Is Doping An Obstacle: Spartan World Championship Exclusive

Hey, what's up? It's Ben Greenfield, and this is a bit out of the ordinary, but I happen to be sitting here with my trusty podcast sidekick, Brock. Jason Skywalker Armstrong. Brock, how you doing?

I'm doing well. Hello. Hello, everyone.

And you could get sick of that lulling Canadian accent over the next few days. Pshaw, pshaw. Because Brock and myself, to a certain extent, but Brock to a much greater extent, we are going to be bringing you some amazing interviews over the next several days because we are at Spartan World Championships.

So here's what to expect. First, if you're not an obstacle course junkie or an athlete, don't worry. We are right now here surrounded by some of the top fitness, health, biohacking, nutrition, and even personal productivity and lifestyle minds on the face of the planet, who Spartan CEO Joe Disena has flown in to be here. And Brock and I have decided to get the microphone in front of them and take a deep dive with them into their top secrets that we can deliver to you. And we're also, of course, since we are surrounded by some of the fittest people on the face of the planet here, we're going to be interviewing some of the most hardcore men and women that exist when it comes to their insider training tactics, their nutrition secrets, their recovery hacks, and a whole lot more. So basically, you are going to be getting lots of podcasts over the next few days. Don't worry if you don't have time to listen to them. You can save them. And I believe these even a handy save function in Apple podcasts. You don't even most podcasting apps save them for later. The next time you're bored on a drive or you have a few extra gym sessions or you're out on a long hike, you can basically listen into a lot of these extra episodes we're gonna be pushing out over the next few days.

You can bathe in them even.

You can bathe in them. Literally, like a float tank or Epsom salts. Yes. So we are, in addition to a bunch of podcasts, you're going to get right here on the podcast feed, doing a bunch of short videos, video and audio interviews over on the Facebook page. And if you don't know the Facebook page URL it is Brock, take it away.

Facebook.com BG Fitness so go to facebook.com.

BG Fitness if you want extra photos, amazing, entertaining and educational content for you in addition to what we're giving you right here on the podcast.

I'd call it edutainment.

Edutainment did you make that up?

No.

Okay. Now, we may not have our usual show notes. I'm gonna warn you.

Yeah.

But because I'm illiterate, Brock is illiterate and dyslexic and listen and Canadian. And frankly, we're going to be so busy interviewing people, we're probably not going to have a lot of time to sit down and make for you show notes. But we will make for you plenty of extremely helpful content and we promise mad value if you just listen in the next few days. Again, we're not going to bore you with the ho hum. I eat Red Bull and Snickers before the race and my top recovery tactic is compression socks.

Nor are we going to bore you with a long intro than we've already done.

No. This is getting a little bit long in the tooth. So I will be racing. And I will be not only racing, but likely out there leading other racers through the course after I've done the race myself. So you're going to need to get used to Brock's Canadian voice and his beautiful shaven ballerina legs.

You betcha.

Which you actually can't see on an audio podcast, but I can vouch that they are quite beautiful. He'll be the voice you're listening to and seeing if you're on Facebook all weekend as we make you a part of what is widely considered to be the super bowl of obstacle course racing and is the crown race to discover who the fittest person on the face of the planet actually is.

Spartan World Championships.

Unless you're a CrossFitter, in which case it would be the CrossFit Games. So get ready of plenty of action. Get ready for plenty of action over the next few days. And if you want to have the most fun with this, stay tuned to all the live content and the conversations over at facebook.com bgfitness and keep a notepad or your own friggin noggin.

Make your own show notes, guys.

That's right.

Come on. We've been holding your hand for too long. Now it's your turn.

Take notes on everything that we bring your way. We promise we're going to make this a lot of fun for you. So that being said, listen in because here we go.

He's an expert in human performance and nutrition, voted America's top personal trainer and one of the globe's most influential people in health and fitness. His show provides you with everything you need to optimize physical and mental performance. He is Ben Greenfield.

Power.

Speed, mobility, balance, whatever it is for you, that's the natural movements get out there. When you look at all the studies done, studies that have shown the greatest efficacy.

All the information you need in one place right here, right now on the Ben Greenfield Fitness Podcast.

All right, welcome back to the Ben Greenfield Fitness Podcast. And once again, this is not Ben Greenfield, as you probably guessed by the.

