[quote]rekrunner wrote:
that after prolonged exercise in the heat, it is "common" to have plasma volume reduction of "5-20%". Later, in Chapter 8, it is "not uncommon" to have a reduction of "10-20%
[quote]Plasma shift wrote:
But surely this is the whole point, 67 mins of work for a marathon runner in moderate temperatures does not represent 'prolonged exercise in the heat'.
3 possibilities for errors that you assume all go in her favour to get her to the position where she could explain the figures, come on now.
How many qualified experts brought Lance down? Wake up Gary.
Happy New Year!- Actually it is designed in the ABP by incorporating a 2 hour delay. See the previous Ashenden and Schumacher links for the science behind the 2 hour recommendation to help eliminate false positives resulting from reduced plasma.- The whole point is not whether Paula was dehydrated, or Portugal was hot enough, or 67 minutes is long enough, but to wait 2 hours for the effect to dissipate (up to 10-20% plasma reduction) in order for a sample to be valid. It's the only recommended way to eliminate the uncertainty.- Dehydration and altitude, if they generate enough bias, will *always* generate "errors in her favor". The chance of errors were greater before the 2009 rule changes.- To date, no leading expert yet has commented on Paula's blood profile, to determine if the 3 suspicious values actually form an abnormal APB blood profile -- no expert has put her in a position yet where she should need to offer any explanation. This was only done by non-expert reporters and armchair fans.- Lance had at least 7 doping positives in 1999 alone, plus one suspicious result in 2001. Ashenden and WADA (especially Dick Pound) were part different teams of experts that helped bring him down.The next relevant milestone is to see if WADA's "wow" report deem's Paula's values worthy of comment.
Accountability wrote:
If only the leading world experts in this area had through the of this when designing these tests and the ABP. They should have consulted you first.
Think of all those poor athletes who have had their ABP flagged without plasma shift being considered.
Accountability wrote:
But surely this is the whole point, 67 mins of work for a marathon runner in moderate temperatures does not represent 'prolonged exercise in the heat'.
Accountability wrote:
3 possibilities for errors that you assume all go in her favour to get her to the position where she could explain the figures, come on now.
How many qualified experts brought Lance down? Wake up Gary.
New Year's Resolution: The filthy cheating doper Bobblehead Radcliffe goes to prison and forfeits all assets.
Doping/cheating is not a crime. Even Lance didn't go to prison.The two organizations in charge of controlling Paula say there is no grounds to proceed with any charges.No one else is stepping forward claiming they were a victim of Paula's doping/cheating.The next possible step would be for some country/organization/athlete with standing to appeal to the CAS.
She's Filthy wrote:
New Year's Resolution: The filthy cheating doper Bobblehead Radcliffe goes to prison and forfeits all assets.
seb.co.uk wrote:
Doping/cheating is not a crime.
She's Filthy wrote:New Year's Resolution: The filthy cheating doper Bobblehead Radcliffe goes to prison and forfeits all assets.
Doping/cheating is fraud and theft. Radcliffe should be in prison and she should come out penniless.
UMMMMMMMM wrote:
seb.co.uk wrote:Doping/cheating is not a crime.
Doping/cheating is fraud and theft. Radcliffe should be in prison and she should come out penniless.
With the federation complicit in the fraud and theft. They appear to gain the most in the fraud scheme through various revenue streams and shift the blame onto the athlete, the weakest actor.
It's very well thought out on the federation/IOC's part.
rekrunner wrote:
Here is a follow-up math assignment for you:
What happens to Paula's 2003-2005 off-scores when we restore 10-20% of plasma volume?
I think you had problems reading or understanding rjm33's post. He is saying that the abnormal blood test results indicate a 41% loss of plasma volume, over double the numbers that you are considering. Here is the key text from the post:
rjm33 wrote:
.this decrease of plasma volume from 3.3L to 1.915L is a decrease of plasma volume of 41.97%!!!!!!! to explain Paula's change in hemoglobin value increase of 30%.....
