Find the original article here. I have merely shared this, as it blew my mind a little. Quite a long read so grab a cup of coffee, it will blow you away.

The genetic influence on exercise performance is dizzyingly complex. So complex that my best efforts to explain how genes may impact on the science of performance will fail to capture just how enormously complex the various interactions are. It is so complex that despite the best efforts of scientists to find “the performance genes”, they have failed. This has been interpreted in some quarters to mean that these genes don’t exist, that genes are unimportant and that training counts for all – nothing could be further from the truth. The reality is simply that they’re too numerous, with too small an influence, and too complex to find…for now.

However, having previously discussed the ‘holes’ in the theory that success in sport can be explained by deliberate practice, it’s important to consider the genetic component. When I presented evidence that showed, for example, that only 28% of variance in darts performance could be explained by 15 years of practice time, then it begs the question of where the remaining 72% lies? When you consider that some athletes are able to become world-class within 12 months of taking up a sport, whereas others slog for a lifetime to stay mediocre, part of the reason may lie in the genes.

And of course, this is enormously complex. So let me say this upfront today: The science of success is about the coming together of dozens, perhaps hundreds of factors. Practice, quality coaching and time spent learning are clearly key factors – this is why you get “hot-beds” of performance, exceptional athletes from anywhere that opportunities exist – the impact of training on performance is large enough that it can help to offset potential differences in innate abilities. Can it turn anyone into a world-beater? My opinion is no, but this doesn’t decrease the value of the training.

Equally valuable, I believe (and some of the early evidence is below) are genes or innate ability, and this is what has been downplayed in the popular media. It is not wrong to suggest that practice is crucial and that elite performers do many hours of training. But it is incomplete. And sometimes, incorrect, when you promote one at the expense of the other – training and genes are additive, not exclusive. So when Ericsson writes in his 2009 paper that:

“distinctive characteristics of exceptional performers are the result of adaptations to extended and intense practice activities that selectively activate dormant genes that are contained within all healthy individuals’ DNA” (Ericsson et al 2009) it must be challenged on the basis that the science may not necessarily support this.

And to help complete the picture, we look at genes – that is the context of this post.

As mentioned, I have recently written two review articles on this subject – one will be published in Dialogues in Cardiovascular Medicine to co-incide with next year’s London Olympic Games, the other will hopefully be published in 2012. My co-author, Prof Malcolm Collins, is a geneticist, and I owe a debt of gratitude to him for some of the genetic concepts I explain in this post. So let’s look at genes and performance.

The most powerful genetic influence of performance is…

At the risk of starting with the blindingly obvious, the first key point to make is that the single biggest impact made by any factor on sports performance is genetic, and it is biological sex. Before people react negatively to that statement, please don’t view it is a statement of superiority or inferiority – it is simply a fact, and is the very reason we recognize (and embrace) separate categories for competition. Ask the following question: If we did NOT recognize that men and women should compete in separate categories in most sports, how many women would be competitive?

Take marathon running – Paula Radcliffe holds one of the most respected records in athletics with her marathon world record. That performance, easily the best ever by a woman, would have ranked her 473rd in an “open” world list in 2009 alone. That is, 472 men were faster than this time in a single year. In history, the time was ranked 3,205th, and that was in 2009 – it’s now probably close to 4000th.

This gap exists in all athletic disciplines ranging from 100m to 100km – a 10 to 15% difference between the best men and women is seen across the board. Of course, the differences may be smaller in other sports – skill-based activities that are not heavily influenced by size, strength, heart or lung volume, hemoglobin content etc may be more competitive. But the difference still exists (would you back Serena or Venus Williams against Federer or Nadal?), and the result is that if we competed in only one category, no major sporting prize would ever be won by a female competitor.

This is the very reason that we recognize separate competitions – they enable competitiveness. And the point is that this characteristic, biological sex, is entirely genetically determined. There are of course cases where the neat binary system we create is skewed by intersex conditions, and we debate and discuss cases like Caster Semenya’s endlessly. In those instances, there is a mismatch between genetic and anatomical sex, such that the chromosomes no longer determine the biology. However, genetics is entirely responsible for male and female characteristics, and this has an enormous impact on performance.

The question is, if genes exert such an enormous impact on the entire organism, are there similar genetic differences within each grouping, and do these affect various systems (muscle, heart, physiology) in the same way?

Genetic complexity – height as an example of complexity

The next illustration is height. It’s well established that height is a highly heritable characteristic. In fact, 80% of height has been linked to a number of genes (it’s called a polygenic trait because many genes influence it), with the remaining 20% being down to environment and diet.

