VIOLAH JEPCHUMBA, a 65-minute half-marathoner and Ken-born athlete. busted for EPO.

just a hunch wrote:

As a child did you frequently use the old " I know you are but what am I " retort?

Rekrunner's favorite game. Now that this doping thread is a couple of pages lomg, it is turning as per usual into rekrunner trolling 10 - 20 letsrunners.

Or, from his unique point of view, 10 - 20 letsrunners trolling poor rekrunner for no reason.

Now wouldn't that put the cat amongst the pigeons? If there was an epo type drug that simply increased the size of existing mitochondria without increasing the number or % of red cells. That would truly stuff the entire ABP system, no changes in off scores but sudden enhancement, you would only catch the cheats via an Hct weight test (though I admit this might be very far fetched).

casual obsever wrote:

just a hunch wrote:

As a child did you frequently use the old " I know you are but what am I " retort?

Rekrunner's favorite game. Now that this doping thread is a couple of pages lomg, it is turning as per usual into rekrunner trolling 10 - 20 letsrunners.

Or, from his unique point of view, 10 - 20 letsrunners trolling poor rekrunner for no reason.

We're just horrible people. Lol

Yes, all weirdos here except for one sane poster.

And you can tell the impact of all of this on training schedules, instead of elite middle distance runners (from Elliot, Snell, Ryun to Ovett and Nixon Kiprotich) training looking very aerobic in the off season to suddenly being extremely anaerobic in January eg Monday 8 x 2k reps @ 5:10-20, Tuesday 30km at 3:10 pace, Wednesday 20 x 200m in 24-25some with 10 x 150 hills to finish, Thursday hard fartlek, Friday 16 x 400m at 54-55s plus 8km at 3:20, Saturday 20km at 3:00-10 pace, Sunday 12 x 1k @ 2:35-40 plus hill sprints. Super sauce schedules (just one of these sessions has an old cripple like me jogging lightly for a week afterwards).

Naturally wrote:

Yes, all weirdos here except for one sane poster.

Naturally wrote:

Yes, all weirdos here except for one sane poster.

Jon, get those shelves stocked.

m!ndweak wrote:

... what we know from studies is rhEPO makes 3-5% gains, and SIGNIFICANTLY increases the number and size of the mitochondria, which with the added number of rbc's there is more 02 in the blood, and with more mitochondria than NORMAL, more 02 is absorbed from the blood, this in turn allows for MORE production of ATP, which allows for the muscles to FIRE, contract and extended more often, etc...while maintaining a high pace effort in aerobic while everyone else is producing lactic acid by the boatloads cause they are already in anaerobic respiration.

the RBCs are a small part of the big reason why the runners are making HUGE gains on what they themselves dubbed "rocket fuel"

To tell the truth, that observation is more interesting than some of the other extra-Hct augmenting mechanism of rHuEPO proposed, but to put it in context, one shouldn't draw to much conclusions from one isolated paper with non-endurance trained athletes for the following reasons:

- The mitochondrial paper (Plenge et al) was published in 2012 and its key findings most likely had been published/presented even earlier. Are you aware of any exercise physiologists, anti-doping specialists or erythropoietin specialists commenting on the issue and finding the mitochondrial mechanism relevant, because going through literature reviews such as the one by Sgrò et al (2018), the study is mentioned in a few sentences and even the reviewers think it highlights the importance of oxygen delivery, writing a few sentences later that "Lundby et al investigated whether rHuEpo may have some further ergogenic effect on endurance performance other than augmenting oxygen transport [concluding that] the improvement in O2 blood carrying capacity can be the only factor explaining the ergogenic effect of rHuEpo on VO2max".