By.

By the sound of my voice. And we're still Here at the two 2017 Spartan World Championship here in Lake Tahoe. And this podcast is part of the pod Fe as put on by our gracious host, Joe decenna. And right now I'm sitting across a very low table from a fellow that I actually interviewed a few years ago about something completely different. I can't actually remember what it was. I think it was fat adaptation and use of fat in sports or something.

Sounds about right.

Yeah. So today we're talking about something completely different, and it's Ian Adamson, who is an adventure racer, He's a television personality, and now he is the president of the International Obstacle Sports Federation. I got that right. He's looking at me very, very proudly because I got it wrong earlier.

Nodding like a proud father.

Yes. I'm feeling pretty proud too, because it's been a long weekend. I don't know about you, but I've done so much talking, my tongue actually hurts a little bit.

Oh, that is a lot of talking.

I have never experienced that before in my life. But I've. Seriously, I've got like a. Like a sore on the side of my mouth from talking so much. Maybe that. So I'll shut up and let you. I think our audience would be interested in hearing more about the federation.

Well, thank you. Not Ben Greenfield. So our federation is the International Obstacle Sports Federation, and we are the world governing body for obstacle sports, which are obstacle course racing. We have obstacle racing. No, running. So like, like American Ninja Warrior.

Oh, okay.

So these are events, and so they're.

Not 16 mile events, they're just like bang, bang, bang, bang, bang.

That's correct. So sports typically have disciplines and events, and in obstacle sports right now there's many events, there's about 30 common events. Most people are doing something that's kind of cross country out in the wilderness, like a Spartan race or a tough mudder or one of these other brand events. But there are also federation events starting to kick in. And we've been working on the governance, really putting together the structure of the federations for a few years now. It's all been pretty quiet behind the scenes, not a lot of front facing Stuff. Yeah.

Yeah, I haven't. I haven't heard anything about it. Not that I expected to. You don't hear a lot about. Federations are generally not flashy kind of things until you get to the Pan Am Games or until you get to the Commonwealth Games or the Olympic Games, of course.

Well, that's right. And the one thing that. And it's kind of transparent. The community doesn't often care very much about federations until it matters to them. And the things that really matter to us as athletes when we're involved in events, we want things that are better value, so cheaper, safe. You don't want obstacles to fall over, which they do occasionally, unfortunately, they shouldn't. You want things to be fair. You don't want to have. You want to have good competition rules. You want to have.

Anti doping, so doping control. So you know that the guy.

We're getting into that for sure.

In a bit we will get into that. Doping control is important because no one wants to be up against someone who is not as good as them, but has. But beats them because they had an unfair advantage. So that would. That would fall into the category of fairness.

Okay, so this weekend, what was your role with the Spartan World Championship? Are you more of an observer?

Yeah. One of the things that all federations do at every level is that our job is to facilitate safety and fairness for the athletes and value and all that kind of good stuff that athletes need and want. But it's also to facilitate collaboration between all the parties of interest, which are governments, brands, advertisers, all the things that make a race happen, actually an event happen. All the vendors and the people around these big events are necessary because they. They help the event exist. Yeah, it goes all the way through podcasts, NBC's presence, doing their broadcasting.

Yeah, they're doing amazing.

It's a bit. It's a big deal. It's kind of complex, but it extends all the way outside the brands. Now, obviously, Spartan Race specifically is a very big brand, the dominant brand actually, in competition. But there are many brands, two and a half thousand brands in obstacle. Holy smokes. There's a lot. Around the world, we have 70.

National federations. So the international federation's members are the national federations, which are the governing bodies in each country. Their members are the athletes. The reason that there's an international federation is to facilitate collaboration between all the national federations which are representing the members. So it's all of the athletes. And we do things like we represent and facilitate the ability to have safe, fair Competition at the international level and the continental level, and then ultimately the ability to get to games. So you can't go to. For example, you couldn't go to a Spartan race and qualify for Pan Am Games or the Olympic Games because it's a brand and they're not part of the sport. Well, they are part of the sport. They are a brand in the sport. Like triathlon. Right. Iron man is a brand. They have a distance, which is not in the Olympics, as an example, because that's not an Olympic event. But they do have a very good relationship with itu, which is their world governing body.