The key about height is that as “simple” a characteristic as it is, it is still impossible to identify all the specific genes and the contributions they make to it, how they interact. And here, it’s important to understand the approaches to the problem. One can look for single genes – they are called “candidate genes” – that account for the biggest impact in height. But because even something as relatively simple as height is polygenic, there is no single candidate gene.

There is not even a group of genes. In fact, if you really want to get down to it, you have to do what are called Genome Wide Association Studies, where you look at the entire genome at once and look for how variations from one person to the next might account for different traits, like performance (or disease, for example).

And when you do this, the numbers become staggering. Most recently, a paper in Nature Genetics found that you could explain 45% of the variance in height by using 3,925 unrelated people, and a staggering 294,831 different SNPs. A SNP (pronounced snip), just to explain, is a DNA sequence variation, where for example Andrew might have a gene with a certain sequence, whereas Matthew has the same gene, but with a single change, a single ‘different letter’, that alters the function or effect of that gene.

In other words, it’s not even as simple as having a gene or not, it now becomes a question of which variant in the gene you have! If this is getting complicated, don’t panic – it’s because it is complicated! The bottom line is that there is no such thing as a single gene that makes one person tall and another short. There are hundreds of thousands of different gene variants, and these variations change the phenotype (the effect of the gene) so that you and a friend may have the same gene but because your SNPs differ, you have different traits or characteristics.

Let’s just go back to that height finding, which bears repeating: Height is almost certainly simpler than something as complex as human athletic performance, yet it requires almost 300,000 different genetic variants, and that helps us explain only 45% of it. How many more SNPs or genes or DNA sequence variations might it take to explain sprint or endurance performance? And this is why when you read that the latest studies have failed to find a gene that explains why Jamaicans are so fast, you should interpret it with the right insight because:

- They are often looking for a ‘candidate gene’ (or small collection of genes), which is a huge oversimplification of performance as a polygenic trait, and;

- There are simply not enough elite athletes in the world to be able to do the study that finds significant associations between that many SNPs and performance. If it takes 4,000 people to explain less than half of height, then how many more may be required to explain sprint performance, of which height is only a small contributor?

This is also why those genetic tests that supposedly tell eager parents whether little Tim is going to be a sprinter or a distance runner are so over-rated. These tests screen for several genes, including perhaps the most “famous” performance gene ACTN3, which is supposedly linked to elite sprinting performance.

The problem is, the studies comparing Jamaican sprinters and east African distance runners find no differences for that particular gene. I hope I’ve shown you why this may be the case. In the words of Prof Stephen Roth, one of the world’s leading experts on genes and performance “It looks like the gene does contribute something, but only a very small amount at the very, very elite levels”. “Several genes” will sadly explain very little, except in rare cases. And performance is not one of them.

So there is no single genetic predictor of success (or even of height), but this does not mean that genetics don’t count towards success. We are limited by our capacity to measure how these many thousands of gene variants interact, as the next study of training responses shows.

Genes and training responses: Responders and non-responders

The next level of our genetic journey is to ask how genes impact on our ability to adapt to training? This is clearly vital for aspirant elite athletes – whether or not you still believe in 10,000 hours, it’s quite clear that some people adapt faster to training than others, or are able to more rapidly acquire skills than others.

The study that is needed to answer this question is to take a large, random group of people and expose them to training, and then to measure how much they improve. And this has been done. There are four studies, summarized in the figure below, where big groups have been put through a supervised training programme, and their VO2max measured as an index of fitness.

So, on average, VO2max will improve by 15% as a result of training. In some studies, it’s been as high as 19%, in others, 9%. This may be due to differences in the training programme, or the people involved. However, what you should be asking, especially given our look at Ericsson’s violin study and the chess paper, is “What are the individual differences that make up that 15%, and what is the genetic impact in these studies?”

And for this, a paper by Claude Bouchard earlier this year. In this study, 470 untrained volunteers were put through five months of training, and their fitness levels measured before and after. The figure below shows the result:

As you might expect, most people improve by average amounts – 38% of the volunteers improved by between 300 and 500 ml/min (shown by they yellow and green bars in the breakdown of responders section). But either side of these “typical responses”, you see the extremes – the “low responders” shown in reds and oranges, and the “high responders” shown in blues and purples. 4% of the volunteers improved by 800ml/min or more, whereas 7% improved by less than 100ml/min.

