieving more. At the elite national and international level, this allure is magnified, with the prospect of prize money, recognition and adulation. Achieving success and podium recognition, or an even higher ranking on medal tables are favoured ways to build national pride and national identity.
Broken Dreams:
Year 2015 in the sport of Track & Field has seen has seen many examples of misguided goals, where the sacrifices beyond the norm have been made, and several high profile scandals have been exposed. Whilst the temptation to cheat has perhaps always been there, the high profile nature of T&F world championships, Olympic Games and the riches of the professional running and T&F circuit, from the Diamond League to appearance fees at the marathon majors has increased the temptation to take short cuts. At a home level, money prize purses at most local races, notably the Singapore Marathon, Sundown Marathon and most other established local events inevitably increase the temptation to push legal limits.
With the ever increasing presence of depth in running talent, facilitated in part by the internationalisation of running events and the ability for running to be a way out of poverty for developing nation runners (with Kenya, Jamaica, Ethiopia being notable traditional hotbeds of talent), there is an endless supply of committed athletes. Meanwhile, the perennial powerhouses of the USA, Russia and China, where running also offers financial riches and nation defining pride at high profile competitions, pressure is perhaps sourced from governing bodies that need to give a return on funding.
Further fueling of the prospect of dishonest behaviour in running at an international level is the importance of sponsorship contracts and the competitive nature of securing funding for national governing bodies of sports associations, and the professionalization of the administration aspect of sports management, where non-runners gain a living from managing the sport and current runners. Add in the vested interests of Agents, race/meet organisers, Coaches, journalists, doctors and other industry employees who extract a living from managing runners and runner events, the potential for non-transparency becomes apparent. All these stakeholders have an influence in setting goals and influencing the overall environment of elite runners, which in turn influences the outlook of the industry of running.
Managing Realistic Targets:
One outcome of the increased money in running is the ranking on league tables at major T&F meets, be it international (Olympics and World Championships), regional (Asian games) or sub-regional level (SEA Games) being a key focus for many involved in the sport. In the case of the likes of leading track nations like Jamaica and Kenya, to relative newcomers like Qatar, Burundi & Ethiopia and the perennial powerhouses of Russia, the USA and China, national pride and the need in many instances to show a return on government subsidized training programmes to maintain funding is a driver for performance. League table performance can however be seen as a ‘meet specific’ target, which can be considered short-term. Such specific targets ignore a longer term approach which involves commitment and grass roots funding to talent development to ensure a pipeline of new athletes are uncovered and properly engaged in the sport.
At the individual athlete level, development targets remain personal given the individual nature of running. Yet often individual goals are seen collectively and so intertwined with national and administrative goals. With the aggregation of team (and national) targets, individual athletes are grouped to arrive a meet targets, having the effect of depersonalising individual goals.
The advent of various national level scandals and suggestions of systematic doping programs in the Russian athletic federation is currently the subject of ongoing investigations in France and Russia. Meanwhile the Russian athletics federation has been suspended from competition indefinitely after the recent World Anti-Doping Agency report found evidence of state-supported doping of athletes.
This recent mess is in addition to the questions hanging over Lamine Diack, the immediate prior President of the IAAF amidst claims of bribery to supress the alleged Russian doping, for which the World Anti-Doping Agency (‘WADA’) report released in November 2015 found evidence that brings into serious question the London 2012 Olympic T&F results. The fallout is that multiple results are now about to be corrected to strike out medals won by now tainted athletes. A similar dark cloud hovers over the 2013 World Championships held in Russia, where the home team was the first ever host nation to top the medal tables and against a background of findings tipped off by inside whistle-blowers and uncovered positive tests and confessions by coaches and athletes.
The scope of cheating in international athletics will never be known fully, but the lingering mistrust will probably always be with us. Whilst widespread doping programmes are often uncovered, as it was eventually with the East Germans from the 1970s onwards, including their incredible 40 gold medals at the 1976 Summer Olympics, we live in an era of doubt when exceptional running performances are posted. The shadow of Ben Johnson from 1988, and the many other questionable results before and since that watershed running moment remain as indelible stains. The dangerous combination of money, misguided national agendas and intermediaries that include administrators, agents, coaches and the like who may be tempted to support short-term goals at all costs is always going to be a challenge for vulnerable athletes who have at most 10 years to stay internationally competitive and achieve financial security.
