Sunday Mail Has More Details on Paula's Blood Values and Off Scores + News She'll Put up £1m for an MRI lie detector

.....Just another conspiracy theory coincidence that... Lance, Pantani, and Paula all shared the same explanations.....

.....and those explanations would be approved as plausible explanations by.... Paula's blood test 'expert"...Dr. Martial Plan B Saugy.... and the IAAF.....

Has anyone seen Steve Cram's recent buddy buddy interview with Coe and Radcliffe? Steve flies to Monaco to interview these two ex-pats, now resident there presumably, in order to understand what can be done to save athletics.

Lots of ideas presented by Coe: more racing through the year; more head-to-heads between top athletes.

Precious few ideas presented by Radcliffe, who seems a little vacuous and perhaps a little uneasy at having to deal with lots of benign questions that aren't about her integrity.

Very little discussion about trying to rid the sport of its PED problem.

There's a brief excerpt here. (The full interview is much longer.)

http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/athletics/35896925

If anyone on here ever gets the chance to talk to Coe, please tell him that many of us no longer watch athletics on TV because we can't tell who is clean and who isn't. Simple as.

preciously jaded wrote:

rjm33 wrote:

When Marco Pantani got into legal trouble over his blood test results and high hematocrit scores.... his lawyers in their arguments to explain the "suspicious" blood test results ....stated that they could be explained by a combination of high altitude training, suffering from dehydration during the race, trauma from an accident, and a margin of error for the sampling method.

Do those explanations sound familiar to anyone else here but me....the insane conspiracy theorist?

....

Hmm. As I wrote, Armstrong also said that his "suspicious" blood sample after the Mont Ventoux stage in 2009 was as such because he was severely dehydrated and the blood sample was taken too soon after he had finished the demanding stage. There seems to be some sort of a "stock response" whenever hemoglobin or hematocrit values have increased in a manner that does not quite look "normal".

It looks suspiciously like these stock responses are inspired by Mr Plan B Saugy the IAAF poacher/gamekeeper and consultant to the Stars.

From the sep 8 statement,martial saugy :

'' data obtained for example in Vilamoura in 2003, with bloods collected before and right after the half marathon, ran in hot conditions, are typically showing effects of confounding factors. The increase of 2.8 in Hb (and no significant effect on ret%) is due to a drastic hemo-concentration caused by the specific race conditions''.

..and we showed here in 1,200 posts that dehydration/hemoconcentration is not a plausible explanation for that large 2.8g/dl increase in Hb for Paula.

...and Saugy said there was no significant effect on ret%, but would not release the actual ret% from prerace......but I was able to figure it out with the OFF score of 82 and Hb value of 12.8...which gives a prerace retic% of 0.59 and we have the postrace retic% of 0.47% and Hb of 15.6g/dl.

...which means the retic% would of gone from 0.59%prerace to 0.47% postrace which is a 20% decrease in retic% (which can also indicate a blood transfusion along with the massive Hb increase, which is always the most important factor to look at first and foremost)....

.......which means that Dr. Saugy would not be telling the truth when he said there was not a significant change in retic%(of a score he never released).

Like I said.....I do not think that Saugy would expect that someone on the internet would use the OFF score and Hb score to catch him in a lie...

...or spend months researching dehydration levels in runners...to catch him and the IAAF in another..

.......you can see that the LTP is a very reliable truth scoring system......

....I also think the dehydration/hemoconcentration plausibility explanation is a lie.

...and there may be other omissions as well...Saugy seems to try to explain the scores away in isolation while ignoring the massive Hb changes and massive change in OFF score from 82 to 114.87 in 2 days!

.....which is why I call Dr. Saugy and the IAAF liars and frauds.......

..........you better stop reading ...or I will turn you all into insane conspiracy theorists....

...............................go readers!!!.............