Overall, there was a range of changes in VO2max all the way from 100ml/min (basically no improvement) to over 1000ml/min. That’s a 10-fold difference. You may recall that yesterday, we saw how chess expertise showed an 8-fold difference between the fastest and slowest to succeed at reaching Master level. It seems that a similar range of responses occurs for physiology.

The end result is that the bottom 5% of the sample, those who responded the least, improved their VO2max by less than 4%. On the other end, the high responders, the top 5%, improved by 40%. That is an astonishing difference, and the simple, and obvious question is where are you most likely to find an endurance athlete in this sample? The answer is on the far right – the individual who shows large adaptations to training, improves quickly and then reaches a higher ceiling. I am sure that every one of you reading this knows one of each of these people, perhaps you are one of them!

Note that this study does not take into account that ceiling, and nor does it account for the starting point. Both of these may be influenced separately, and ideally what you need is a person who starts high, shows this kind of high response, and they are most likely to be the endurance achievers.

In terms of the genes, where’s the link? Well, Bouchard performed a genome-wide association study and was able to identify 21 of those previously mentioned SNPs (genetic DNA variations) that accounted for 49% of the difference in the training response. As we saw for height, 49% is pretty solid, especially with only 21 SNPs – it suggests that height is not so simple…!

One of those SNPs was in fact responsible for about 6% of the training response, and as far as a single SNP goes, that’s a pretty powerful association. The figure below shows the association between SNPs and training response:

It turned out that the non-responders were people who had fewer of these SNPs than the responders. If a person carried 9 or fewer of the identified SNPs, they improved by an average of 9% (about half the average), whereas individuals who had 19 or more of the 21 SNPs improved by 26% (almost double the average). The three-fold difference between the responders and non-responders could thus be attributed to the presence of these sequence variations. Not the genes – I can’t stress enough that the search for a single gene is futile because performance is just too complex. But rather individual variants that make up the response of VO2 to training.

And again, this is just one component of performance – think of the hundreds of other physiological attributes that make up an elite athlete. The reality is that our failure to find a performance gene may be more a reflection on our capacity to understand the complexity of physiology and genes than it is an indication that genes don’t make a significant impact.

The key genetic question: Same training, different responses?

The most powerful question, then, in my opinion, based on the above study, is the following thought-experiment:

If you took 470 volunteers from Kenya, and gave them the same training as was given to the 470 in the Bouchard study above, would you find the same range of non-responders to responders? Would you find that 7% of Kenyans improve their VO2max by less than 100ml/min? And would you find that 4% improve by 800ml/min or more?

I would hypothesize that the whole curve would be shifted way over to the right – there would of course be low and high responders. But the lower responders in the Kenyan sample, would, I suspect, be fewer and perhaps would improve by 200ml/min, not 100ml/min. As for high responders, instead of finding only a few who improve by 40%, you may find many more. This would be the indication of a genetic advantage – not that every single person is superior, but that within a given population (470 people in this case), you are more likely to find the physiological characteristics of a champion athlete in one group than in another.

And as soon as you super-impose the opportunity, the competitive environment, the altitude, the diet, the psychology, the culture and belief, the lifestyle, then you have the recipe for a distance champion – Kenya succeeds not because they have these factors, but because they apply these factors to an exceptional genetic pool.

Jamaica has the same scenario for speed, I would hypothesize: a concentrated group of individuals who possess the necessary physiological attributes to run fast, and to respond enormously to power and sprint training. Then onto that, you add the history, the role-models like Usain Bolt, the school competition, the excellent coaching, the culture of the island, and the result is the perfect mix to produce athletes who may well go on to win half a dozen Olympic gold medals.

No alchemy in elite sport – start with the right materials

But it all starts with the genetic potential. In high performance sport, there is no such thing as alchemy – you do not make gold out of other metals. If you want to produce a champion, a gold medal, then you must start out with the right raw materials. Everyone will improve as a result of training. Some, the lucky few, will start out at a level that is higher than the rest, and will improve more rapidly through training. That this is linked to genes is, in my reading of the evidence, unquestionable.

There are other arguments, of course. Some are obvious – your body size is strongly influenced by genes, and it limits the sports available to you. For example, if you’re 1.70m tall and weigh 70kg, you won’t be playing high level rugby or American Football. And definitely not basketball. If you are 2.00m tall and weight 110 kg, then basketball or rugby are options, whereas long distance running probably isn’t. But these are almost absurd illustrations of how genes, which clearly determine these aspects of our physical makeup, influence performance. But if this is true of these traits, then would it not be the case for something like hemoglobin, muscle enzyme activity/content, plasticity of the nervous system and motor skills?