Yeah.

So you can qualify for international championships and various games, of which there are many at Ironman events, same. So you can see it's a very flexible system.

It is, yeah. And a little bit confusing. But I guess the. The confusion only comes from it's. It sounds like it's. They're really trying to be very inclusive, which is great. And not just set up themselves as almost another brand.

Well, that's right. In fact, federations are not brands. This confuses the brand sometimes. But certain brands view federations as being competition, and they're absolutely not. Their job is to facilitate collaboration and help the brands wherever we can. Now, some brands get it. The big brands usually get it really fast. It's partner race, tough money. These guys understand it because they start getting into the bigger system and they start going international, and then it becomes very, very apparent that it's a very effective and very friendly collaborative environment between sport and brand at the top level. Now, as you kind of go further down the tree, there's less understanding and there's less collaboration, but that, you know, we're not too concerned about that. Our job is really representing athletes. And that, of course, means if we can work with the brands to be safer and fairer. And this is a great example at the Spartan World Championships. It's a big event. There's a lot of people here. There's a lot of people very seriously chasing money and wins and. And working with the. The sport is valuable because we help facilitate a closer alignment between how everything looks, feels, people qualifying, the rankings, and it goes on and on and on.

And anti doping and anti doping, that's. And that was what I was going to bring up next, which is absolutely perfect because I. In the. The idea of fairness, the idea of representing the. The athletes themselves, you really. The doping part of it really comes down to protection for. Not only the fairness, but protection for the athletes themselves as well. And I know at lunch Yesterday you were talking to Ben about some of the differences in the dope testing going on. And that's what really sparked my interest in talking about.

That's right. And there's anti doping done correctly, so we call it doping control. But done correctly, it's very effective. It's quite difficult to buck the system. It's possible. If anyone saw Icarus.

I was just gonna bring that up. Yeah, if you saw that, but that was really complicated. It's not very easy to buck the system, even if you've got somebody like that, that fellow working on your side.

Well, that was a bait and switch. That was actually very simple, very effective, very clever. Not clever enough because you can get away with it.

But they got away with it for what, 27 years?

They got away with a lot for a really long time. In various countries, various sports have managed to do that. It's often at a team level. So often a team in a sport, in a country may do it. There's some well known examples in cycling and in Nordic skiing. And quite often.

The sports have quite a lot of control. So the sports, when I say control, I mean ability to create a fairer playing field, done properly, working with all the brands and all of the national federations, the continental federations and the athletes need and want it. For the most part, the number of people doing doping is very small and we can cast a fairly wide net. But the reality is that for the athletes, it's more than just fairness. It's actually a lot more. Because health and safety is a huge deal.

Exactly.

Yeah. Plenty of athletes die, I mean, die because they dope and they dope too long or too. I mean, doping a period is not good, but they, they can kill themselves and they do. Yeah, yeah.

It's a terrifying prospect that people are willing to put their lives really on the line for this. Potentially only small advantage too.

That's right. And sometimes the advantage doesn't work. Especially, and this is the beauty about obstacle course racing, is that the variables, you can't dope your way typically into a win if you don't have the skills. So there's things out there that, if you manage correctly, is a very smart, good, savvy athlete, you're going to do on average better than the guy next to you who thinks they're going to do it through doping. So that's an advantage. Having said that, at some point there may be doping in the sport that may exist. We don't know there's enough people. Statistically, yes, statistically there's Plenty of people. So statistically there should be, you would expect, somewhere in their elite or age group or wherever someone's doping.

So I know the age groupers weren't tested yesterday, but who exactly was tested in the big championship competition yesterday?

I'm going to go into a little bit of detail, so forgive me. So there's. There's a difference between sample taking and testing.

Okay.

So the first thing is sample taking. So you're sampling the field, and yesterday it was the four top men and the four top women had urine samples taken. So that's in competition, sample taking.

So those are just on ice somewhere.

That's right. So they basically, they go.

Is a urine test?

