I took very very very small dossages of creatine, mostly 1 spoonfull a day and noticed that I could retain a good bit of water...Not to the point of being bloated but a fairly decent amount. If a distance athlete wants to take it I would recomend disreguarding all labels and directions, cause if you over do it your going to cramp up from constant dehydration.
I also added dehydrated skim milk to 3 glasses of milk in the morning and at night, it gave me more cals for the day and more protein that I wasn't able to get on days where I didn't have good quality meat to eat
Water is the best thing a runner could have. I got to the point of drinking close to 2 gallons a day. Lot's of pissing but I didn't feel near as bad in the heat as some of my team mates.
I have known of guys who did blood dopping in the summer time, by training up in Colorado for about 1 month then removing about 1 pint of blood 1 every week or two and then putting 1 pint back in before a big race like Conference, Regionals, or Nationals
Some guys used EPO along with blood dopping if they couldn't train in Mt's
Steroids weren't very common on our track team cause we competted to win the D2 title year after year so testing was common. Though to my knowledge the few who did never got caught. EPO would be more practical for a runner to use so they can increase the Red blood cells I believe it is inorder to hold more Oxygen in their blood. Steroids would be ok but I'm not sure from a strength standpoint how much they would benefit from it. Lasse Verin was rumored to have taken steroids as well as blood dopping when he won the Olympics back in the 70's
so small amounts of gear, blood doping, and or EPO would do ok, the risk of EPO could cause your heart to stop from producing to many Red Blood cells, and thicken your blood.