- If I am reading you correctly, you are concluding that a given increase in Hb/Hbmass should elicit higher increase in Vo2Max with rHuEPO vs. blood infusion? As far as I know, this didn't take place in the only research paper in which both Total Hb elevating mechanisms were tested (Ekblom et al, 1991) in well-trained individuals, but the opposite seem to have taken place. Even when the researchers tried to elicit similar increase in Hb, it increased slightly more in the rHuEPO group vs. reinfusion group (13.2 % vs 9.3 %) whereas Vo2Max (6.4 % vs. 7.9 %) and time-to-exhaustion (13.5 % vs. 15.5 %) were actually better in the reinfusion group despite smaller increase in Hb.

Nobody is claiming that there might not be something there, but it is strange that only a few specialists even bother to flirt with the mitochondrial material.

Dutch cycling study.

Inquiring minds want to know wrote:

rekrunner wrote:

There was a recent double-blinded EPO study, which I accepted the result as truth.

What study was that?

The study talked about excess capacity of mitochondria over O2 delivery, with an even larger disparity after EPO treatment, the limitation of cardiac output, and the large dependency on O2 delivery. The study did not really talk about CO2 expulsion (unless one of these other acronyms is really CO2), but I would assume it is also linked to O2 delivery. This sounds like "during whole body exercise", the mitochondria is limited by O2 delivery, even more so after EPO treatment. Don't the RBCs delivery O2, and take away CO2? Is there a contradiction between the study discussion, and your description "it's all about the mitichondria" and "the RBCs are a small part of the big reason "?

m!ndweak wrote:

yeah i dont know what you were trying to address,

We have seen there are several steps in the ABP procedure, with an increasing amount of data, and the certainty of "likely doping" increases with each step in the process, as anti-doping experts evaluate other external factors and rule out other likely non-doping causes. This is not extreme but, an inherent reality in the process. You seem to be "very very" sure, regardless of the uncertainties -- something I wouldn't call moderate.

casual obsever wrote:

rekrunner wrote:

I can agree you are between me and mindweak on a spectrum of left to right, however, as a recent example, after reading your conclusions on Rupp, Farah, and Bolt, that "my doubts for those three are very very small", you don't strike me as the voice of reasoned moderation.

For an extremist like you, every reasoned moderate thought such as this one looks indeed extreme:

"Likely dopers are by definition "highly unlikely" to be clean, therefore I am sure that they are dopers."

In reality, an extreme thought would be:

"These are professional runners, therefore they are dopers."

On the other side of the spectrum, an extreme thought would be:

"These likely dopers are clean, because that could have been caused by altitude, and their character is impeccable, and they never tested positive."

Looks like a second hand account. If we are talking about "all types of PEDs", I would agree PEDs are effective. The question becomes, which "D" is "PE".

Now That's Telling It Like It Is wrote:

There you go - first hand account of an elite marathoner talking about "feeling like superman, never tired, quick recovery after training."

Since marathon training & racing has got to be one of most destructive & damaging aspects of an elite athlete who pursues this discipline, PEDs are obviously effacious and not just this "belief" & "faith" BS that rekrunner keeps trolling us with.

10-20 looks like an over-estimation, and I wouldn't say for no reason -- I know the reasons. These arguments won't be decided by popular vote.

casual obsever wrote:

just a hunch wrote:

As a child did you frequently use the old " I know you are but what am I " retort?

Rekrunner's favorite game. Now that this doping thread is a couple of pages lomg, it is turning as per usual into rekrunner trolling 10 - 20 letsrunners.

Or, from his unique point of view, 10 - 20 letsrunners trolling poor rekrunner for no reason.

Aragon wrote:

- If I am reading you correctly, you are concluding that a given increase in Hb/Hbmass should elicit higher increase in Vo2Max with rHuEPO vs. blood infusion? As far as I know, this didn't take place in the only research paper in which both Total Hb elevating mechanisms were tested (Ekblom et al, 1991) in well-trained individuals, but the opposite seem to have taken place. Even when the researchers tried to elicit similar increase in Hb, it increased slightly more in the rHuEPO group vs. reinfusion group (13.2 % vs 9.3 %) whereas Vo2Max (6.4 % vs. 7.9 %) and time-to-exhaustion (13.5 % vs. 15.5 %) were actually better in the reinfusion group despite smaller increase in Hb.