Urine test, yeah. Urinalysis. So they. This is a fairly effective test. It's fairly easy to do. It's not blood and it's a. For all of the people who went through the testing, at least half of them had been tested before. This is where it gets interesting, because some at the Olympic level, like, actually Olympics, in which case they're probably being tested hundreds of times. Yeah. And then there's others who have been tested in professional sports and they've been tested probably hundreds of times. Some people are. They get a. It's basically they call an athlete passport, but it's a. You get a passport and you have to let them know where you are at all times.

Some of the triathletes pop up and test your urine.

Heather Golnick.

Or take your urine.

That's right. That's exactly right. Heather Goldnick was a professional triathlete, five time amazing athlete. She was in the system. Right. So she would. She was at Disneyland with a family one time and she has to write down what she's going to be. They tested her at Disneyland.

Wow.

Yep.

Well, I guess if you're for. If you're going to be really, really fair, that's the only way to do it. Otherwise you can just be like, oh, sorry, I didn't tell you that. I happened to be in Russia, for example, for the three months leading up to the Olympics.

That's correct. So that. So we're talking about sampling and testing. So I actually said testing where we meant sampling.

Yeah, that was all about the sampling.

Yeah. So it's the sampling. Easy, quick ones, your analysis done properly. It's very strict protocols around it. Very, very specific forms to go with it. And there's. There's protocols. You need a medical director. You need people to know how the whole system works. You need a team of doping control people with chaperones and it's a very specific chronology of things that happen.

Chaperones, you mean to escort them into.

The bathroom stall to watch them from the finish line until they've peed in the cup? Oh, actually watch the pee leave the human body and go. Oh, really? That's important because you don't want someone putting something in.

I suppose that was something they talked about in the, the Tour de France. They were thinking that they had like bladders full of other people's urine.

Oh, there's all sorts of tricks that people use. I mean there's all sorts, there's just this huge range of things. So the medical director here does doping control for Olympic sports. So he's, you know, he's a very, very good medical director. And then we had another gentleman who has been in the Olympic movement as four time Olympian to sport, four time Olympian and medalist. So he's been tested and now he heads up sports. So we had a, we had a full doping team here and anti doping team. Got to get it right.

Yeah, wrong one, wrong side.

So the anti doping team, so they do, they did the sampling. So those samples now are going, being shipped to the, to their office at the Olympic training center in Colorado Springs. Okay. And then do they use those crazy.

Bottles that they showed in, in the Icarus movie? You can unscrew, but you can.

Well, that's the top level. They didn't, they used the, they use medical sample bottles but they put, they put it tamper proof. They do two. Well, it's actually kind of. They do four levels of tamper proof sealing. So they seal it up. The seal, they actually split the sample into two. Then they seal it up and the athletes have to do it all because it's always has to be only the athlete's hands. Then they put these anti tamper adhesive labels on and then they draw through the label. So if someone does attempt to take the label off, which is very difficult, try getting it back on where the line was. It's almost impossible. You can try it for 100 years, you probably wouldn't get it. So you do all these levels of security. So you know, the A and B samples are the ones and then there's barcodes and there's numbers and there's big four. I mean it goes on and on and on. It takes a while. And that's just the sampling and then it goes to the testing. So those go to various labs. So what, this is the first step. So what's happened here is.

Very good sample taking all to Protocol with the people. Actually do it regularly. And then it goes to. So this is a spread of people. In an ideal world, you capture a few more, but it's very expensive. So you do a full panel urinalysis, and it's like. I don't remember the actual number. About a thousand bucks. It's about a thousand bucks a person. So just if you test all eight, that's $8,000 in the testing. Yeah. But then you've got the medical director and the time, the flights and all that. So really, it's about a $20,000 exercise just for that number of people. Most races don't have that kind of money.

Yeah, that falls onto Spartan.

That falls on the phone. Spartan requested it.

Okay.

So we went in as with the US Federation, usa, ocr, and they recognized.

Basically, they're recognized in the United States, like officially recognized. Not many in the world are. There's 70 countries, but maybe eight are recognized. Takes a long time. Yeah, now we're working on it. We're three years in at the international level. And Most people say 20 years to never is.

Oh, wow.