Fair points. My only goal here is to understand what experts in the domain think is normal, as both you and doctor rjm33 take these high values with a grain of salt.If my evil twin were to argue against me, he would point out:- What is normal for the general population is not necessarily normal for Paula, especially if she is truly anemic, and not just iron deficient. We would need more details about her profile and medical history.- Even normal values don't exclude micro-dosing.I would have no response except to say I'm against making athletes medical history generally public.At least we can understand why experts might not be concerned with a high, but still normal value at altitude, without resorting to protection and coverup theories.And we can see how well strongly expressed opinions like "she should have been immediately banned based on 16.2 alone, and retroactively banned for 2003 and 2005" are connected with reality.My concern with pre-2009 data is based on what is public knowledge:- change in the IAAF process in 2009- significant errors actually observed (many by Ashenden) without these process changesI'm all for using pre-2009 data, if we can accurately determine or upper bound all the possible errors.Concerning the pre-2009 journal articles:- I don't know if the researchers asked the IAAF to collect and analyze blood values for the studies behind- I don't know if they used the same flawed procedures lacking quality or process controls -- maybe the studies behind clarify the procedures applied. Surely some errors, such as collecting blood within 2 hours of heavy exercise in the heat would not be a factor.- Random measurement errors that can greatly impact individual samples, will cancel each other in large population samples.- I don't know, but I guess the expressed "normal" ranges are based on an average of a large sample set, and some arbitrary selection of standard deviations, like +/- 2 SD. The differences in the expressed ranges are most likely different choices of SD. If the IAAF like errors also occurred for the journal article authors, I suppose the average is still correct, but at worst the SD might be higher.

I appreciate your recent change of tone, but these kinds of posts are unnecessarily provocative.

rjm33 wrote:

Autologous Madness!

Here are the latest results from the LTP (Letsrun.com Truth Passport) test which is reliable, robust, and with high sensitivity and high specificity.

Here is a partial list of "suspicious" results:

...

It's not quiet anymore.Question for the experts:We saw elsewhere that Paula drinks 4 liters of water a day.Can this also cause a dilution effect?Could it be similar, or would it be much smaller?

Plasma rubbish wrote:

...

It's strange that she would have such low Hb levels (12 is very low, I quietly wonder if she transfused a bag of saline prior to testing...

Uk athletes used Saline drips before hot distance races up until it was banned. I know this for a fact.

Here is another conspiracy theory I have recently developed during my progressive and now fairly severe episode of psychosis caused by my desire to destroy the wicked witch of the west...which is you rekrunner....

My psychosis...which other posters have recently correctly described as now taking on religious messianic themes involving "saving the world" from rekrunner as well as bizarre ideation including "revealing the truth" to the world (even I noticed that one as I was writing it).......revealing the truth to the world?... What are you talking about?...You are on the LRC forum you wacko?...

....I realized that I was getting worse and that I might be coming down with the very common Kenyan weak mind disease that Renato has told us about.

Since I am a doctor.....I know that weak mind disease... is very common on Wall Street.......and very, very, very common here at the LRC forum...

... So what if Dr. Saugy destroyed 67 Russian samples....he is keeping his job..and none of Paula's scores officially count pre-2009... and nothing is going to happen to Paula... get it rjm33?....

So here is my new conspiracy theory:

...Could rekrunner and Jon Orange be the same person???...

Yes -- using hemoconcentration/dehydration alone to explain 2.8 (or 3.6) in 2 days is ridiculous no matter how you slice it.What then, is a good "maximum" upper bound?If we assume a maximum 10-20% plasma volume loss, and do the math (I leave that to you), I guess we would find something less than half, surely not more than 1.4-1.5.Of course, the maximum is one extreme possibility, and not guaranteed even in extreme conditions like a world class semi-marathon in warm weather. The error can be less than the maximum, like other cycling and running studies that found 0.45, or 3% or 5%, up to the opposite effect of 7% hemodilution found in women jogging for 80 minutes.There are two choices to narrow the range of -7% to +20%:1) Analyze the conditions in excruciating detail to accurately assess or cap any effect to eliminate any doubts2) Wait 2 hoursMy own expressed opinion is that some effect around 10-20% cannot be dismissed so easily without more details.

rjm33 wrote:

..and we showed here in 1,200 posts that dehydration/hemoconcentration is not a plausible explanation for that large 2.8g/dl increase in Hb for Paula.

...