Rate of performance improvement – a key symptom of innate ability

Last example – I was asked yesterday in a presentation on this subject whether a parent should try to ‘diagnose’ their child’s potential using the genetic tests. I explained above that these tests have very limited potential to do this, to the point of being useless. It did get me thinking though about what we look for to detect whether those genes are present. How does one know that a person has innate ability over and above the typical ability to learn any activity? And I believe the key, as illustrated by Bouchard’s study, is the responsiveness to training.

Of course, the starting point is also crucial, especially for sports that are “physiologically limited” (like running, cycling, swimming, triathlon, where muscles, heart, lungs and brain provide a ceiling for ability). But for skill-based sport, where training time does matter, the key is how quickly the skill or ability can be acquired – this is the symptom of the innate ability. I was asked about the Polgar sisters, for example – these are three Hungarian sisters who were taught by their father to play chess to prove that “genius are made, not born”.

The coaching of their father, along with professional chess players who were employed to teach the three girls the game, produced outstanding chess players. Two became grandmasters, one an international master. Judit Polgar is the most accomplished female chess player ever. Their story is often cited as a nurture over nature example.

But there are problems with that theory. First, the fact that they were all family doesn’t allow you to exclude genes. But more than this, when you read the story and start to see not only what they achieved, but when it was achieved, it’s difficult to make the case for many hours of training being the secret of their success.

For example, Judit Polgar, at the age of five, defeated a family friend (an adult) without looking at the board. She defeats her father (a decent level chess playing adult) at five, and beats a Master level player at seven, playing blindfolded! Remember that yesterday we saw that on average, it takes 11,000 hours of practice to become a master, and you realize how exceptionally talented Judit was. She then beats an international master player at 10, and a Grandmaster at 11. These are accomplishments that precede “many hours” of training.

Her sister Susan wins a local chess competition for Under 11s at the age of 4. Within the first year of their exposure to the activity, they demonstrate exceptional ability, long before the 10,000 hours, long before the deliberate practice can explain their obvious ability. What makes these sisters exceptional is not simply that they accumulate hours of training, it is that their ability to learn the skills is astonishing – defeating a Master at 7, while blindfolded, given that at most, you’ve done maybe 3,000 hours of training, is just a staggering illustration of superior ability, developed through training, certainly, but not a performance that you’ll find in most people.

Sure, in order to continue to the Grandmaster level, to become the best in the world, it required more training. But the trajectory was clearly there early, it was a symptom of innate ability, and so this is an argument for genes just as much as it is deliberate practice.

The Polgar sisters, to sum up, are the sporting equivalents of Missy Franklin or Michael Phelps – precocious talents who achieve within the first few years what others take a lifetime to do, and will often fail. That is as much an argument for innate ability as it is for deliberate practice. The only experiment that proves nurture over nature is if you can take 100 children, unrelated, and train them all to reach the same level of performance. The simple fact is that this doesn’t happen, and the reason is, at least in part, innate ability.

Conclusion: Two valuable frameworks, both absolutely necessary

I don’t think it’s revolutionary to suggest that BOTH genes and opportunity are needed. In the scientific community, you’d be laughed at for suggesting this. Most people believe that it’s a combination of both, and that’s why the current models, the best models for performance, integrate all these factors. One such model is shown to the right – it’s a framework for talent ID and development from a 2008 Sports Medicine paper by Vaeyens (click to enlarge). It clearly includes natural abilities, catalysts, environmental factors and even chance. These are the basis for current sports science beliefs, and the theories put forward in the popular media, and by Anders Ericsson, unnecessarily and incorrectly oversimplify this.

I can appreciate the value of the deliberate practice framework proposed by Anders Ericsson, popularized by Gladwell, Syed, Coyle etc. It reinforces that we must better manage our entire sports environment to ensure that more potentially successful athletes are exposed to good coaching, good diet, competition etc. This has implications all the way up to government level, where policies around sport are determined. For example, in South Africa, sport is less accessible than it should be, partly because of the removal of sport from our school curriculum. We also have a dearth of coaches, and few facilities – these factors combine to greatly reduce the chance that we’ll produce a Phelps, Franklin, or even a great distance runner, regardless of the talent we have.

But equally, the realization that certain individuals have innate abilities that will help them achieve elite levels is crucial. It influences where money is spent, how young athletes are steered, how athletes are encouraged to transfer from one sport to another (think of the lifesavers and sprinters who were given a shot at the Olympics and skeleton because of the Australian Talent transfer). This too has implications for policy, and even for parenthood, in terms of understanding whether a child should specialize early or be encouraged to be as diverse as possible with their sport choices.