Yeah, we. We're hopeful. We. We're hopeful. I'm bullish, you know, I'm super optimistic. But I'd say we can do it by 19. That's what I say now what? But it's not up to me. Yeah, a lot of it is. And then. And we can then roll this thing across every country and all the big brands. There becomes a point where we can do it at no cost to the brands. There's a point we're not there yet because we haven't monetized the sport yet. We're doing all of the. All governments. We do it. I mean, I do it. I spend money on it. I advance money to the federations and to myself and to the International Federation to make it happen. But eventually we'll get there. Hopefully, I'll get my advance back.

That would be nice. Okay, so now we've collected the samples and potentially sent them off for testing. When do they decide or what's the criteria that they decide whether to test it or not?

Well, it's done in two ways. So those samples are stored. Right. So they basically go into fridge or freezer. Then the question becomes, all right, so, shall we? And we don't know whose samples who at this point, because you got to match the forms and the numbers and all that sort of stuff. So they just got a whole bags of samples. Yeah. And then you randomly. You can either test all of them or you can Choose a few. Or almost. Or some. Or whatever. Whatever is tested. And that's quite common. It depends. Usually you do top three and test and then some randoms.

Okay.

And that would be normal. Now, remember, this is the first step. So most of the standard international criteria and standards for sampling and testing met. Now, what we have not done yet is we're not doing actual water testing. So that's World Anti Doping Agency testing. Now, this is another level because now the controls are stricter and you bring in actual water people who do the actual sample taking and actual testing. And most sports don't do that. They will. They'll bring in accredited actual medical directors who do it properly. And that's where we are. We're not at the. We're not at the hundred thousand dollars testing level yet.

Does that mean, like, would WADA be testing for something different, like something beyond the regular dopamine?

No, there's just a stricter level of. It's like. It's like Icarus. Right. So the, The. The glass jars with the tan proof tops.

Oh, okay.

But the labs that test, now, that's different because water doesn't test their accredited labs. It's in the US and North America. It's usada.

Okay.

So US Anti Doping Agency. So USADA does it in the Americas. It's the same thing. Totally.

Okay.

And then there's accredited labs. So what? The top of my head, Cal.

Ucla, I don't remember, somewhere in California is the accredited lab. And then there's other levels of testing. This is where it gets quite interesting, because I was talking to John Albon coming in. He said, oh, yeah, I was tested in Scotland and I was tested in Canada, and I've been tested here and there. I said, well, what did they do? How did it look? He goes, well, in Scotland, they just took one vial of blood. The guy looked at it and just threw it in a box. And I'm thinking, okay, so not even sampled properly. Right. So that's where doping. We're anti doping or doping. Got doping control, but we're actually not.

So that was interesting because it wasn't labeled in any way or was.

Well, you need two samples and you need all the labeling, the seals and the. And I mean, there's this whole protocol that goes around it. And his description was. It wasn't even close because they're probably assuming that no one or they don't even know how to do it.

And this was at an obstacle course.

Yeah, I don't know. It could have been running.

I don't know where some sort of.

He was. He was tested somewhere. He did it. He had something done in Canada. I don't know exactly where it was. He. I believe it was.

The OCR World Championships last year. Now those are World Championships, just so you know. It's not federation, it's a trademark of a New York corporation. So that's not actually a World Championships. They just have the name.

It's easy to. I could have a World Championship. Yeah, you could.

You can. Yeah, you absolutely can. Everyone, everyone can have World Championships. Let's do it gets a little, it gets a little sticky though when you say we're the independent OCI World Championships and everyone thinks you're the actual World Championships. Because I get. The federations get tons of calls from people saying can I qualify for your race? And we go, we don't have a race. And say what do you mean you've got the OCI World Championships? No, that's, that's just the name Renewal Corporation uses for a branding, you know, to make money because they're trying to make money from. They are making money from the athletes. It's great. It's a great idea. Yeah, brilliant.

Stealing, that's. What do they call it? The search engine optimization of like stealing people's names on the Internet. It's kind of the same sort of idea, I suppose.

Yeah. I mean it's great ideas. Brilliant. We would love them to work for them to work with us at this point. They've declined but I think it's an investor thing. Right. They've got to answer to the investors and it's a for profit business and being in the nonprofit world is. Or being aligned with it, they see it as competition. There you go. You asked the question there.

Yeah.

One of the brands that see. See sport as competition, which makes sense because they've got this trademark independent OCR World Championships.

But anyway, so let's get back. So he was tested in Canada.