Bandits, PEDs & Cheats:
2015 has been a busy year for negative press for the running (and sporting) world, with the spectre of dishonesty, corruption and vested interests building even more notoriety in our sport. The non-exhaustive list includes the 2015 Nairobi marathon where a ‘bandit’ claimed second and for a time, the $7,000 prize money until he was exposed. Then there is the cloud over Kenyan athletics, with multiple suspensions being served by ‘winning’ athletes over recent years, being capped with the recent suspension in November 2015 of the Kenya Athletics President, whilst the IAAF investigates on subversion of the anti-doping procedures and possible misuse of funds.
There are currently over 30 Kenyan athletes suspended at the time of writing due to failed WADA supervised drug tests, including 2 from the 2015 World T&F Championships in Beijing. This is in addition to recent headlines around returning athletes that previously were suspended for positive performance enhancing drugs (‘PED’) tests, notably Justin Gatlin, the American sprinter who won silver in the Beijing World Championships. Tyson Gay (USA), Asafa Powell & Sherone Simpson (Jamaica) were other notable names that also made recent headlines for the wrong reasons, with suspensions due to positive PED test results.
Further high profile negative headlines making waves in 2015 include the Nike-Orgeon Project under the celebrated coach (and ex- marathon champion) Alberto Salazar, which in turn placed the spotlight (unfairly, until proven otherwise) on his elite team of athletes (including Galen Rupp & Mo Farah). Meanwhile questions over the 2021 World Championships being awarded to Portland highlighted the lack of trust with administrators of the sport.
This backdrop of doubt being raised about clean athletes and administrators compounds the even more damaging impact that the Union of Cycling Internationale (UCI) administration has had on professional cycling. The recent and long-running PED controversies around the Tour of France, with Lance Armstrong at the centre has surely pushed some spectators and athletes away from that sport. Not to be outdone, FIFA and its suspended President Sepp Blatter has seemingly lowered the bar with its back turned seemingly to entrenched corruption of football administrators at the governing body.
The dilution of fundamental ethical values and the preference for pushing limits by vested administrators and the support staff of athletes is a key cause of creating environments which allow cheating via PEDs to occur. Whilst each individual athlete is consciously responsible for their own in-take, it is unlikely they could infringe without complicit knowledge and help from support staff. But at the core of doped athletes, what other factors drive them to take short cuts and cheat?
Values and Context:
Each guilty athlete is unique, and so it would be folly to generalise with broad statements. However what is a common factor is the lack of regard for genuine achievement of long-term goals. The temptation for elite athletes to boost performance by a few percentage points quickly is a crossroad that each cheat would have encountered. The decision to infringe on the values of fair-play to fellow competitors and one’s own integrity would have been trumped by doubts about their own abilities, training regime and prospects at that time. The decision to cheat would be with little regard for the long term goals and the prospect of taking a longer but untainted route to achieving their true potential.
PED cheats, be they athletes, administrators or coaches also forget about their responsibility to our great sport of running. They disregard the basic beauty of it being free, intuitive and within us all to run. They forget that it is our first sport as humans, and that it is the foundation of all sports given running is about agility, speed, endurance and persistence. They forget about the interrelationship of short goals and long term goals, and the beauty of testing and finding one’s natural limits, and then redefining them. For those PED cheats that remain unexposed, their achievements are of course equally tainted, and their relationship with running will be without spirit and authenticity.
So as you review you past year of running and set new-year targets, make them reflect your reality. Be honest with your targets, and then create ‘reach targets’ by knowing each short-term goal is linked to your long-term vision of what you can become as a runner. Whilst speed and endurance are favourite measures of your progress, consider also your wider credo, and what running achieves for your life-balance. Your willingness to sacrifice and deal with disappointment, and using that disappointment as motivation to get you back on the road the next day in your favourite running outfit is the essence of a truly dedicated runner.
Trust your running to bring out your best traits in the long run. Those that seek short-cuts feel uncomfortable with facing their running reality, and lack trust in the ability for running to bring out the best in themselves.
This article was first published by BoldInk Media Pte Ltd in the December/January 2016 edition of RUN Singapore.
https://www.runmagazine.asia/a-year-of-running-a-time-to-reflect-on-your-running-credo/
