Altitude = EPO = Fast

After a week in Tahoe sleeping at about 6000 feet and skiing every day, I was pretty psyched to come home and go for a ride at sea level! I took some of the women I am coaching for Death Ride out this morning for a fairly climbing intensive ride. It got super cold and windy up on Mt. Tam, but I have to say the extra little red blood cells I grew while in Tahoe did their job. It's always fun to come back down to sea level and feel like you are a total climbing rock star! I almost stayed with the Team Spine boys on the climb up from Alpine Lake - almost! :D

Of course, all the extra red blood cells will be long gone by next week's 120 miler. Sigh!

I was due to donate blood February 14th, but didn't, because I had scheduled a Century the 11th and either an organized or personal 200k the 25th, and a 400k March 11th. This is the only time in many years I have held off on donating due to an athletic event, though there is always heated discussion on the Ultrarunning list about what's the best protocol. Heck, I've run 5 miles on a hot afternoon the same day I gave blood, and felt _nothing_. (You could argue that running, at my pace, is NOT a strenuous activity!)

But really, I think I probably would have been ok. It'd be three and a half weeks out from the 400k. I wonder what percentage of the red cells would be back by then?

On a Podcast I was listening to yesterday, they were talking about Tyler Hamilton and his accused blood doping, saying his blood had been found to have someone else's red cells in it. I hadn't actually thought "they" (not saying he did it- I would like to believe he did not) took out their own red cells, stored them, grew more, then put their own back in. It never occured to me that it could be someone else's cells. It kind of grossed me out, but really, why should it? That's what blood donation is all about. Weird.

It amuses me to carry my electrolyte caps in a Procrit (epoetin) tin that I got at work as a promotion- it had mints in it.

That's cool that you can tell a performance difference like that.

Nanci