So you can see that an implied 41.97% plasma volume loss by Paula is over 100% MORE than the maximum number of 20% plasma volume loss in the exercise physiology textbook or the Ashenden study, and that I agree with the textbook and Ashenden study.......Isn't that strange we would all agree?
rekrunner wrote:
I don't need to "go back" to the lab error argument. Don't fall for the "highlander fallacy" where we can only pick one. All of the arguments ever presented are still in play -- illness, antibiotics, altitude, inter method bias, internal quality checks (calibration), transporting and analysing. Nothing that has happened since Dec. 2014 has made judging pre-2009 samples collected and analyzed with pre-2009 processes with post-2009 ABP rules more valid. The 2009 rules were designed to reduce the uncertainty -- this is because pre-2009 the scientists observed a great deal of uncertainty from several sources.
You list all of these factors that could influence the test results but this only weakens the point that you are trying to make because you are not considering that they could also favor a false negative result as well as a false negative (internal quality checks, calibration ...). It would be really rotten luck that all these factors were all independently skewing the test results to become false positives on at least 3 occasions.
If there was a major "lab error" (and this includes all the internal qualitry checks, calibration etc that you cite) that resulted in the false positive, then you would expect to hear about a whole bunch of other samples from other athletes analysed by the same lab to have thrown up false positives. We have not heard this so far.
Dear Rekrunner,
I used to be a big Paula fan. Still am, I guess, but the leaked blood data and the IAAF crimes and her lack of transparency have me concerned.
I spent the holiday break reading through this thread. It raised a lot of questions that the media hasn't covered.
But it also left me pretty certain that you're Paula's husband. And so I'm wondering if you can send me her autograph, just in case she really is clean?
rekrunner wrote:
Well since Paula's innocence hinges on my answer, I guess I better address this. Let me repeat again that expert answers should come from experts, and I am no expert on blood. I couldn't find a good definition for plasma drift, nor do I understand the significance of cardiac drift to changes in blood volume. Having said that...
First, it looks like your figure of 12.8 is a better figure than 12.0 that has been used for 29 pages of calculation. From Paula's official response, the blood expert talked about a 2.8 g/dl difference in the 2003 measurements, not 3.6. From the IAAF official response, the post race measurement was 15.6. Therefore, the 12.0 figure coming from the autobiography seems to be the least official, and the correct value should be 12.8. This means the difference is then not 30%, but 22%.
If by plasma drift, you mean changes in blood volume, due to hydration and dehydration, I thought Ross Tucker settled this, with his 1983 study (slight plasma expansion) and 1974 Dill and Costill study (plasma reduction), that significant changes can occur with prolonged exercise. From what I can tell, there are two kinds of changes, first there is an increase in blood volume to prevent/delay dehydration (or preserve osmolality?), and then a decrease as fluid gets redirected to the skin (causing your cardiac drift?). The details might be wrong but it looks like there are two opposite effects, probably occurring in that order.
In your (as "troll much?") previous link to the "Exercise Physiology" textbook, we can find in Chapter 7, that after prolonged exercise in the heat, it is "common" to have plasma volume reduction of "5-20%". Later, in Chapter 8, it is "not uncommon" to have a reduction of "10-20%".
So starting from 12.8 g/dl, given that pre-2009 blood collection, handling, and processing was less stringent/ more variable, and that a 20% volume loss is still considered common by a current Ex. Phys. textbook, we don't have to stretch far to explain a 21.875% difference.
Plasma shift wrote:rekrunner, is there no such thing as plasma shift? Did I just make it up?
If so then Paula must be guilty. Enough of the semantics of the biological passport if you please. Can you actually address the issue directly.
Either dehydration beyond a certain point causes cardiac drift or it doesn't.
The only smoke and mirrors on this thread are by those posting on it who are ignoring this issue and not by PR herself. Her recall of exact numbers is not the issue to be debated, even if they are slightly amiss.
What has to be quesioned is the authority of those claiming to have real medical or physiological knowledge of the issue, but deny the possibility of a decrease in plasma volume to values that are commonly recorded.
