Is doping prevalent at a sub-elite or hobby jogger level?

Prevalent? I don't know. I do know at least a dozen people that dope for the "fun of it" because they know they will never get tested. Their attitude it "so what if I get tested" I'm not breaking any records.

Probably not that prevalent but those who are willing to throw money at crap like Whoop, CBD, and Stryd are probably also spending on visits to anti-aging clinics for “therapeutic” TRT and hGH. Seems like it would be more prevalent in age group cycling and triathlon, TBH.

Don’t know the answer to the prevalence question, but it seems bizarre for hobby joggers to even want to dope given that pretty much nobody except themselves even cares about their times; sort of like cheating at an online scrabble game with an anonymous handle and using a word-finder program, like what are you even getting out of the whole exercise?

I like your example/analogy. I expect a lot of people do that. I also don't know what they get out of it...and yet it happens.

I think this would be a good anonymous letsrun poll.

Agreed. I asked in the first place because I'm also perplexed that there may be people out there who are doping even though there's no tangible benefit for them. Maybe they just don't think of doping as cheating and want to see what they're capable of?

I would say not. Professional dopers have a lot on the line that causes them to cheat. Hobby joggers have nothing on the line. Hobby joggers cheating would be much simpler and lazy type cheating. Like cutting courses like Mike Rossi.

Dopers still have to put in the hard work to achieve gains.

No body cares unless you are at the elite level. IMO if you are not at the elite level it is not cheating. WOKE WADA,USADA need to quit with the antiquated power trip.

I am 65 and do not use PEDs because I think they are either useless or dangerous. If the PED Police ban NMN or NAC or any other health promoting supplement I take they can go f themselves.

The world has moved on. Meatheads who use antiquated roids or shortcut rbc with epo or Masters who do TRT just to ride/run a bit faster are dumb and get what they deserve they do not need to be monitored a total waste of money or really a sham as testing old farts is pretty rare.

Missed a huge sponsorship opportunity with all the stupid rules banning stuff. Imagine some you tuber promoting EPO dropped my 5k time by 2 minutes use the code runfaster on checkout for a 15 percent discount . RX provided by Virtual Doc no problemo.

somewhere i read it is about 10-20% ....

I'm fairly confident that plenty of sub-elites and semi-competitive age-groupers using low-level doping techniques (I'm thinking mainly testosterone or whatever from anti-aging clinics). I mean, it's a given that there are at least some examples (the mere existence of clinics willing to prescribe testosterone for people who don't really need it guarantees that); the question is how many, and that I'm not confident enough about to speculate much.

But seriously, saying that it's unlikely because these unknown athletes have so little to gain is way off base. I think the age-group cheating that has been exposed has shown that a lack of what seems to other competitive runners like a practical reason or justification for cheating is not something that holds these people back. People will dope (or otherwise cheat) for the flimsiest of reasons - from wanting to beat some guy at work, to winning a bet, to trying to improve their status in their group, and on and on. Would it make sense for a 28-minute 5k'er to dope? It doesn't matter if it doesn't "make sense" to the average person. Most people do some pretty non-sensical things at least some of the time.

At a local gym I used to go to a guy they called "the pharmacist" would just kind of hang out. He could get anyone anything for the right price. To me, it just seemed way too reckless and dangerous to use any of that stuff without professional supervision. I don't know any endurance guys that used any of the pharmacist's product but a lot of the armature weight lifters loaded up on special "vitamins" and "supplements."

Its not TRT when hobby joggers push their Test levels to 1000 plus ng/dL. That plus 6 iu growth per day?

There is the occasional "Christian Hesch" who can win small prize money, but I suspect intentional prevalence among hobby joggers is statistically low, lacking incentives for most. But WADA's rules are broad and due diligence among hobby-joggers is low, and there are a number of inadvertant doping scenarios that would end up as a WADA rule violation:

- many amateurs use energy drinks and take supplements like energy tablets and protein powders -- an industry which is not well regulated -- which could lead to doping positives due to secret ingredients, or inadvertant contamination during processing, which may or may not be in the ingredients list (and may be under alternate names then you would find on the WADA list). Look at any marathon and you will find many solutions for ingesting sugar during the run with mystery gels and goos which can contain a banned substance.

- if you suffer from seasonal allergies, any medication you take could fall foul of the banned substance list. Similarly, any visit to your generalist could end up with a prescription for legitimate medication that could cause a positive test.

- due to the routine and extensive doping of animals in the meat industry, many athletes have tested positive from eating meat at restaurants like Teriyaki bowl, and some other "exotic" restaurants.

- recently an AIU-expert gave expert testimony that on the order of 1 in 10,000 pork eaters, from as many as 12,000 pigs a year across America, could unknowingly ingest nandrolone, and test positive.

Yes.

Low-T therapy is doping and a lot of men seek this out.

It's not medical...it's doping.

I know someone who uses PEDs, he's a 31 minute 10k, 70 minute HM guy. I don't see the point, it doesn't even put him at the front of local races. He does it because he likes seeing the times and doesn't care how he gets there. On the other end of the scale, I know a few older runners who won't wear Vaporfly's because it means they can't compare their current times with their times from 5+ years ago. Running below elite level is just about what you, all that's on the line is your personal satisfaction

So, what is TRT & DHEA suspected use like among the Grandmasters? I don't complete anymore & just run recreationally/fitness due to post-traumatic osteoarthritis & chronic injuries (I'm 61 & haven't completed for several years now).

I remember several years ago when I was a member of prominent master's running club, it was a popular topic to talk about PEDs & supplements. No one in the club admitted to using TRT but some of the guys admitted taking "DHEA." It was because it was OTC and there are a few studies showing that it increases IGF-1 with older individuals (one study also showed it increased "free testosterone" with men over 45 during HIIT on an excercise bike).

I take DHEA now as part of my anti-aging supplements. I spend a lot of time now pumping iron & spin biking at the gym & I can tell you most of the guys around my age that I know are either using TRT or DHEA. Most of these guys are just fitness rnthusiasts with a few that jump in a local charity 5k/10k now & then.

My guess is that since DHEA is OTC here in the States & is dirt cheap, it's probably used by a lot of master's athletes in various sports.

At the level that the OP lists, who really cares? I assume people who use substances would do their own research re risk, at least someone with half a brain would.

I suspect that in the older crew, the benefit from doping is in being able to revisit your youth. Getting older, which means slower recovery, less power, diminishing muscle, and increasing body fat, can be really depressing for a runner. It's totally understandable why someone might be motivated to go to an anti-aging clinic or pick up some DHEA off the shelf to counter that.

One possible cohort might be masters runners looking to stave off injury. They don't care what times they post, they just want to keep running--maybe after a long layoff from injury, someone might find that rebuilding a base at age 60 is a whole different challenge to when they first built it decades prior.

There are, of course, better ways to go about it but you could see how someone might take the shortcut, if the long way around is very long, and fraught with doubt at the same time.

The title and the actual post are way too different. I'm quite certain that doping is not 'prevalent' at sub-elite and especially hobbyjogger level. On the other hand, there definitely is a statistically significant amount of doping and other cheating at 'local competitive' and 'age group competitive' levels. It is not, however, 'prevalent' as as the idea of intentionally cheating in your hobby is pretty crazy and can't be the norm by the very definition of 'norm'.

As the other poster noted, technically a lot of hobbyjoggers can test positive because of some supplements they take without the intention of enhancing their running performance, at least not so directly so to think of it as 'cheating', but it's also very unlikely for such cases to make the majority.