What to Do About the Casual, but Competitive Trail Runner Who Dopes?

Sage Canaday has been on a heater lately calling folks out and trying to work through these grey area doping issues as our sport professionalizes:

…However the issue with banned performance enhancing drugs in endurance sports isn’t just about winning prize money or making an Olympic team. It’s about honesty and integrity and mutual respect for all runners in a race.

Here we have a sport that’s growing in popularity and still – hopefully forever – let the amateurs toe the same line as the elites. The calls are now getting louder to bring doping controls to the top races where prize money is on the line and much prestige to be gained. Most races are still without any doping controls. There are many runners who aren’t elites in the strictest sense but are influential their own right, and sometimes place high on podiums. They, like in the instance Sage refers to, might event coach other runners and recommend certain treatment plans. On top of all this we have WADA rules which are strict, but not perfect.

Sage continues his post:

I don’t have all the answers to this. I realize taking certain drugs (not all are created equal at all!) can be a very personal and a very nuanced thing for individuals. I believe in enforcing existing rules and WADA/USADA code for competitive races…but I also realize testing is very limited and expensive…

So I’d like to open this up to a constructive discussion of possible solutions and hear other’s thoughts and feelings around this. It can help shape the future and culture of our sport as individuals in the community may see it from very different perspectives.

Doping controls are already a costly and thorny issue. We are far away from even having a handle on the actual elite end of our sport, but this issue needs to be addressed nonetheless. And it will need some of the top players in our sport to not to put their heads in the sand but take a stand and speak out.

The easiest and fairest solution is to apply the rules to everyone equally.

Why this topic is blowing up right now is not because some hobby jogger from the back of the pack got caught cheating, but that “self declared non-elites” are actually reaching podiums, receiving sponsorships, and are influential in the sport with their behavior and opinions. This puts them on the same playing field as elites, therefore they need to be adhere to the same rules as elite runners.