Something fishy about Rieti facility...

Higher oxygen content in the air will not help sea-level performance. At sea level, your blood leaves your lungs 98-99% saturated with O2. The performance limiter isn't getting oxygen into your blood, it's getting oxygen FROM your blood TO your cells. Hence capillarization, etc.

ordersofmagnitude wrote:

I think the problem many of us are having with this 'forest air' theory is that we understand that gasses diffuse very very quickly.

Actually you would have just as much proving that the newly created O2 diffuses 'quickly' as i would proving there is more O2 in a forest without the empirical proof. I would love to see if that data is available.

Let's face facts, the air over water has much more water vapor in it than over the nearby land masses. That water vapor may diffuse to adjacent parcels of air over land, but not nearly as fast as it does when the prevailing winds push it there.

We do know that runners run their best in high pressure systems, which have a twofold boost, 1) low humidity and 2) more oxygen. A place like Philadelphia can have a variance of .60"Hg in barometric pressure within days. That's a 2% variance in the total available O2. So is it the increased amount of oxygen or is it the humidity (or lack of) that makes the difference in distance running performance? Or both?

adsfasdfsdfasf wrote:

Higher oxygen content in the air will not help sea-level performance. At sea level, your blood leaves your lungs 98-99% saturated with O2. The performance limiter isn't getting oxygen into your blood, it's getting oxygen FROM your blood TO your cells. Hence capillarization, etc.

The question isn't whether or not the blood is 98 or 99% saturated. The question is, if there is more available O2, does that saturation level push to, let's say, 98.5-99.5%?

Again. If the barometric pressure is 29.6"Hg compared to 30.4"hg there is a measurable increase in the available O2. Higher pressure is better for distance running. We know that for a fact.

ordersofmagnitude wrote:

And I think that theory does a much better job explaining why the 100m guys were fast today. I'm thinking that extra O2 from trees isn't making a different in that sort of race, even if it were real.

The 100 guys ran fast there becasuse it was warm enough for for sprinting. If it wasn't, they would not run as fast.

There is evidence to support this notion:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16166208

Interesting, I just wish some of these studies were done with fir athletes. Peak VO2 uptake of 56.4 is not "highly trained"

Malmo you are starting to sound like the fool you aren't here. The oxygenation of blood in terms of saturation is not a limiting factor in aerobic performance. The limiting factors are the oxygen carrying capacity of the blood (ie volume/haematocrit) and, more importantly, the A-V gradient (the tissues ability to utilise the oxygen, ie enzyme concentrations etc). It doesnt matter if your blood O2 sat goes from 98 to 99%, the muscles are using it as quickly as they can at VO2max, the machinery does not notice the difference.

Furthermore, gas diffusion through the lungs is so efficient that your staurations are not altered with small changes in FiO2. In very high FiO2, im talking several % points higher (eg only replicable in artificial settings) the blood PaO2 can be increased significantly - but im still not certain someone breathing a higher Fio2 gets a performance improvement as the A-V gradient remains a limiting factor.

Obviously, a large decrement in FiO2 at altitude does limit performance, but to assume the reverse is true is erroneous. The "wooded area" theory is rubbish.

While I usually find your posts to be fairly knowledgeable malmo, you are quite wrong here. The whole "rain forests are the 'lungs of the world'" idea has been shot down in recent years, as scientists have found that tropical rain forests are essentially oxygen neutral, with little or no net oxygen production. Bacteria and Fungi in the forests consume almost the entire rain forest production. Amazingly, though scientists have been debunking the "Lungs of the World" idea since the early 1990s, you can find it in use by almost every environmentalist group to this day.

Now, forests DO act as filter for us, and they do remove many greenhouse gasses from the air, including those that make up pollution, which definitely accounts for the "heavenly" taste and smell to the air...its clean...but its certainly not more oxygen rich...if you want oxygen rich you need to build.

And as for where oxygen comes from, most of the oxygen generated via photosynthesis comes from green algae in the oceans. Surprisingly, our oceans are far more important to our survival as a species than our forests.