He was testing Canada. Same thing. How did it go? What did they do? Said I beating a cup. Got a sample. But what about all the forms and the ceiling and the, and the handling and. No, now they say on their website, if you check on the OCR web, the. What's it called again, the independent OCR World Championships website. They say they use the.

I think it's called the association for Drug Free Sport or the Something for Drug Free Sports, the US business and they do middleman testing. So they actually don't test. They, what they do is they provide services where they can send people to do the sampling and they probably do it properly, I'm guessing. And then they can, if they choose, depending what that sample is, they can then send it to an accredited lab. If you want an accredited lab. Of course the price keeps going up and up and up and up and up. So if they take samples, so they do the sampling and if they do it properly and then if they decide to do the full screen test is what it's called. So full panel, then it gets very expensive because it is a very expensive exercise and it's, it's in great depth and this is what you want to see. You want that to happen. Now the chances of that happening from. So our understanding is, from the description is that that probably didn't happen. I actually called the company. Oh yeah. And they couldn't find any information on it.

So if these things are happening so differently, like not only like blood versus urine versus in a cup versus in a thing that's sealed and stuff, what are the, like there's some obvious ramifications of, of that, but on a sort of bigger, like broader scale. What's, what is the implication there?

Well, I think the threat of dope anti doping is good. So most.

You mean just the idea, like the idea is that the athletes know that they might be tested. So yeah.

Even if it's a smoke and mirror. So from what we can tell most, it's mostly smoke and mirrors. That's what as far as I can tell. Yeah. I don't know. I mean I, I, I could be talking at my proverbial sphincter, but the reality is from the, yeah, we talk out my ass. I don't know what you can say on Ben's stuff, but I just said it, so.

And the Mind Pump guys earlier today were swearing like crazy. So.

Awesome. We'll let it hang out. The thread is good. It means that people will pay more attention the athletes. That's good. If you try and fake a test, but it's a really poor fake or I mean it's just, it starts raising questions and then you can lose credibility. I mean, I think from what I could tell from John, you should probably talk to him. I miss it secondhand, but yeah, my, my, my interpretation from what he said was. Yeah, it was a joke. Like the, the Andy, so called Andy doping done these other things is absolute joke because he knows what it looks like.

Yeah.

And here at least half the people that were tested have been regularly tested at the proper, at the highest level, you know, at the Olympic Games by water. They know what it looks like they know exactly what it looks like. You can't fool them.

But I guess you're right about the. The smoke and mirrors. Like just the idea that, well, I showed up at a race in Scotland and then one in. In Canada that didn't quite test right, but then, boom, they show up in Tahoe and it gets. They get tested correctly. There's still the fear that there's going to be a correct test at some point, I suppose, but it does kind of make you raise an eyebrow.

It's a problem if the. Let's say. I mean, we know the people who have questions, because we have a lot of questions. We give the athletes all sorts of opportunities to declare things and.

Show documents. And so there's a thing called a Therapeutic Use Exemption, a tue.

So if you have low testosterone and you're using a testosterone.

Right, exactly. So that's exactly right.

Not too extraordinary levels. But to regular.

No, but. And it's valid and it's a real thing and it happens a lot. So. So you got asthma and you got a serial inhaler or something like this. So they're real cases where an athlete really needs a TUE because, yeah, they can compete and, yeah, it's fair. So what they. If they're smart enough and they understand it, they will go to. In the us, they'll go to usada, they'll go through the paperwork, they'll get their tue. And we had it happen here. We had athletes with TUEs because they know.

So you get your physician to say, yes, this is a valid. And you take it to the. Was usada.

You said USADA here.

And they give.

Nice. Anti Doping Agency.

Yeah, yeah.

So they get it from usada and then. And then. So. So they're in the system and it's all documented before it even happened.

Yeah.

And they're smart enough to know that. So this guy, you know, these people are. They're smart. Athletes are smart. They should be. They should educate themselves on all this.

Yeah, well, it's easy to get this information now. It's not like 20 years ago and you had to like, go to the library or something.

All on the. All the Federation. Well, at least the International Federation and the U.S. federation. It's right on the website. Well, and even click on the link.

So many supplements that I buy these days actually have a label on it that says like, like water approved or. Or something like that. Just indicating that you're not going to get busted if you're taking that supplement.