Yes rekrunner, you have nicely summarised what I am saying. It's not anything like what so many posters here are claiming. They have no knowledge of this common phenomenon which I have known about for 20 years. If I've known this for that long, it should give you a clue as to how normal a phenomenon plasma shift is, because there was no internet available for me back then, I had to actually go to the local university library and read actual physiology textbooks.
In Paula's book she mentions how hard the last 4 miles of the Vilamoura race was. She was obviously dehydrated. Yes, usually we don't lose plasma to any great degree and there is not much of a plasma shift/cardiac drift, but on humid days, it is quite common for this to happen, as it has to everyone on this thread many many times.
Autologus madness wrote:
Larkimm and Plasma shift don't want to read this, but it's the cold truth...
PR is one the biggest fraud in the history of the sport.... Lance have real good company here!
rjm33 wrote:Once again rekrunner, you are wrong.......The answer to your question about how would we respond to an exercise physiology textbook and an Ashenden study both stating that losses of plasma volume are in the order of 10 to 20% is that..... I respond by saying I totally AGREE with the exercise physiology textbook and Ashenden study.......what a big surprise!!!....... You don't understand the difference between changes in plasma volume and changes in hemoglobin values! They are NOT THE SAME THING!!! .........You don't understand the difference, do you rekrunner??????..........sorry about that..........................
Let me explain it to you how it works :
Hematocrit is the percentage of Red Blood Cells(RBCs) of the total blood volume or..... %RBCs divided by total blood volume.
Total blood volume is made up of RBCs and plasma, so a hematocrit of 45% is 45% RBCs and 55% plasma.
Hemoglobin is the iron containing protein which carries oxygen and is located in the RBCs, so hematocrit and hemoglobin levels will increase and decrease by the same amount in percentage change terms, so with a 10 percent change in RBCs as measured by hematocrit there will be a 10 percent change in hemoglobin value along with it.
Now get your calculator out........ A typical runner has a total blood volume of about 6.0 Liters.
so let's use our typical hematocrit score example of 45% to calculate the amount of RBCS, which is 0.45 x 6.0L equals 2.7L of RBCs and 0.55 x 6.0L equals 3.3L of plasma making up the total blood volume of 6.0Liters.
Now let's go with the highest number from the textbook and Ashenden study of 20% for the loss of plasma volume due to prolonged running and dehydration. So the 3.3L of plasma is decreased by 20%(0.66L) to 2.64L
Note that ONLY the plasma level has changed, not the RBCs, which remain the same at 2.7L.
Now the total blood volume has decreased to 2.7L of RBCs with 2.64L of plasma for a total blood volume of 5.34L. It has decreased from 6.0L to 5.34L from the loss of plasma volume.
The hematocrit, which is the %RBCs of total blood volume, is now 2.7L of RBCs divided by 5.34L of total blood volume, which gives a result of 0.5056179, which is a hematocrit value 50.56179%
So with a 20% loss of plasma volume from prolonged running and dehydration, the hematocrit has increased from 45% to 50.56179%, which is an increase of only 12.36% in hematocrit value. A 20 % loss of plasma volume would also lead to a similar 12.36% increase in hemoglobin values from prolonged running and dehydration......NOT a 20% increase in hemoglobin values. See how changes in hematocrit and hemoglobin values are MUCH LESS and DIFFERENT than changes in plasma volume. They are DIFFERENT, while you have been trying to say they are the same, which is WRONG!!!!.........
