Doping Isn't the Real Problem

Yesterday I was blessed with the opportunity to eat some doritos. Now, I don’t know about you, but I can’t eat one dorito; I can’t eat two doritos; Hell, I can’t eat 10 doritos- I eat the whole damn bag every time. I have no self-control, and the worst part of it is that I know exactly why. The combination of delicious salts and seasonings is too much for my taste buds and each chip leaves me craving for more. I feel like crap the rest of the day as a result, but nonetheless I’ll do it again next time they are presented to me. One will never be enough.

Diminished returns is usually something we hear about in economics. The general idea behind is that eventually you will reach a point where something just isn’t worth the trouble anymore. Case in point, I likely could be satisfied after one dorito. I recall a nutrition professor in college telling us that 80% of the enjoyment in the taste of a food comes in the first bite. But I want to keep the taste alive, so I eat another, even though it won’t be as satisfying. With each chip, the enjoyment goes down, so the desire goes up- it’s almost like a drug.

A drug.

Through my extensive watching of the evening news and NatGeo documentaries growing up, I’ve learned some basic truths about some kinds of drug addictions. The first step is getting addicted, and some drugs are so potent that the first hit can be enough to do the job. Then, once hooked, the money to keep the drug flowing is needed because with each hit, the enjoyment is going to go down a little, so more needs to be purchased for the same effect. Over time the amount of the drug needed hits a level past the person’s income, and once finances are exhausted we hear about theft, break-ins, family trouble, and all sorts of horrible things that eventually end up with people in jail*.

We Americans are addicted. We are addicted to money, television, social media, oil and gas, self-image, and sports. It’s evident in our everyday lives that some things, we they to suddenly disappear, would leave many people without a sense of reality. Think about sports: we watch sports endlessly, bet on the winners, listen on the radio, play constantly, and stay ruthlessly loyal to teams that we honestly have no real affiliation to other than ‘my parents always liked them, so I did too’ or ‘I live in __insert big city here__ so I like them’. For athletes, performance means contracts and exposure. Exposure and contracts means advertising deals, which means $$$, which means financial stability and freedom that is the essence of the American Dream™. The huge amounts of fans and the insane amounts of money involved in sports are a lure, and once an athlete takes that first hit, they are addicted.

I didn’t make it far in the sporting world. I competed in baseball and lettered in swimming in high school, and ran decently well for a small, relatively unsuccessful D1 men’s track team. But even I know what it feels like. Beating people in a race is an exhilarating feeling, and I still to this day can’t get enough of it- it’s a rush. I would push and push and push to get where I needed to be in order to win. Long nights of sleep, healthy food, proper exercises, high mileage, and adequate equipment coupled with a strong desire to give everything in practice every day led me to gains I never would have expected out of myself. It was all fun, but it was also addicting. I can’t even imagine getting paid to do it.

Individual sports have a dorito doping problem. We’ve seen it in cycling, weightlifting, and track and field. It seems that each week brings a new story of a high-level track athlete being busted for performance-enhancing drugs, and in many cases we have seen athletes receiving Olympic Medals years after the fact, as a result of a medal winner being stripped of their award. We’ve reached a point in the sport where racing simply isn’t good enough anymore. We want records, fast times, big names- everything to bring us excitement in our instant gratification world. Running message boards are filled with young people asking questions about what kinds of workouts elites do to become as fast as they are. The truth lies in 100+ mile weeks and bone-breaking weariness, not some fancy workout designed by some genius coach. What’s a quick way to the top? For some, the answer is PEDs.

Recently, Nike has announced that it will pay marathoners to be put into a perfect situation in order to break the 2-hour barrier. Before that, a group called the Sub-2 project was created for the same purpose, the difference being trying to race below sea level in the Middle East instead of in Oregon. Many big races across the world offer large bonuses to run a certain fast time, and once one person uses PEDs, the rest almost need to follow suit. Did you ever watch interviews with cyclists busted for doping? Most of them said they had no choice; in the world of cycling EVERYONE was doing it, so the only way to stay competitive and keep making money was to dope as well, because only a small handful of people on this planet are talented enough to be as good as professional athletes who are doping. Track would be no different. If someone bursts onto the scene and has amazing success from doping, odds are some of the athletes will either figure that out or be tempted to use PEDs themselves. From there, it rainbows out to everyone, and soon after that, the ones who didn’t use PEDs are losing sponsorships because they can’t perform well in races. To add insult to injury, some countries don’t have effective measures to prevent doping from happening, and this leads athletes in stricter countries to push the boundaries.

Look at the women’s world records for some of the distance events (the ones held by Chinese women from more than 15 years ago). No seriously, do it. Tell me that those times are attainable and that female athletes wouldn’t be tempted to try every means necessary to get to that level. Do it.

Doping isn’t the problem. Our obsession with records and fast times is the problem. We no longer can be satisfied watching a race simply to see who gets to the finish line the quickest. Heck, there are runners out there getting paid to be a pacer for another- often faster- runner. The lead them out for the first part of a race, and drop out usually around 2/3 into the race and leave the runner to themselves after that. In major marathons a good pacing job pays out tens of thousands of dollars. I like to think of racing in terms of when I was a camper as a kid. When lunch was served, the race to get into line first was on- I had to get food first. I would race other kids to the building where lunch was served. It didn’t matter how fast you got there; the only thing that mattered was who got there first. That isn’t the case anymore.

This past Olympics the Men’s 1500m final came under scrutiny for its absurdly slow finishing time. The winners came in around 20 seconds slower than they were capable of running a in race slightly shorter than a mile. We forget that tactically it was brilliant. We forget that the last lap was run in something around 50 seconds by the eventual winner. What we remember is the slow first few laps. I myself have had significant problems with that race, but for different reasons. I don’t like tactical racing because I love watching people give 100%, start to finish. It shouldn’t have anything to do with records for fast times that we say mean something. Times disappear- races do not. Time is a human construct, but our bodies are not. The reason we have doping is because we are obsessed with time, speed, instant gratification, money, and success.

The solution is complex, and obviously I don’t know the answer. It’s one thing to tell people not to use PEDs, it’s another to say ‘hey, just don’t be as fast as people who use PEDs and get away with it. You won’t make as much money, but it’ll be ok’. I was fortunate enough to never have to witness people using or dealing with PEDs, but I was a victim of our time-intensive culture. We wear GPS watches that nail down our run distances to the hundredth-of-a-mile; we can track our pace at any point during a run, especially during a workout; we run races where we are more focused on our pace than our outcome; we even create special ‘distance carnival’ track meets where athletes are shipped onto tracks like cattle and race only for a time important to them, not knowing more than handful of people in their race. We have taken away the joy of racing to win, placed the emphasis on times, and then wondered why people cheat in marathons and use performance-enhancing drugs on the track. I take performance-enhancers every day- vegetables, fruit, whole grains, doritos, and healthy meats. I don’t take performance-enhancing drugs. You shouldn’t either. Our culture makes it ok to take shortcuts and cut corners on the way to the top, but the process is truly what makes life enjoyable.  Doping isn’t the real problem- our culture is.

*disclaimer: not all drug addictions work this way, so don’t lump everyone together. However, this does happen