It seems that MC Confusing is confused.

http://www.google.com/search?q=where+does+oxygen+come+from&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a

No, I think that was in WC in Rome '87. An utter scandal.

They also changed the program so Panetta could race steeple+10K.

ask Ovett. He set a record of 3.30.77 in '83 over 1500m.

Child like wonder wrote:

It seems that MC Confusing is confused.

http://www.google.com/search?q=where+does+oxygen+come+from&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a

no, I'm not...

"Rainforests are also often called the "Earth's lungs," however there is no scientific basis for such a claim as tropical rainforests are known to be essentially oxygen neutral, with little or no net oxygen production.[11][12]"

"Rainforests are also responsible for 28% of the world's oxygen turn over, often misunderstood as oxygen production,[3]"

P.S. nowhere in your article does it say anything about rain forest contributions, to oxygen, just "Photosynthesis" (I just said "green algae" instead of phytoplankton)

This had 'Doha' written all over it. Ryan Bailey 9.88?? Come on guys...you can't be serious. You have guys who didn't run anywhere close to their PB for the whole season running NR's, PB's and SB's in this one race. Italian organizers just want to make sure the Bolts of this world are showing up there next year.

Ain't buying this. Too bad these times will go on record.

you keep forgetting that a non-insignificant amount of O2 is dissolved in the plasma which can be used directly for metabolismhere is an extreme example with hyperbaric chambers :http://www.hyperbaric-oxygen-info.com/hyperbaric-oxygen.html

1.The total oxygenation of body inside hyperbaric chamber now equals to a maximum oxygen-carrying capacity of haemoglobin plus up to 2000% increase of oxygen concentration in plasma and other body fluids

2.Plasma saturated with oxygen does not just enhance the oxygen-carrying capacity of haemoglobin. Reaching concentrations of up to 6 mL/dL (at a pressure of 3 atmospheres) oxygen dissolved in plasma exceeds metabolic requirements of tissue and bone cells regardless of haemoglobin supply

3.Oxygen carried by plasma is capable to reach destinations in oxygen deprived tissues or bones otherwise unavailable to red blood cells carrying haemoglobin molecules

the key thing is that it's not all about haemoglobin or the dissociation curve - a increase in plasma O2 saturation in forrested areas may be a performance enhancing factor - even a factor of 0.1% improvement at sea-level between urban/country woud offer close to 0.5s advantage in a 3k

If this forest theory were true, shouldn't the opposite be true? In Beijing you had an enclosed area with 95K people breathing, surrounding by millions breathing. Was that equal to altitude? Of course not.

adsfasdfsdfasf wrote:

Higher oxygen content in the air will not help sea-level performance. At sea level, your blood leaves your lungs 98-99% saturated with O2. The performance limiter isn't getting oxygen into your blood, it's getting oxygen FROM your blood TO your cells. Hence capillarization, etc.

Wrong. In elite athletes in particular and many others, as soon as hard exercise starts that blood Oxygen saturation is going to start dropping. Many will end the race with O2 concentrations in the mid to high 80's.

Look up EIAH (exercise induced arterial hypoxemia)

Of course, I know very well the situation of Rieti, since when I was the National Responsible of 400m (several years ago), ad later of Middle Distances (more recently), we used that area for our national training camps, in different sectors.

At the moment, Rieti is the main center for the sprinters that ran 38"17 in European Championships, winning silver in Barcelona.

The record of Rudisha is the WR number 8 in the history of Rieti meeting. The edition 2010 was the edition number 40, and always there were top results in middle distances, and several times in sprint events too, depending on the direction of wind (yesterday was favourable).

The track was always very good, but now is one of the best in the world, after a new system made from Mondo when it was renewed (going from 6 to 8 lanes) few years ago.