Paula had a hemoglobin (or hematocrit) increase of 30%, which if you can do math, in our example leads to an increase of hematocrit from 45% to 58.5%( a 30% increase),with the RBC value still staying the same at 2.7L; this would mean that her plasma volume would have had to decrease from 3.3 L to 1.915L,( for a total blood volume of 2.7L RBCs plus 1.915L plasma equals 4.615L of total blood volume, so 2.7L of RBCs divided by 4.615L of total blood volume equals a hematocrit of 58.5% ) ....this decrease of plasma volume from 3.3L to 1.915L is a decrease of plasma volume of 41.97%!!!!!!! to explain Paula's change in hemoglobin value increase of 30%. So she won the 1 hour and 7 minute half marathon WC race with a plasma volume loss of over 41%( and remember she had an anemic hemoglobin level at the same time!)......WOW!!!....... THAT IS SOME MASSIVE DEHYDRATION and OVER 41% LOSS OF PLASMA VOLUME IN ONLY 1 HOUR AND 7 MINUTES OF RUNNING WHILE WINNING THE WC 1/2 MARATHON RACE!!!! ....Go Paula!!!!.......She is once again SUPERWOMAN!!!!!!.......
So you can see that an implied 41.97% plasma volume loss by Paula is over 100% MORE than the maximum number of 20% plasma volume loss in the exercise physiology textbook or the Ashenden study, and that I agree with the textbook and Ashenden study.......Isn't that strange we would all agree?
See how I have shown you and everyone reading this how to calculate hematocrit and hemoglobin changes, and blood volume changes , and plasma volume changes .....all off the top of my head.........with just a calculator...........NO TEXTBOOK REQUIRED......or ASHENDEN STUDY REQUIRED........Do you know why I don't need them?........because I have already read BOTH of them!!!.....a long time ago.....
See how you are WRONG AGAIN!!!!.......sorry rekrunner........I suggest you go back to your LAB ERROR explanation that you and Paula (with the once again superhuman blood test results) and the IAAF and Dr. Saugy are all so fond of ..........while I wait for Dr. Martial Saugy to be arrested and put in jail................with the rest of his corrupt pals..........
Go Paula!!!!!.... Go Lord Coe!!!.......Go Dr. Plan B Saugy!!... Go rekrunner!!!...Go trolls with poor reading comprehension who don't know the difference between plasma volume changes and hemoglobin changes!!!!!!!!.........You should go to the physiology textbook and Michael Ashenden study that you quote from...and try to understand what they actually state......instead of trying to distort the truth so that it can somehow fit into your distorted pro-Paula world view...........
Are we having fun yet rekrunner?......Hey, what is that sound I just heard???....... I think it might be the sound of your explanations for Paula's blood results being destroyed in the distance..........just like the 67 Russian samples that Dr. Plan B Saugy destroyed for the IAAF.........
What you didn't mention is that your hypothetical 45% RBCs is also equivalent to a hemoglobin count of 15 g/dl which is much higher already that Paula's normal count. Her even lower count before the rae was most likely due to a slight acclimation to the weather. At the end of the race, the counts of 14.8 to 15.6 are equivalent to RBCs of 44.4 and 46.8, still well lower than you hypothetical high value of 50.5
If you actually knew anything about hematocrit/hemoglobin counts and plasma shift and if you spent a lot less time obsessing on this thread expressing your weird and highly misinformed obsession, you would have more time to get a life.
Sigh...
We're no further on are we? In the sense that the debate is happening in only one place, and between only a few people (who don't, to a layman like myself, appear to be able to even agree on the science!).
As I've said before, and despite my reputation as a pro-Paula UK athletics fan (self admitted), what this needs is someone reputable to take it up in the world of sports science and journalism. Tucker is clearly suspicious, but is on record as giving the benefit of the doubt. Ashenden and Parisotto don't really deal with Paula in any specific way. Those journos who could do something about it seem to be keeping very quiet - surely this would be the biggest story of their careers (or second, after Lance) if they could nail it down?
It's not just Paula's silence which is deafening - its the silence of independent journalists and investigative reporters too....
You're expecting way too much.
Tucker is a blogger. Bloggers say argumentative things for click bait. Brojos do just the same.
Journalists don't know anything about exercise physiology, they just want sensational stories.
The self appointed experts on this thread don't know much about ex phys either. Exercise physiologists themselves are not inclined to say anything in support of PR because of fear it will damage their reputation. Also most of them don't know much about ex phys anyway.
This is just a stupid thread on the internet. Nothing more, nothing less. Why would PR spend any more energy defending herself against these idiots?