All in all, it’s a fascinating debate, and thank you for your inputs and contributions to the debate so far. As always, my aim is to have the first word in a debate, not the last, so I welcome more inputs. In this post, I’ve proposed my theory, based on the early gene studies that are associating exercise performance with genes. I’ve tried to highlight the complexity, and to illustrate that all is not as it seems.

The rest is for future studies, but I’ll leave it with my ultimate conclusion. To become an Olympic champion, the very best of the best, you need to tick the boxes. Genes is without a doubt one of those boxes. But so too are opportunities. And so is success genetics or training? It’s both. In fact, it’s 100% genetic, and 100% training.

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image from Marc

Yesterday, I set a crash course program for Challenge Cape Town, now that O till O is complete. It’s quite a scary one, I have to admit but hey, I`m happy to fail from time to time and this certainly will have me in the failure area if I am not 100% diligent with recovery. In the run-up to O till O, I focussed on specific elements that take more time to get right (swim economy, for instance) and got in as much winter riding as possible, whilst remaining healthy and having a mad work schedule.

So now, we have a 5 week block based very much on maintenance of swim and run form and supercharging the bike leg for the race.

This involves early mornings, weekends spent in a post-endorphin-haze and being ultimately, focused on economy of movement for the next few weeks. Whilst I cannot work much on the testing aspects, protocol aspects and the fine tech that could help, here is a short list of things I DO control:

- Quality of sleep
- Stability of body weight
- Mood
- Quality of nutrition
- Financial stability
- Emotional stability
- Illness and injury history
- Immune system function
- Accident assessment – shelled athletes crash, fresh athletes have close calls.

These are items that I can keep untangled as such. Very importantly from that article for me in the next few weeks:

What you can do, however, is work on yourself, is accept yourself as you are right now, is start to fuel your own personal inner fire of belief without any external sources. It’s not that you don’t value the thoughts of friends and people you love, but instead, that you accept them as simply that: thoughts and input from the outside world. If every time you speak to a group of people, they yawn and look away, accept that maybe you’re boring them, but don’t take it any further than that. Don’t read minds. Just take that information and decide what you want to do about it.

There are going to be but a select handful of people who will put up with me in the next few weeks. They understand the drive and value the commitment (and that I will return from the haze soon).

Thankfully, there is a relatively economic engine under the hood which I merely need to rev a little and I don’t have to put in months of hard work to get close to where I want to be. I will most likely not be in the best shape of my life come 6 November, but I will get close, if all goes well. I am content that in my sporting life, I have done the basics to be able to merely rev the engine a little to get Pareto’s Principle going for me. Doing the work, as I have always stated, is the basic foundation. Once it’s there (just Google 10 000 hours), it’s easy to rev it.

In the next few weeks, I will be reporting back to you on some movement exercises a friend has given me to try out, to do with improving movement and reducing energy waste whilst swimming, cycling and running. Improving response times and being able to maximise performance whilst having a full time job is essentially once of the key pillars to this blog. I am excited to try a few new things and share them with you.

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Image courtesy of Nick Muzik.

I recently grabbed the chance to interview Ryan Sandes. If you have not heard of him, shame on you. He is probably one of the 3 most awarded athletes in South Africa. His sport, ultra STAGE marathon running (across deserts no less) is quite niche and like a Greg Minnaar, he is not a household name. I wanted to get some background questions to why he is so good, but in reality I ended up with the knowledge that the guy works harder than anyone I know. Plain and simple. He is willing to out train every single other hopeful ultra STAGE marathon runner in the world. Period. Full Stop. #BOOM Let’s get to the questions:

1. We have as many nerve endings in our feet as in our nether regions, hence the joy of running. Runners “high” is something I am sure you can contest to. Are you more affected when running by what you feel, or by what you see, seeing as you are someone who runs in the beautiful wide.

I would say it is a combination of both, but definitely what I see effects how I feel. When running in places like the Amazon Jungle, Atacama Desert, Fishriver Canyon, and Table Mountain I am on a constant “runners high” and running up a hill, dune or through a swamp does not feel like hard work. I become like a little kid exploring a new play park and I want too see more and hence keep running. One of the main attractions of trail running for me is the awesome environment I get to run in.

