rekrunner wrote:
I still don't see the contradiction or incompatibility in 2004, let alone the relevance.
You don't? Let's try again......
Paula Radcliffe in her autobiography:
On Monday, August 2, three weeks before the Olympic marathon, I did my final 2hr 15min run down at the lake near Font-Romeu. It was as good, if not better, than any of the long runs I had done that summer. I was in very good form. The next day we left for England, where we would spend five days before going to the south of Spain to acclimatise for Athens.
We based ourselves on the edge of the Doñana National Park, south of Seville. There were lots of trails, we had a nice place to stay and the temperatures were close to Athens. We wanted to replicate my build-up for my previous marathons as much as possible.
On Sunday, August 8, exactly two weeks before the race, we did our last long training session: a two-hour tempo run in the evening to replicate the Athens marathon. Gerard (Hartmann, my physiotherapist) wasn’t feeling well and didn’t come. Gary (my husband) and I went in the car to the cycle path from where I would set off.
Warming up, I felt a little tightness in the vastus medialis muscle in the quadricep of my left leg. Had Gerard been there I would have asked him to have a look, but it didn’t seem serious enough to drive back. If it became sore during the run, I would stop. Through the first hour and a half I was aware of it, but it wasn’t painful. In the last half-hour it gave me a little more trouble, but as soon as the run was completed the leg seized up.
Gerard told me not to worry; the muscle causing the problem was not essential for running. As soon as he touched the area that was in spasm I was in agony. To loosen it, he had to be incredibly gentle with his massage and clever with his psychology; he didn’t want me worrying about this. The next morning it felt bruised but otherwise seemed OK. I went for my run as normal, but five minutes into the warm-up it was obvious there was a problem. It felt as if I couldn’t bend my leg properly. On the massage table, I didn’t have to be told it was serious. I could feel the same squeakiness in the area above my left knee that had been in my shin before the Chicago marathon two years before and again in 2003. Crepitus had come back to haunt me.
Gerard said the muscle didn’t seem to be damaged; it was aggravated and in an inflammatory cycle. By evening it felt better and the squeaky sensations had disappeared. The next morning, there was still no sign of the crepitus and I decided to give it another 24 hours before putting it to the test.
That afternoon we went for a 20-minute walk on the seafront and returned for more treatment. When Gerard looked at it, his face fell. “It’s back,” he said and I could tell that he was shaken. So we turned again to Dr Hans-Wilhelm Müller-Wohlfahrt (the German doctor). We had to get this sorted and quickly. Gerard and I went to Munich.
Gary Lough's take on this injury:
On one of her last long training runs, her leg started to hurt out of nowhere….but of course I didn’t really know what was going on, so she kept going, she thought it was some kind of cramp…..
VERSUS.......
Gerard Hartmann's description of the injury (interview with Cathal Dennehy):
The following year, 2004, she went to Athens [for the Olympic Games] as a massive favorite in the marathon. What exactly went wrong?
GH: Three weeks before the Olympics, down in Portugal, Paula did a 16-mile run and a car with joyriders going too fast came in onto the gravel trails. A stone or something hard flung from the back tire, hit her knee, and she got a blood abscess deep in her knee. We flew the following day to Munich to see Dr. Müller-Wohlfahrt.
Gerard Hartman's interview with Sean Ingle:
“In 2004, in Greece, she was overwhelming favourite for the women’s marathon and, three weeks beforehand, was in the shape of her life. Then came a freak accident: she was running along the trails when a joyrider, going too fast, skidded down near her, sending a sharp stone flying into a knee.
“A stone, like a bullet, had hit the side of her knee and it had turned black,” Hartmann says. “She had a clot and abscess.
So you don't find the differences in these stories just a little bit strange? Try really hard and not be a troll here rekrunner. We're not talking about a positive dope test here, we're just discussing why there are two stories about her pre-Athens injury that are in no way compatible. A normal person would just acknowledge that yes, that is odd.