Nobody is claiming that there might not be something there, but it is strange that only a few specialists even bother to flirt with the mitochondrial material.

However rather interestingly Berglund & Ekblom's other 1991 paper just focusing on rHuEPO found stable reticulocytes and that "low doses of rhEpo increased Hb levels and Hct by more than 10% after 6 weeks" which would suggest one could increase Vo2Max by 6.4% without triggering an off-score red flag. Pretty effective.

Subway Surfers wrote:

However rather interestingly Berglund & Ekblom's other 1991 paper just focusing on rHuEPO found stable reticulocytes and that "low doses of rhEpo increased Hb levels and Hct by more than 10% after 6 weeks" which would suggest one could increase Vo2Max by 6.4% without triggering an off-score red flag. Pretty effective.

I find the ABP slightly Off-topic, but out of memory I can recall that there exists real research papers where it is concluded that one can increase his/her hematocrit without triggering OFFScore. This conclusion can't be drawn from the 1991 Berglund-Ekblom paper even when the quotation from the abstract is correct.

rekrunner wrote:

You seem to be "very very" sure, regardless of the uncertainties -- something I wouldn't call moderate.

I said "sure", didn't I, using WADA's definition as guideline ("highly unlikely that it may be the result of a normal physiological or pathological condition").

You of course have to exaggerate these "uncertainties" for whatever reason you may have for all your trolling here, although you know exactly that they are "highly unlikely".

RE "my doubts for those three are very very small": as pointed out, there was more than "likely doping".

Take Farah for example, in no particular order without being complete:

- likely doping

- didn't open the door to the OOC tester

- lost injection paperwork

- coached by doper coach Salazar

- coached by doper coach Aden

- huge performance jump at age 26

- literally unbeatable thereafter until age 33ish

So many strikes (there are more), yet only two "very" in my statement.

Aragon wrote:

I find the ABP slightly Off-topic, but out of memory I can recall that there exists real research papers where it is concluded that one can increase his/her hematocrit without triggering OFFScore. This conclusion can't be drawn from the 1991 Berglund-Ekblom paper even when the quotation from the abstract is correct.

a) real research papers: yes, e.g. Ashenden, SIAB Research Consortium:

"Our treatment regimen elicited a 10% increase in total haemoglobin mass equivalent to approximately two bags of reinfused blood. The passport software did not flag any subjects as being suspicious of doping whilst they were receiving rhEPO."

b) OFF score conclusions from the 1991 paper: that depends on how many details are presented in that paper... are there the right details? (Sorry, gotta run now)

Because Subway is in essence mostly right and he most likely read only the abstract which is misleading in its wording, I will only state that the Ret% data is very scarce and it evidently wasn't collected for anti-doping work and I am not sure that either that the available data would not've triggered ABP.

I won't go deeper than that because when I was too interested in the Malm et al paper in another thread it was used against me even when I raised valid points.

By "strike" do you mean "swing and a miss"? Let's take a closer look at what you called a reasoned moderate thought: "Likely dopers are by definition "highly unlikely" to be clean, therefore I am sure that they are dopers." I see you've introduced the word "highly" in the definition, and then removed the word "likely", both injecting a subtle bias. You might argue because WADA says "highly unlikely that it may be the result of a normal physiological or pathological condition", that adding "highly" to the definition is justified. But in this case "highly unlikely" refers to "normal physiological or pathological condition", and not "to be clean". Without any extra knowledge, I find this statement to be moderate, without injecting any personal bias: "Likely dopers are by definition "unlikely" to be clean, therefore I am sure that they are likely dopers." I guess you will call this extreme? Ultra-conservative? It's my impression that merely acknowledging uncertainties at all represents an exaggeration for you, as if it would be a sign of weakness.