2. I have a suspicion that you have an inherent engine of economy. The way you have risen to the top has been miraculous to some, but I would hope to think you spend 10 000 hours doing something to build your engine as a kid. Economy is surely the biggest factor to your kind of running. What was your childhood like in terms of (subconsciously, of course) teaching your body to run/function on as little effort as possible? How much focus do you place in your current training on economy of movement?

My Dad ran a few Two Oceans marathons when I was about four or five years old and some of my earliest childhood memories are of me running around the garden with his medals on pretending I had just won the Two Oceans! But this was short lived and my main focus was rugby as I think it is every South African kid’s dream to play for the Springboks. Playing flank at school I always had to be one of the fitter guys on the rugby field so maybe that was the start of were I learnt how to run far..

Naturally I have quite an unusual running style but it is really economical so I have not tried to change anything, as it seems to be working. I spend a lot of time on the trails getting my body used to running long distances and this definitely helps my body adapt to being more economical.

3. Your sport is so much more niche than mine. Running is the biggest sport in the world, but Ultra STAGE Race Running is tiny. A niche which you are the worlds leading athlete at. Would you move to a more mainstream version of running if the opportunity existed to improve your professional career or are you focused on your niche for the foreseeable future?

I have set myself three major goals that I would like to achieve as an ultra distance runner. That is to win the 4 Desert Series (www.4deserts.com), the Ultra Trail Mont Blanc and the Badwater Ultra marathon (www.badwater.com).

The 4 Desert Series and the other multi day races I have run have been loads of fun and it has put me on the map as a runner but if all goes well I would like to focus on running the Mont Blanc Ultra next year. This is a different style of race to what I am used to…it is a non stop 100 miler through the Mont Blanc mountain range. I see this as a progression from the multi day stage races and the 100-miler scene is a lot more commercial. It will be a huge challenge to be competitive at the Mont Blanc, but I am excited to keep pushing my physical and mental boundaries.

And then in a few years time I would like to end off with a Badwater Ultra or few…. To me this is the ultimate challenge!

Namibia Desert Race pic by Dean Leslie www.wanderingfever.com

4. I talk about solitude a lot. You seem like a guy who understands that. I have never heard you qualify a statement you have made, which is a very rare commodity. Are you someone who runs because it puts you in scenarios of pure solitude, where you may have to question how the hell you are going to make it back home, or do you find the solitude of your sport leaves you craving contact with the “normal” world?

I am someone who enjoys being on my own and in my own headspace. After about four or five hours of running that’s is when I think most clearly. Running long distances is just a state of mind… I love doing what I do and spending 7 hours on the trails is not hard work for me – I see it as play! I break my longer runs down into mini segments focusing on the present and taking in the surrounding environment… time seems to fly by when I am in the “zone” and I don’t have a worry in the world. Endurance events are all about keeping a positive state of mind and having fun out there…

5. I heard that you sleep on the floor, in tents and have to carry your own food. I also heard you don’t have water to wash your kit in and that its very rough at these stage races. Not quite Sani2c vibes where there is decadence on tap, so to speak. Tell us about the unglamorous side of your races. People underestimate how tough your races are, in fact.

Yeah these races are fully self-supporting, the only thing competitors are given is rations of water and we sleep in massive ten man army tents. To be competitive during the race I go as light as possible and therefore take the bare minimum… I take one pair of race kit so things get smelly (I am not a hit with the chix during the race), I don’t brush my teeth and I live on freeze-dried meals, smash and Perpetuem. I also don’t take a sleeping mat to save weight which has backfired a few times…the Fishriver Canyon is quite a rocky place!

6. I also heard there is no prize money. How are you funding trips, training and all the recovery processes?

Multi day stages races are really expensive because of the remote areas they take place in. The average cost of a race entry excluding any flights etc is $3 000 and my Antarctica entry is $10 000..

Most of the races do not have prize money so when I tell people I run 250km with all my food on my back and pay up to $10 000 in race entry fees I get a few strange looks… my answer is cross that finish line and you will know why I do it!!..

So I would not be living my dream without my major sponsors Velocity Sports Lab and Salomon.

Then there is also Oakley, Suunto, Hammer Nutrition, and Imazine – thanks for your support guys!!

And I have just finalised a Red Bull sponsorship – super stoked!!

7. What was your comrades experience all about? Is it a race you could see yourself competing as a contender? I heard you were rumored to be running?

I did not end up running the Comrades this year…. 89km on tar scares the sh..&%..t out of me! My race schedule got to busy and it was a toss up between the Trans Alpine Trail run or Comrades…. Comrade is on my door step so another year.