Yet here you are. We need to understand what was happening in real time as results were being handled, not just in Paula's case but with respect to the whole program. At the moment, we are seeing corruption and probably incompetence (lots of lab errors). I would like to know what went on. maybe we should assume that the 12 year era of sport should be regarded as one in which there was no antidopjng system. Let's just give an asterisk to records set during that time and move on. But, like you said, why would anyone bother looking into this - the athletes don't even seem to care about the corruption.Some runners released their data to clear up confusion. I am pretty much done with following pro runners.
quote]Plasma shift wrote:
You're expecting way too much.
Tucker is a blogger. Bloggers say argumentative things for click bait. Brojos do just the same.
Journalists don't know anything about exercise physiology, they just want sensational stories.
The self appointed experts on this thread don't know much about ex phys either. Exercise physiologists themselves are not inclined to say anything in support of PR because of fear it will damage their reputation. Also most of them don't know much about ex phys anyway.
This is just a stupid thread on the internet. Nothing more, nothing less. Why would PR spend any more energy defending herself against these idiots?[/quote]
Plasma shift wrote:
You're expecting way too much.
Tucker is a blogger. Bloggers say argumentative things for click bait. Brojos do just the same.
Journalists don't know anything about exercise physiology, they just want sensational stories.
The self appointed experts on this thread don't know much about ex phys either. Exercise physiologists themselves are not inclined to say anything in support of PR because of fear it will damage their reputation. Also most of them don't know much about ex phys anyway.
This is just a stupid thread on the internet. Nothing more, nothing less. Why would PR spend any more energy defending herself against these idiots?
I probably am expecting too much. But to take the other side of the fence for a moment, what if Paula was running's "Lance"? It would still be a sensational story if the world record holder and vocal anti-doping stalwart was found to be a hypocrite.
Personally, I think that the Lance / Paula analogies are unwarranted; despite everything, I still have yet to see systematic doping (uncovered) in athletics in the way that it was being uncovered in the cycling world before Lance was outed. I'm not so naive as to think there isn't a possibility that the whole world of athletics is riddled with it, but on the basis of the evidence so far all I've seen are sporadic hotspots and individuals.
I am naive enough to think that perhaps there is still a higher ethos of honesty amongst those who follow athletics as their sporting pursuit than there was in cycling (cycling has had substance abuse as part of its core being throughout its history).
But for me its all about the evidence - not just IAAF or WADA getting positive tests, but first hand, insider tales of doping programmes, athletes who have "turned states evidence", labs and doctors who have seen the light and are confessing all. Its just not there.
What is sad to see is the lack of confidence in the sport that exudes from this thread, and others. For people who are passionate about the sport, as I'm sure many of those on this thread who are accusing Paula are, how must it feel when you watch major events believing that throughout the field it is more or less impossible to tell who is clean and who is dirty?
For me, I resolve this by watching each event from the perspective of assuming innocence. Even those with serial offending histories, such as Gatlin, I've got to assume are now clean. I might not agree with the penalties that they've suffered, and I might harbour lingering doubts that potentially they are benefitting from their previous crimes, but such are the current laws of this sport. They've done their time, now they are free to race. So I sit back, watch, enjoy, discuss, debate.
Its a far more enjoyable place to be!
The thing is that Paula actually believes she hasn't done anything wrong by doping/cheating because a lot of other top athletes were doing it. So she is emphatically denying it just to protect her reputation according to the uninformed non-running public. She takes it to another level though ('EPO cheats out'). She is the female Lance Armstrong.
Thedirty wrote:The thing is that Paula actually believes she hasn't done anything wrong by doping/cheating because a lot of other top athletes were doing it.
I love the fact that you write this as a statement of fact, when in face (even if Paula was a doper) there's no way that you could know this!
Why are no victims coming foward to prosecute?
UMMMMMMMM wrote:
seb.co.uk wrote:Doping/cheating is not a crime.
Doping/cheating is fraud and theft. Radcliffe should be in prison and she should come out penniless.
