My fastest distance runner donated blood today. How will it affect his conditioning/performance?
My fastest distance runner donated blood today. How will it affect his conditioning/performance?
Can he take out a withdrawal later?
Kick him off the team. He is no good to you anymore.
Short-term he will see a decrease as RBCs were taken out.
Make sure he is hydrating to help with the loss of plasma.
Based on my experience and in talking with others, we tended to "suffer" for 10 days or so and then felt pretty normal. Interval sessions seemed to be most affected. Easy runs far less so after the first couple of days.
If he is racing this weekend, he probably is not going to kill it.
My freshman year of HS, our top guy gave blood the day of our last meet, he was pretty close to sub 10 3200, I could barely break 11. I nearly lapped him that day.
From an article several years ago by a doctor/runner on the subject,
"The third lesson to learn from this information is that there may be a training advantage to be gained by donating blood without blood loading later. Why is this? Since blood supply is one determinant of athletic performance, exercising while anemic puts additional stress on the body. Compensatory adaptations in other systems (lungs, muscle cellular level, and capillary formation) persist after the body has made new blood to replace the donated blood. A ball park figure for this would be 3-4 weeks. Then for a week or two the body would “believe†it was blood loaded. To my knowledge this has not been proven, but there are anecdotal reports from participants in blood loading studies. I would recommend donating blood at the local blood bank 4 weeks before the event you were pointing for, and make sure that you eat properly and take the appropriate blood building supplements during this recovery period. You would not modify your training except to anticipate slower times for your timed runs and intervals. The main caution is for women runners to ensure that they are not already borderline anemic or iron deficient. The best way to check for iron deficiency is to measure serum ferritin- the best measure of your body’s iron stores."
Do you have a link or a source to this?
He will underperform at least until April. Giving blood really affects a highly tuned athlete.
Yes, that is what I would have guessed that it would take 4 weeks. Back when people used to talk about blood doping, they told me that they would have the blood drawn in the Spring before track races and then they would go to altitude and start with steroids to build the hematocrit back up for four weeks.
Your guy should go to the Vitamin Store and buy a blood builder product. It is not a drug, just a collection of vitamins in one pill that are the building blocks of RBC production (folic acid, B6, B12, Iron, copper and cobalt). There are several on the market.
Not a bad idea for all your kids to take it. Amino acids (protein) also play a big part in RBC formation so he may want to make sure he gets extra Iron daily and protein twice a day.
On average a little more than a month to get hemoglobin back to normal, but differences in VO2max are small after about a week:
http://www.runnersworld.com/sweat-science/blood-v-plasma-donation-for-runners
From personal experience, I've always felt noticeably slower (based on a standard weekly tempo loop) for a few weeks.
You can skew a study or set the controls to prove anything. In reality when any runner doing real training donates blood their training and racing goes to crap the next few weeks. the effects will linger on performance even longer because the runner will likely have put themselves "in a hole" from having trained with a low blood count.
Primo Numero Uno wrote:
What part of the sentence, "To my knowledge this has not been proven, but there are anecdotal reports from participants in blood loading studies." slipped past your razor-sharp reading comprehension and analysis?
You posted a BS study and you get upset for someone who calls you on it. That you even presented this study with or without a disclaimer shows how little comprehension you have on this topic.
I've only donated before a race once. It was a ten-miler and I donated double red blood cells about 3 weeks before. I gave blood in the morning, and when I ran that afternoon it sort of felt like running at altitude. After that I didn't notice it at all, but in my race I ran like total crap; of course that could be for other reasons as well.
bloodblood wrote:
My fastest distance runner donated blood today. How will it affect his conditioning/performance?
As a coach I always tell my athletes not to give blood during the season. The school where work (but do not coach) schedule blood drives between seasons which is great. But where I coach is the opposite. This can be frustrating because it always seem to be schedule on a key workout day.
I gave blood during track season (before meets began) my junior year of high school. Aside from getting my ass kicked at practice that day (which I probably should have participated) there were no lasting effects. A week and a half later I opened the season with PR's in both the 1600 and 800.
Even though I wasn't really affected it still interrupts training which can be frustrating, especially for a coach.
Sesamoiditis wrote:
not a doctor but dated one wrote:From an article several years ago by a doctor/runner on the subject, . . ."
Do you have a link or a source to this?
Google got me to this:
http://exclusive.multibriefs.com/content/everything-you-always-wanted-to-know-about-blood-doping-and-epo/sports-fitnessThe counterpoint to "exercising while anemic puts additional stress on the body" is that, while it may be putting additional stress on some part of the system, one simply can not run as fast so there is clearly less stress on some other parts of the system. My inclination is to believe the latter dominates thus blood donation is a net setback to one's training. Training is about stress and recovery and ideally we avoid doings things that hurt recovery.
What's a low blood count...I have only one kind of blood. Does it get any lower?
I gave blood my senior year of high school like an idiot, didn't know it could effect my performance. I did because I heard a rumor you could get drunk off one beer that night, but it didn't really work.
Ended up running a 1:58, 4:29 that season, not sure if not giving blood could of helped me go faster. Also, I quit drinking my senior spring season (besides the blood night) and didn't see much of a increase in my performance. Recovering from races was easier and I dropped a few lbs. 2 cents
I have only one kind of blood.
You obviously didn't study immunology and/or hematology at college!
I used to give blood in HS and it hurt me for a week but then I was fine
I tried giving blood in my 30s once...I was slow for a month.