No. One major long standing difference between us is: once Jon discovered efficiency/economy and the neuromuscular, he has abandoned all the aerobic science before. I have embraced efficiency/economy and the neuromuscular, while clinging to the aerobic mythology.He's English. I'm American.

rjm33 wrote:

Here is another conspiracy theory I have recently developed ...

So here is my new conspiracy theory:

...Could rekrunner and Jon Orange be the same person???...

I don't want to speak too much about Lance.One observation (from Ashenden again?) I recall from a failing memory is that his comeback tour values didn't behave like previous tours: an earlier (pre-1999?) Lance had falling hematocrit values over the 3 weeks, something quite normal, while the comeback Lance was rejuvenated somewhere in the middle.

preciously jaded wrote:

Regarding other data related to this subject I am posting up some of Lance Armstrong’s blood data from the 2009 tour de France which were made public because Armstrong insisted that he was riding this Tour de France clean ...

Who can we believe here?

rjm33 wrote:

Since I am a doctor......

.....how come you have so much time to write and read this thread, and do you write up all of your medical notes mainly using ellipsis and surplus full stops??? ... Just.... Wondering..... On....a.... Saturday...... Morning ;-)

Pretty sure Rekrunner said he was from Cheshire and his kids ran for Paula's first club, now he says he's American....

rekrunner wrote:

Yes -- using hemoconcentration/dehydration alone to explain 2.8 (or 3.6) in 2 days is ridiculous no matter how you slice it.

What then, is a good "maximum" upper bound?

If we assume a maximum 10-20% plasma volume loss, and do the math (I leave that to you), I guess we would find something less than half, surely not more than 1.4-1.5.

You really should include not only that Paula ran harder, but also the following differences of the 10 - 20% experiment done also around 22 C, where:

1) The participants ran 2.5 - 3 hours (vs. 67 minutes).

2) The participants didn't hydrate (while Paula used a scientific approach to always hydrate perfectly in races).

3) The data were taken directly after the run, without rehydration (while Paula rehydrated for 60 - 90 minutes).

In conclusion, I would divide the found maximum of the 20% hemoconcentration by a factor of 3 or 4 in this case. But ok, let's use a factor of two to give ensure the avoidance of a false positive -> maximal possibility then is a 10% heme increase for Paula -> here 1.20 g/dl.

That brings her from 12.0 to 13.2, far below the experimentally determined 15.6 g/dL.

As for the "expert" - not experts - saying otherwise: this person a) really has no credibility, and b) presented no reason for his conclusion. Same goes for the infamous "bloated" IAAF defense document, wherein they basically say that hemoconcentration is possible and therefore the increase is possible, without demonstrating that the numbers do work out.

Apparently you struggle with the last part too, rekrunner, which is why you started to invoke extreme measurement errors. Those in turn are not mentioned by either IAAF or Saugy in arguing for the plausibility of the 3.6 g/dL increase. It is also obvious that they ignore the 12.0 value, exclusively talking about the 12.8.

Check again. Not me. My kids don't run , and didn't run for any club ever anywhere. I've never lived in the UK. I was born in America.

Cracjed wrote:

Pretty sure Rekrunner said he was from Cheshire and his kids ran for Paula's first club, now he says he's American....

He posts on european times. Or he's a night clerk at the 7-11 in Jersey City.

Cracjed wrote:

Pretty sure Rekrunner said he was from Cheshire and his kids ran for Paula's first club, now he says he's American....

rekrunner wrote:

Check again. Not me. My kids don't run , and didn't run for any club ever anywhere. I've never lived in the UK. I was born in America.

That was larkimm. For what it's worth, I see the two of you as hard-core fans, who simply can't accept the facts* (cf. your indefensible claims a la "but it was 30 degrees!", "16.2 is not unusually high", "0.77% is low", ...), and J.O. as an obvious troll like J. R.

* I've seen a lot of those fans/remarks when discussing Armstrong's doping since '99, when he was caught for the first time. Most of them are now claiming that yes, he doped, but he did just like everybody else. The latter was proven to be false too, but who cares.

Footage of the 2003 Half Marathon that led to the questionable blood test is now on youtube:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r27hc6qhsp4

Pretty impressive, drops the opposition after just 14 (!) mins. Worth noting she looks on the verge of collapse after crossing the line.