RBC donations in the OS
EDITED TO GIVE YOU THE ENDING NOW:
If you decide to do this, be prepared to feel like crap for a while as you try to do these workouts. Also, do it EARLY in the OS or even better, BEFORE you start the OS. The way the workouts ramp up and the tests at 8 and 14 weeks come at you donating during it will kill ya. I did it at the end of week 8, right after that test, and regret it now.
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Hey, RnP, what are your opinions on donating blood during the OS? This is something I've been doing for decades but I haven't been training like this in an OS before. I've donated plasma and platelets in the past during racing season and that has minimal effects on work capacity because you can replace the fluids quickly and be back in the game within a couple days at the most. Donating red cells is a different story.
One of the reasons I donate is because I run significantly high in the iron department in addition to having one of the blood types frequently in demand. It isn't like I'm going to donate the weekend before test week to scotch my results. I also know that I'd have to dial it down quite a bit in terms of target paces and power targets in those first couple of weeks. My question is about whether the musculature in the legs will still be able to get sufficent work stimulus in light of the diminished cardiovascular oxygen delivery capacity.
My latest Hgb levels was 16+ and it usually goes down to something like 11+ when I give an Alyx (double red cell) donation. HCT is somewhere around 42 and it winds up in the mid 30's.
Should I avoid donating red cells?
Comments
Now seems better than either at the end of the OS, when you want max energy for recovery, or during IM or HIM build. Wish I had your hct. Mine is 38-9 usually. Eat a can of spinach beforehand
It's not ideal and you will absolutely notice a significant change in your watts, paces, RPE, etc. Or rather, as Al said, better now vs later when you may want to apply that fitness to a race, etc. My classic story is me donating blood 18 days before my first Ironman in 2000. Good intentions but I "lost" about 45" per mile of run pace and about 1mph on the bike at the same heart rates.
2 months of continuing on as I am versus 2 months of trying to work back up from an artificially induced drop in FTP and VO2max.
Which is better? Will I likely wind up weaker in the end if I give blood or would the added challenge of working the muscles with reduced O2 delivery make them stronger? Could this habit be one reason why I have a greater tolerance for anaerobic work but not necessarily a high FTP?
OK, altitude training as an analogy.mTraining @ 2500 meters provides maybe 65% of the O2 as sea level. Instead of 4 oxygen molecules per hgb molecule, there are 2-3 on each. Its not possible to do effective FTP, VO2, and TP IP type wkos @ that reduced O2. FTP as a result is 10% less. So losing 2 units will diminish your ability to do hard work, and thus inhbit the improvement of FTP&VDOT, if the altitude analogy holds.
I think I'm going to have to do an experiment on myself.
Peter ... Interesting discussion, although I never donate blood myself. Concerning changes with lower O2/hgb levels @ altitude, and changes to power production. What I experience is, I can still generate the same power levels, but hold them for shorter times. The extreme example is what happened to me @ the top of Independence Pass, 12,090 feet up. I was climbing OK (20 miles, 4000' gain) and noticed watts dropping with the same RPE as I went up. A (younger) guy slowly passed me @ about 10,800', and I was able to slowly return. To him over the next 1,000 feet, getting on his wheel by the final turn 1/4 mile from the summit. I though I would put on a sprint designed to last for a minute, which would get me all the way to the top. But I could only hold it for about 10 seconds. Power was just. Ot in the muscles. Similar e periences at lower elevations between 7 and 10,000' No problems holding a steady pace for long times, but my watts/ RPE drops fairly evenly as altitude rises, and ability to hold higher bursts decreases.
What I'm curious about is the time course of reestablishing my FTP, VO2max and VDOT numbers over the weeks following the donation. Will it be right along with the standard curve of red cell replacement? Will it lag behind that curve, suggesting that your red cells play a key role in your body's recovery from exertion? I'll be doing everything I can to keep other variables out of consideration but still, this whole thing will only have an n of 1.
That is, unless Brenda Ross wants to get in on the action...
Currently reading, The Secret Race. Great read and opened my eyed a little but most of us thought something was going on to ride like that day after day after day.
I like his word - Choade!
Tyler was my hero. I did an MS Ride with him one year and really enjoyed the experience of pacelining with him. He is really a nice guy and quite a prankster. I was totally crushed when he was found to be doping.
@ Peter - My prediction (for the sake of a working hypothesis) is that your FTP will drop less than 10%, your VO2 as tested in a five minute effort will drop less than 5%, and FTP will return to baseline sooner than you Hct does. I'm thinking that there is more to athletic performance than oxygen carrying capacity, including hormones and brain/muscle connection. You'll end up with a higher FTP as a result of this. Again, just a working hypothesis, would be nice to be a real study. As a physician, I have a congenital belief of the value of bloodletting.
!0% is the amount of red cell mass you will lose?
HCT = 42 before donation. Weight is 175 pounds. I can only give 1 unit of RBCs since I am donating platelets today.
I'll check back in about 2
So, I'm now unhooked and the monitor indicates I now have a HCT of 37, a drop of 5 (11.9%). Time to hydrate like hell and then we'll see what happens tomorrow on the bike. I thinking I will try to match my power numbers as if doing a test tomorrow and then continue on with the workout as best I can. Currently I am working with a VO2max number of 337 watts and an FTP of 259 watts. I wonder if I'll be taken down to 297 (11.9% down) and 228 respectively.