That's right. There's actually. That's, that's correct. There's. There's actually there are products. Thorne is an example. So Thorne is a. Do you know Thorne? Yeah, yeah.

Ben's a big Thorn affiliate.

Oh, okay. Yeah. So. So Thorne are accredited for all of their products. So they sponsor Olympic sports because it's safe.

Yeah.

It's not going to be tampered and it's not going to go in a factory that could accidentally dope the athlete. And when you get to the highest level as an athlete, you get quite. You get very careful, put it that way. Yeah, you get very careful about who touches you. You get very careful about what they put on you. You get very careful about what you eat because you don't want to be that athlete who got doped somehow by someone or just by happenstance. And it happens really unfortunate when it does.

Well, there was a triathlete not that long ago that got busted for the SARMs selected at selective androgen receptor modulators. And she said that it was eventually they tracked it down to her electrolyte formula. Had just trace amounts of it or something.

That's right.

So how the heck does that happen?

Because a lot of, I mean if you're just, if you're mass producing.

More likely you're a small producer but you're in using someone's factory. Right. So yeah, you're making some electrolyte stuff and then you're in some factory and they don't clean the equipment because they don't really care. They're just going to clean it and not clean it precisely, but it looks clean enough. And this really doesn't matter to almost anyone. So it doesn't have a clinical effect on almost anyone but you can still measure it. So that's the problem is that yeah, I got this electrolyte and it's great and it works great but you don't know what the factory did or what was in the line before that product or all that's really hard to prove too. Like very difficult.

Like once you've been been busted and labeled and kicked off the circuit and, and stuff, what are you going to do? Spend like hundreds of thousands of your own dollars tracking down the manufacturer and like it's unlikely to happen.

That's right. And that's why I think companies like Thorne have stepped up and they go, they get accredited, they clean, their stuff is clean, not tampered with. Sealed up properly, you're safe.

So that's, that's a lesson to you folks out there listening right now, like, make sure that you do your due diligence on your own end. If you're competing at a level where you're likely to be tested and likely to run into those problems. There's. The majority of us are probably. I'm quite certain I'll never have a doping test because I'll never be at that level where anyone cares about my outcome.

But.

But if you are at that level, then you do need to do that due diligence, don't you?

That's right. That's exactly right. So that's. That's what Spartan is doing right now is they're stepping up to get the fairness elements in place. Yeah. Then we hope to see it with other big brands. And, of course, as we mature the sport with the National, Continental and International Federation, we'll be able to take a lot more of that burden.

And this really means a lot to the sport of taking this part of it seriously in its endeavors to. Or in its hopes and in your federation's hopes to get it to that bigger level of getting it into the Pan Am Games and places like that. Right.

That's right. Hang on one second.

That was my running up the hill cough.

It's really dusty here. It really is dry.

It is. So, yes, the goals of our international federation are to achieve recognition as an international federation. And what that means is that once recognized, then we actually do have a sport. Now, I would be shocked if anyone says we don't have a sport.

Yeah. That seems strange.

We have all the bits and pieces that, you know, looks, feels. It's big. Way bigger than almost any. In fact, I think the biggest mass participation sport on earth now. Not just think I know for sure. Meaning a lot of people on the start line.

Yeah.

For competition, where the people are actually racing for their time. It's. We are big. Huge.

Yeah.

Which is good because it gives a lot of power to what we can do. And early in, we were very, very early in on the life of the sport. Meaning we can have a more collaborative atmosphere between all the players and create a playing field that is a lot more cohesive than, say, combat sports. As a good example, the disarray in combat sports, because there's so many of these four or five bodies that kind of emerged and then fought each other. Yeah. Now, we don't want that to happen. So we're. We're so far. Cross my fingers, but so far we've managed to. We've managed a seamless collaborate, relatively seamless collaboration. There's little hiccups along the way, but meaning that, you know, the federations aren't fighting anyone, the brands aren't fighting anyone and everyone's happy and we're all moving together and bringing things into alignment like anti doping and competition rules. And it doesn't mean that it's constraining the sport at all. This is a big fear, by the way. A lot of athletes think, well, aren't you just going to make our sport.

Terrible or homogenize it so all of the races are the same and they don't have their own specific je ne sais quoi or whatever?