Normally, the situation is favourable for the following reasons :

a) Some altitude, able to reduce a little the resistance of air for sprinters, but not so high to penalize specialists of middle distance (the track is at a level of 515 meters)

b) The position of the track, with a lot of trees around (see the explanation of Malmo for understanding the advantages of that situation). Under this point of view, we can indicate other track, built inside a forrest, where normally it's possible to produce top results (for example, Heusden in Belgium)

c) The fact the place is very dry at the end of August-beginning of September. Never there was high humidity during the previous editions of the meeting, and yesterday, if possible, the situation was one of the best ever.

d) The temperature is, normally, very comfortable (22-30°), good for sprints, but also middle distances. The meeting is in the afternoon, finishing about 7:00pm. The temperature at the beginning (4:30pm) was 29° with 33% of humidity. For that reason, the competition of 3000m Women was not very fast (too hot). But, later, the weather became more fresh (during 3000m Men, 23° with 36% of humidity). Not only, but, till about 6:00pm, the furlong opposite to the final was completely sunny, instead during the final race all the track was under shadow, because the sun went down behind the tribune.

e) The track is particular, because the Company (Mondo) made a special type of track (more deep than the normal tracks, but at the same time more hard and elastic than the standard) using Rieti for checking the results of a more advanced technology (the organiser, Sandro Giovannelli, was for 20 years the IAAF responsible of the International Activity and now is the personal advisor of the President Lamine Djack).

f) The organisation is very focused for having top technical performances. Giovannelli doesn't accept too many athletes in any race, pacers are prepared according the real goals of the best athletes in every race, and the athletes themselves are totally motivated in running very fast, because everybody knows there is possible to improve their PB.

About the case of yesterday, particularly for the sprint, I want to remind that Nesta Carter came from a 9"85 very close Tyson Gay two days before in very worse conditions in Bruxelles, so this time cannot be a surprise (and, before, 9"86 in Luzern).

And, finally, the atmosphere of this type of meeting is very different from that we find in the big meetings of Diamond League. People are around the track, practically can touch the athletes in 8th lane. The athletes don't fear the presence of the spectators, but are stimulated to do their best having only positive feeling with the ambience.

For all these reasons, top athletes are happy to compete in Rieti (and everybody for less money than in the other meetings...), knowing that, many times, there it's possible to change their career.

it's a significantly wooded area around the track, which means lots of trees pumping out lots more O2

the local concentration of O2 is going to be significantly higher than the 21% it is at most places at sea-level

more O2 available for metabolism which will make all races potentially faster

That's gotta be the funniest theory of the year - give Ventolin a medal! Scientific studies have given guys 40% oxygen to breathe and found that they don't get faster! How are some trees going to make a difference! Heck, 100% O2 has been found to be marginally effective to improve VO2max, for example.

Even if the trees drove the O2 level up by 1%, it doesn't correct for 405m altitude (which is irrelevant the other way), meaning that Rieti is the same as any sea-level venue.

Junk science indeed - you're a pseudo-academic, and then you tell other people they're monkeys. Look in the mirror, bro, you're a fool and the worst kind - the one that thinks they're the smartest guy in the room!

Give it a rest. You're embarrassing pseudo-science here.

Just to add, since there is some intelligent discussion about evidence. You can't look at hyperbaric studies, because they change the partial pressure and thus the dissolved oxygen in the plasma. This is not relevant to what happens because of added oxygen to the air. So only studies with oxygen concentration are relevant.

The problem with this study:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16166208

is that local muscle fatigue assessed by electrical stimulation over-estimates the contribution of peripheral fatigue to the fatigue.

So then I take back my earlier post, because there are some studies finding improvements:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16166208

- this is 9 sec improvement in time to exhaustion.

And this one (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/7791589) finds a 2.3% improvement over a 2,500m rowing trial. There are other studies finding none, incidentally, and much of the effect is speculated to be placebo.

But as I said, the issue is the assumption that having trees elevates the oxygen, not only by enough to counteract the small change in oxygen availability as a result of altitude (405m would correspond to a drop of about 3% - it drops 6.3% for every 1000m gained, and linearly), but to actually add enough to improve performance - those studies are using enough oxygen to prevent a drop in saturation (one is at 30%, the other is at 60%), and some trees are going to change running performance?