Blood Donation=Poor Race?

[Silva Surfer]

Just curious - I'm not looking for an excuse, just an explanation.

I gave blood this afternoon and ran a local athletic club road race this evening.
It was a 2.9 mile route, mostly flat and conditions were very reasonable. 7 weeks ago I ran the same race 33 seconds quicker. I felt good at the start, fairly strong and tried to hold something back to try to spread out my effort. At around the half way point my legs and lungs just didn't seem to want to respond and the guys I had been running with pulled away. I slowed to try to maintain some sort of decent pace to the finish but just seemed to slow ( very gradually ) even more.

Any science-bods or medical bods out there who can tell me if it's possible the blood donation could have affected athletic performance as I'm positive I would have equalled or bettered my time of 7 weeks ago had I been able to maintain my initial pace??

Cheers!

[Big Jon]

Is the Pope a catholic, do bears jobby in the woods? Of course you'll be affected by giving blood - it is the stuff that transports oxygen from your lungs to your muscles that use it to provide energy to move said muscles. reduce the amount of blood and you'll automatically reduce the amount of oxygen thus reducing your muscles' ability to work, so reducing your running speed.

[andypat]

As Big Jon says - the answer would be a definite yes. In fact you might want to be a bit careful about overdoing it for a week or so after giving blood. I used to give regularly and reckoned it took me about a week to recover from the initial dip, although i think its possibly longer before you fully recover. Off the top of my head think you are losing about an eighth of your blood when you donate so expect a comparable loss of energy.

I know a lot of more serious athletes than me (I describe myself as such only in the sense that bowlers at the commonwealth games are similarly described) wont give blood due to the disruption to their training.

[ifor]

The cyclists did not cheat by putting an extra pint in for no reason.....

[lakesorunner]

Feeling faint

After donation some people can feel faint. When the body loses blood, special nerve cells in the walls of the arteries of the neck, called baroreceptors, sense that your blood pressure has dropped. The blood vessels constrict to compensate for this loss and to keep the blood pressure normal. Standing up too quickly, for example, can cause an abrupt drop in your blood pressure and make you feel light headed. Lying on the couch restores blood flow to the brain as your head will be at the same level as your heart. Sitting on the edge of the donation bed with your feet hanging down for at least two minutes will also help, as it allows your blood pressure to stabilise itself before you stand up. If you are feeling faint, our staff will ask you to stay at the session until you feel well again.


The above was taken from the National Blood Service web-site. I am staggered that anyone would THINK of going to race straight after giving blood. The number of warnings you are given by the staff, and the fact that, as BigJon says

it is the stuff that transports oxygen from your lungs to your muscles that use it to provide energy to move said muscles

should make it fairly obvious it is at best silly, and at worst potentially dangerous, to do strenuous activity immediately after giving blood.

[Roger]

Quite early in my running 'career' I gave blood on a Monday, scoffed at the advice not to run for a week and went for a training run on Friday. The run was a routine six miles and not particularly hard, but after 4½ miles I felt dizzy and weak, and had to slow right down to avoid collapsing.

If you're running seriously and are keen to give blood, then consider becoming a plasma donor. That way you get to keep all those lovely oxygen-carrying red corpuscles, and have to make up only the fluid.

The other option, i.e. giving blood but getting it put back again a few weeks later, is 'blood doping' and is a doping offence. For good reason: more blood = boosted performance. And for exactly the same reason, less blood = worse performance.

[Blanka]

The other option, i.e. giving blood but getting it put back again a few weeks later, is 'blood doping' and is a doping offence.

Interesting, I didn't know that - seems a bit radical to me but presumably some people go to all sorts of lengths to win even if it means cheating.

From the detection point of view, this must be a fairly foolproof way of cheating if you get your own blood put back seeing as it cannot be detected as foreign material in your body, is that the case?

[AndyC]

Actually Blood-doping can be detected even if you use your own blood- two methods work (that I know of) 1) the age profile of the blood cells is distorted 2) (the one they use to detect EPO use) you end up with more cells per unit volume than can be sustained (the body gets rid of the extra liquid more quickly than the extra cells)
and that is before you consider that you might need to add preservative to the blood to prevent it degrading while being stored

[Mrs H]

There was some good stuff in this thread a few years back when I asked a similar question
viewtopic.php?f=1&t=6744&p=77230&hilit=blood+doning#p77230

(How do you do those nice neat links Scott?)

[Scott]

(How do you do those nice neat links Scott?)

Highlight the bit of text you want to be a link, and then click the "URL" button. Then you need to type an equals sign and the web address after the first "url" than appears.

For example:

Code: Select all

[url=http://www.britishorienteering.org.uk]click this link[/url]

will look like this:

click this link

[Mrs H]

I'm gonna try it to see if it works
it should be here

WOW -

[Scott]