I think the Comrades is the greatest ultra road race in the world but as road running it is not my focus and I would not be competitive at it I will wait a few years until I attempt it. But I defiantly will be running it at some stage!

Jungle Marathon in the Amazon – pic by Greg Fell www.wanderingfever.com

8. What are the 5 races you would most love to do and why those specifically?

1. The Mont Blanc Ultra – it is 166km up and around the Mont Blanc mountain range and it the ultimate test when it comes to ultra distance mountain running.

2.Racing the Planet Nepal – it is a one off race next year taking place in the Nepal mountain range. I do not think you will get a more beautiful race than that.

3.The Badwater Marathon – 135 miles (217km) non-stop through Death Valley…the road gets so hot that the racers shoes start melting. This race scares me but is one of the things I have to do before I die.

4.The Skyrun – I was injured last year but went up with Salomon to watch the race. I think this race is the ultimate trail / mountain running challenge in South Africa.

5.An Ironman – I have watched Ironman South Africa for the last two years and the race leaves me with goose bumps. Seeing guys like yourself and Greg Goodall smashing the course really inspires me to get out there one day! Unfortunately I will more than likely watch it from the sidelines again next year…. But a Greg (Ed’s note: Greg Goodall is who I would consider to be my primary rival in my age group in South Africa for Ironman. His balance across all 3 disciplines, ability to focus and do the right kind of training and calm demeanor make him the most balanced athlete out there. We have never raced an Ironman head to head but have raced many other races together. He went to Kona in 2009.) vs Raoul showdown could make for some interesting watching??:)

9. In terms of nutrition, I realize you are a Hammer Nutrition prophet. They make fantastic products, but on your long weekend runs (up to 9 hours I read somewhere), what are you eating out there for that amount of time and do you ever run with music?

Yeah I am a huge Hammer fan, especially of a product they make called Perpetuem. I run for up to 12 hours on only Perpetuem and a few Endurolyte tablets here and there. Perpetuem keeps my energy levels constant with no spikes or drops… I mix it into a thick pancake batter and have some about every 20mins washed down with water.

I listen to a bit of music on my runs, but this is more so on my road runs where things can get a bit monotonous. On the trails I like to be able to hear my surroundings like a hissing puff adder I am about to stand on.

10. I am a gear head. I have seen some siiiick gear that you have had going at African X with that snazzy back pack Salomon have developed. What is the testing process like with them for new gear and how custom is the stuff you are using from them? How much do you think the gear affects your training and racing?

Going to France and testing out all the new Salomon gear was awesome. I got to meet the guys who make the gear and you see just how passionate these guys are about making the lightest, fastest and best fitting shoes and gear for the athletes. The Salomon international group is relatively small and everyone is treated like family. They have gone out of their way to make me prototype gear to keep warm in Antarctica and are also making me custom shoes to fit the exact mould of me meet (I have fat feet!).

Endurance trail running is all about comfort while running and looking after your body so that it can recover as quickly as possible. Salomon have gone out of their way to achieve this and so I definitely feel it affects my training and racing in a positive way. A Salomon athlete wins one in every three trail races around the world so they must be doing something right.

That was that.

Ryan was off to run shortly after the interview (seriously) for a 7 hour run in prep for his Trans Alps run. 7 hours??? The guy just gets the work done, which is probably his biggest secret. I would reckon its taken him less time to get to his 10 000 hour mark in this sport than anybody else, which is why he is so ahead of the competition. His training partners are there for his shortest runs only, from what I have been told.

His results are incredible and he is the leader in ultra STAGE marathon races so far in his career, in the world. Someone equated it to walking into the ring as a first time fighter and knocking Ali out in the first round. He is easily comparable to an Armstrong, a Shumacher or a Wellington. He is local, he is lekka and we should be proud of his achievements so far. I do, however, feel that they are just the beginning.

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This is from Endurance Corner.

Alan Couzens is a super smart guy, and wrote a post about What it Takes a while ago. Get that here.

Today this arrived in my inbox. The Chuckie V article will be posted up a bit later today, around 3pm as well, so click back then for that. In the meantime, trust no ONE..

My post on “What it Takes” from a couple of weeks back generated a good deal of discussion both in my inbox and on some internet forums. I didn’t comment on any of the forum posts because I find it much more interesting studying the psychology from afar than attempting to influence it. It is my experience that the bulk of internet ‘discussion’ is more about a proverbial peeing contest than a true attempt to learn anything so, as a general rule, I stay out of it.