Exactly. That's exactly. The goal of a good governing body, is to encourage the thing that makes the sport itself. And in obstacle course racing, the thing that makes this interesting is you can do anything you want and you're going to innovate constantly and be really flexible and throw out these new. So that's all not okay. That's necessary. Yeah. So to encourage that is absolutely crucial. To encourage the diversity and the flexibility and the innovation and that's crucial to this sport, to keep it healthy. I would argue all sports, but. But this is a good one because it does that. The layer that we add is the ability. We add events that.

Are easier to measure and easier to have. Records, rankings, fair competition. If you're competing in Bulgaria or Sacramento or Sydney, Australia, and you're on a championship course for games, then, you know, it's the same course that's different, that's just adding something in. That's adding another layer of ability for people to compete. For those who want to go onto the Games level, then they get a format that they can do it. They're going to compete in all the other stuff, most likely. But then to go to that kind of. Through that championship system, ultimately, you know, in a mature sport, it would be the Olympic Games, but you're not even at the Olympic level. You're going to see a mountain bike course which has flexibility. The road cycling, mountain biking, BMX triathlon. Yeah, I mean, there's good flexible guidelines around the system, but it's flexibility within the framework. And we're creating a solid framework, but with a lot of flexibility. So we facilitate the innovation and the stuff that makes it fun. For goodness sakes, this is what makes it fun. Yeah, yeah.

I mean, even marathon, as limited as there really is, it's 42.2 kilometers. But in the meantime, in between those two points, there can be hills, there can be 90 degree turns, there can be whatever, whatever you throw at it.

It can be anything.

But obstacle is like it's 100 times more, more variables than that. So.

That's right. That's exactly right. So the bottom line is it just does not constrain the sport and the growth of sport and the ability to sport to be innovative and change and move and do the things that we want. It just adds another layer of ability to go to bigger different things. I should say not necessarily bigger. Well, put it this way, if at some point in the future we manage to get recognition and if we got a medal event at the Olympics, then if, if.

That'S a reality, the number of people that are watching it is vast. Yeah. Because Rio as an example, close to 5 billion people are watching. Five billion, yeah.

Watching sports that they aren't even aware exist for the rest of the four or the three years between the games.

That's exactly right. Now people say, well why does that matter? I mean it may not matter to a lot of people, but it really does matter for the health of the sport because then you tap into this huge ability to. Well, there's a lot of money involved is one and you can tap into governmental money because they want to help with development and safety and all the things that we do.

So imagine getting paid to be an obstacle racer.

That's right.

Well we want to sponsorship money and.

Yeah, we want to build professional and semi professional athletes. I mean this is another thing the sport needs to do is we want, we want heroes. Yeah, Heroes are great for sport. Anti Heroes are good. We don't necessarily want them but you.

Know, I don't think you have a choice.

Yeah, you're going to get them as well. And they're also good for the sport. So heroes. Anti Heroes heroines. People to look up to and aspire to and follow and cheer. And this is the thing, the human elements that make it fun and exciting and you like to see your favorite athletes and then you get further develop the team aspect so the country team aspect where there's all these, there's, there's lots of opportunity here, put it that way. And I come from a lot of Olympic kind of sports stuff, so I've seen a lot of things in sport. 30 years of bit more probably 73 is when I started. So 73 on.

Fantastic. Well that, that is an awesome place to, to leave it. I think we took it sort of full circle there. And if people want to find out more about the federation, where can they go?

Upschool sports.com obstaclesports.org and you have an.

Amazing background in history too. So people should go and check you out. Where would be the best place to do that?

Ian Adamson.com how much easier can that be if you can remember my name? It's easy.

Yeah. Well, thank you for sitting down in this. It's a beautiful day outside and we're hiding in the dark, so I'll let you go and enjoy the sunshine.

Absolutely. My pleasure.

At the 2017 World Championship Spartan Event Pod Fest, I've lost track of all the titles and things I'm supposed to say, but this is Brock Armstrong for Ben Greenfield Fitness and Ian Adamson signing off. Thanks for coming.

Thank you, Brock.

You've been listening to the Ben Greenfield Fitness podcast.

Go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com for even more cutting edge fitness and performance advice.

Sa.

Sam.