Think again. I fully understood "rjm33"'s post. The calculations only apply if 12.0 is a true value. If 12.0 is bogus (and/or 15.6), so is 41.97%.The 12.0 wasn't flagged by anyone, except rjm33, as a suspicious value.The 3 suspicious values can be reasonably explained by the context and data as:1) plasma volume loss + altitude2) plasma volume loss + altitude3) altitudeYou cannot escape the uncertainty with pre-2009 data.We heard that 30% of 2012 podium winners were once suspicious. That we haven't heard any other names besides Paula is a direct result of the selection of the Sunday Times to highlight the 3 samples from a "famous British athlete".No doubt there could also be false negatives that might be hiding "suspicious" values as normal. That's why we needed 2009 rule changes.
preciously jaded wrote:
rekrunner wrote:Here is a follow-up math assignment for you:
What happens to Paula's 2003-2005 off-scores when we restore 10-20% of plasma volume?
I think you had problems reading or understanding rjm33's post. He is saying that the abnormal blood test results indicate a 41% loss of plasma volume, over double the numbers that you are considering. Here is the key text from the post:
rjm33 wrote:
.this decrease of plasma volume from 3.3L to 1.915L is a decrease of plasma volume of 41.97%!!!!!!! to explain Paula's change in hemoglobin value increase of 30%.....
So you can see that an implied 41.97% plasma volume loss by Paula is over 100% MORE than the maximum number of 20% plasma volume loss in the exercise physiology textbook or the Ashenden study, and that I agree with the textbook and Ashenden study.......Isn't that strange we would all agree?
rekrunner wrote:
I don't need to "go back" to the lab error argument. Don't fall for the "highlander fallacy" where we can only pick one. All of the arguments ever presented are still in play -- illness, antibiotics, altitude, inter method bias, internal quality checks (calibration), transporting and analysing. Nothing that has happened since Dec. 2014 has made judging pre-2009 samples collected and analyzed with pre-2009 processes with post-2009 ABP rules more valid. The 2009 rules were designed to reduce the uncertainty -- this is because pre-2009 the scientists observed a great deal of uncertainty from several sources.
You list all of these factors that could influence the test results but this only weakens the point that you are trying to make because you are not considering that they could also favor a false negative result as well as a false negative (internal quality checks, calibration ...). It would be really rotten luck that all these factors were all independently skewing the test results to become false positives on at least 3 occasions.
If there was a major "lab error" (and this includes all the internal qualitry checks, calibration etc that you cite) that resulted in the false positive, then you would expect to hear about a whole bunch of other samples from other athletes analysed by the same lab to have thrown up false positives. We have not heard this so far.
larkimm wrote:
Sigh...
We're no further on are we? In the sense that the debate is happening in only one place, and between only a few people (who don't, to a layman like myself, appear to be able to even agree on the science!).
As I've said before, and despite my reputation as a pro-Paula UK athletics fan (self admitted), what this needs is someone reputable to take it up in the world of sports science and journalism. Tucker is clearly suspicious, but is on record as giving the benefit of the doubt. Ashenden and Parisotto don't really deal with Paula in any specific way. Those journos who could do something about it seem to be keeping very quiet - surely this would be the biggest story of their careers (or second, after Lance) if they could nail it down?
It's not just Paula's silence which is deafening - its the silence of independent journalists and investigative reporters too....
You're a Brit larkimm, you know the British libel laws. As does Paula evidently. (“You print it and I sue you [and] you won’t be getting any money back in future like Lance Armstrong, I promise you that.â€). Journalists I'm sure are monitoring and investigating the story, but they won't be publishing anything unless they were very sure of their story.
I also disagree with what you and others have said about Ashenden & Parisotto - they put their names to a story which (to all intents and purposes) named Paula Radcliffe as the individual with the abnormal blood values (“a successful athlete who on three occasions recorded off-scores that had a less than a one-in-1,000 chance of being naturalâ€). They wouldn't do that lightly I'm sure.