Here's the test I did today. http://www.trainerroad.com/cycling/rides/139781
Here's the test I did for the NOS Week 8 test on December 17th. http://www.trainerroad.com/cycling/rides/129299
5 minute VO2max test:
I managed 320 watts and an avg HR of 179 bpm with a long time up in mid 180's. Pure agony. Felt like I was climbing one of the 20% hills we have around here. Compared to the Week 8 test where I went out way too hard I was only trying to match my VO2max number of 337 watts and see if I could hold on. I managed to get an average of 95% of my current VO2max. But... The previous test had an average HR of 177 bpm and I got up there in the low 180's for a bit. That time in the mid 180's was awful and it was while I was trying to hold onto the 300-310 watt range. Still I was surprised I was able to get those watts for 5 minutes but it really thrashed me.
One thing that stands out in my mind was how quickly pushing a harder gear wore me out. Normally I like to grind a harder gear for a change of pace and I can put up with it for longer than a minute, even longer on steep hills out of the saddle. I do that a lot on hill workouts for the muscle work. Today was another story. I think the RBC donation had a greater impact on this aspect of my cycling than riding tempo, sweet spot or FTP at a cadence near 90 or above. The muscle fibers needed for a hard gear (cadence above 80 though) reached their limit within 10-15 seconds. Those efforts seemed to hurt right away.
20 minute FTP test:
After a 10 minute rest I was still willing to give it a try but my head was really arguing about it... I didn't go out really hard like before and used the suggested 2 minute ramp up time. I tried to match the power that got me my current FTP but that was a bust. My previous test had a 273 watt average but I could barely get there with a gradual build up so I settled for current FTP (259 watts) plus a little more. No dice. Within the first couple of minutes I was fading. I tried a harder gear and lower cadence at the 3 minute mark and it cost me dearly. The 4th minute was a big dip down and it was a fight to get the easier gear to turn over and get the power back up. I didn't even make it to the 10 minute point as I just could not tolerate the way I felt. I saw that my HR was already marching steadily up through the high 170's. I shut it down and switched over to another workout to do some more work at the ABP or sweet spot level. I managed to average 263 watts for the first 5 minutes and then things just got too hard.
Regarding my HR, in the previous test, it took 2 minutes to get above 170 bpm and it climbed up to 175-176 and held there for the next 16 minutes in spite of pushing 270+ watts until the final push where it went into the low 180's. This time it also took 2 minutes to get to 170 bpm but my HR was already up at 180 bpm by 7 minutes when I decided to bail with my wattage wavering all over the place between 250 and 270 watts. I would say that the blood donation affected my FTP ability more than the VO2max but I also did the 5 minute test first. I would have gotten better results doing this test first but there you have it. I couldn't make it half way through at a lower power output because my HR was just too high and my whole body was screaming. Exactly how I expected to feel.
Further work at ABP (85-90%):
Yeah, right. I managed to maintain an average of 229 watts and an average HR of 163 bpm with a long time in the high 160's. I wound up with 88.4% of current FTP. It took a lot of focus to keep the power up but it still was wavering all over the place. Power was in my sweet spot zone but HR was solidly in my threshold zone and it was not comfortable at all. That workout file is shown below.
http://www.trainerroad.com/cycling/rides/139816
So that was Day 1. It's just a single data point but I learned something for myself at least. I felt that hard gear/low cadence riding was dampened more than easier gear/higher cadence work. Now, let's see how long it takes to reestablish my power levels before the donation.
I'm also noticing that recovering from these two shorter workouts doesn't seem to be going as well as it usually does. I'm fully rehydrated, especially since the donation process I went through replaces the volume lost with a plasma substitute solution. I have ramped up the nutrition in advance of and after the donation. I've done all the usual things I do to recover but the workouts feel like they took more out of me even though they were at lower power intensities and for shorter durations. The strain on my CV system was much harder in the test workout and I took it much easier today yet I still feel burnt. Hmm. Now to make swag's about blood components involved in recovery...
Tough bike workout today but I made it through more of it than I thought I would. A .95 and a .91 before having to drop out after 10 minutes of the third 15' block. I took some rest and then built back up near FTP before shutting it all down. I also did a slow run on the big hill into town and back.
Trying to meet my FTP has caused my HR to go higher than it normally does and it is much tougher to accomplish. Since my cardiovascular system is not able to support the muscular exertion like before the donation I'm wondering about the consequences. Am I strengthening my cardio system and leaving my cycling & running muscles to go these weeks with a lesser training stimulus? Or, does the much harder exertion level I'm feeling mean my muscles are getting exertion that is pushing their limits because the reduced O2 delivery is forcing more muscles fibers of whatever type to be recruited to do the work that was accomplished previously by a lesser number?
Wow Peter, that's quite a study you have going here. I donated without thinking it through. This is my first time consistently training since my College running days (about 10 years ago). I too have a highly sought after blood type. But i have low HGB at 39 for this donation (apparently the cut off is 38) however, I felt compelled to help out, being I'm an ICU nurse and know how important blood is for patients! How did you get a fluid replacement? Was it albumin? I have been trying to rehydrate. I've been pretty dizzy (more than usual, haha). I've been reading a lot up on nutrition and fluid replacement.
My workouts since the blood draw have been insanely tough! I just don't have it. My HR is high, which tells me I need more fluid replacement or I'm pushing too hard. So I've been focusing more on HR zones instead of power. Today I hit my first interval as prescribed but thought I'd surly die if I tried another interval. After the 4 min rest my mind was ready to try the full prescription again... Only 7 min in I was unable to meet my power goals so I bumped it down to 85% ish. (My watts are MUCH lower than yours, so my goal was to stay above 180w. Then with 1 min left I powered it up to 96%. The final interval I was poring buckets of sweat and my legs (and even my arms, were in pain) so I kept it at 180w and attempted to increase back above 200w for the last 5 min of the interval, I only made it 2 min. Then did an ok brick after the last bit of cool down. I've NEVER struggled so much. In fact I was thinking about upping the beginner level at the last test to intermediate. Glad I didn't now. Looking forward to a long sleep tonight! Haha!