It certainly was interesting, though, to watch it from afar. To watch how some good athletes were hell-bent on proving to themselves and others that they lacked ‘what it took’ to be great. The psychology is still a little puzzling to me. Even more puzzling is how they interpreted my last post to be somehow pessimistic. Let me be frank. If the thought of ‘having’ to put in 10 years in this sport in order to discover your potential is in any way depressing, then find yourself another vocation.

My curiosity turned to anger when the discussion moved to the deterministic implications of genetics. If you want to limit yourself, go ahead, but don’t generalize that others are equally limited. The logic goes, well I’ve done ‘everything I can’ over the past x amount of years to fulfill my potential in this sport and I’m still not world champion. Must be genetics.

I took a look at what the genetic research has to say on the topic of endurance sports in this post. For mine, not all that impressive and certainly not equivocal. Ironically, the same folks who took issue with the sample size of the Baker and Cote 10 year study seem to have little problem with a genetics study that uses a similar sample size trained with a high intensity 12 week training program to infer levels of ‘trainability’ for the Ironman athlete! But my hunch is that the opinions of these ‘dream crushers’ are not based on perusing the genetics research literature and weighing it against long duration physiological studies and theories on deliberate practice. Rather, my hunch is that these folks are throwing out their opinion based on a sample size of n=1.

The central problem with any n=1 opinion in endurance sports is, as the old Edison quote infers, any ‘failure’ is just as attributable to the one training program that you are following than to failure of the principle of training as a whole:

“I have not failed 1,000 times. I have successfully discovered 1,000 ways to NOT make a light bulb.”

Put another way, be very careful when perusing the forums that you don’t mistake the failure of one athlete to come up with a successful method of making their light bulb for the impossibility of light bulb making as a whole.

Additionally, recognize your failures quickly and CHANGE, lest you become ‘one of them’.

The further problem is illustrated in the following story from my swim days:

I have always been a cerebral kind of guy. Always on the look out for ‘the answer’. In my swim days, I was under the impression that ‘the answer’ was technical. I remember one day before practice I was chatting with one of the superstars of our squad. This guy was the most technically beautiful swimmer than I have seen to this day. Every stroke was textbook. I would watch the guy underwater to try and work out the nuances of what he was doing with his stroke that was enabling him to swim 6s or so quicker than me in a 100 sprint. So, anyhow, conversation was slim, so I took the time to ask him, what do you do underwater that gives you such an efficient pull? His answer? I don’t know. Of course, that wasn’t enough. I asked him to demonstrate parts of the pull. When he did, his actions looked nothing like they did underwater. This guy really had no clue how he pulled off swimming as fast as he did. I’m sure never missing a session helped, but that’s the topic for another blog :-)

My point is that the same is true of most elite athletes that I have known and worked with over the years. It takes pretty dramatic consequences to enforce a 100% logbook policy in a swim squad, even an elite one. Most athletes want to do the work, not write about it. As such it is my experience that many of the best athletes have only a very vague idea (based on memory) of how they got to the level that they are at. The very best elite coaches on the other hand, record everything and have notebooks going back to the dark ages on their training programs. Unfortunately, in triathlon, there are so few truly elite coaches that provide accessible knowledge that we tend to believe verbatim the generalities of the athletes that are based on their best recollection of how they trained.

Chuckie V’s most recent blog on “How to become a champion endurance athlete” is a flat-out gem. Through the entire post, the importance of self-belief is highlighted.

Make no mistake, spending time on the forums listening to folks banter on genetics based on their limited recollection of their own n=1 sample is not just harmless web-surfing. It is life altering. With every n=1 reference that you take on, your belief in your own potential is damaged. Fortunately my own ego and pig-headedness makes me pretty immune to what others say, but if you are in any way susceptible to this stuff, keep the following in mind:

• Any ‘failure’ is purely a failure of the one program or protocol that the athlete personally selected.
• Many athletes have a very limited idea of what their selected protocol was !!

So, who do you trust? Well, I’m a pretty good starting point :-) Primarily because I have an obsession with collecting real-world data for all levels of triathlete that borders on OCD!!

But, that doesn’t sit well with the File-O-Phile in me, so in the end, I would tell you to trust RESULTS. Every athlete is an experiment of one and any ‘truths’ about the human training response are typically based on limited samples, limited time frames, along with the limited assumption of human conformity, which I am dead-set against. Every athlete is different. Your best bet for success in this athletics game is to X out the forum window, open your spreadsheet and keep detailed personal records on your personal response to a given training stimulus. In addition, keep that picture of Edison and his light bulb firmly engraved on your screen saver, along with the caption “Persistence conquers all”.

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