My experince with drugs and blood doping

I took 175 mg of testosterone per week by injection for one season.The ability to recover after repeated hard days was unreal. This dose of testosterone put my testosterone level above 1000ng/dl...about twice what a normal male puts out.
This is what the test does....it helps you recover. You can also get down below 6% body fat without loosing any muscle mass. On the down side test, and all steroids, will make you hold water weight and I was holding about 5 pounds I think. The water, however, is mainly intramuscular and it helps with strength a lot.

Sides.....acne, lost a bit of hair, and of course even a small dose of testosterone will shut down your natural testosterone production completely. When you stop it takes a while before your natural testosterone level comes back and you feel tired and with no sex drive at all.
Testosterone and all steroids will make your good cholesterol(hdl) basically disappear as well while "on" the stuff.




I also used EPO for 4 months 4000 iu's injected sub Q in the lower belly fat once a week to build, and then 1000 a week to hold. 4000iu's will bring your hematocrit up 1% a week.
I went up to 54% but even at 50%, the legal limit in the pro ranks , my performance was unreal.
My sustainable power output went from 350 to 420 in three months!!! That's a 20% gain!!!

Sides.....none because I checked my crit every three days with a portable crit tester.
I also NEVER got dehydrated and never went above 54%.
If anyone does not test their hematocrit at least weekly then they are idiots plain and simple.

Anyone that goes above 55% is an idiot because at night when your heart rate and blood pressure drops you can DIE simply because the heart is not getting enough oxygen.
By the way Riis and Pantani were well above 55% when they won "the tour".

At the time I was racing Cat 1 and I can tell you that most of the guys that were really good riders were on EPO or at least blood doping.

Now for the VERY COMMON way to blood dope.
Our team doctor would take about a liter of blood out of each of us a couple months before a big race. Then he would spin it in a centrifuge to rid the blood of plasma...what was left was pure red blood cells(packed cells). He would then drain the blood into blood bags, put preservative in it and put the whole nine yards in a frige at 33 degrees F. The day of the race we would infuse our own blood back. Each unit of packed cells(about 300cc) would increase our hematocrit about by 3!!! so if you infused 3 units you jumped 9 points....like from 45 to 54%!!!

Now I don't think that anyone should use drugs. I for one didn't like myself while I was "on". I always wondered about the guys in the back of the pack...what if they took drugs...maybe they would kick my ass. What about the pro's that don't use drugs ....maybe they would kick Armstrongs ass too.

SO...anyone who believes that Armstrong or any other top pro or even any top Cat 1 national level rider is clean simply lacks high level racing experince. Armstrong is an asshole for saying he has is clean......Greg Lemond know better. I do NOT wear the yellow wrist band!!!

There is a doping forum where this would be much more appropriate.

oh...I didn't know that....

So WHYYYYYYYYYYYYYY did you dope.........funny it's the people who had experience with it are yelling not to dope! Weren't you smart enough to find that out in the first place........or was it a way of living? Or you were forced to dope?
And okeee but why do you believe lemond and hampsten.......everyone dopes right? Level playing field.....so what's the prob then!?

Okay bro......I doped because I wanted to be a pro. I didn't continue because I didn't like myself for doing it.

It is NOT a level playing field bro because some people respond better than others to drug use.

In the Lemond seminar that I attended he was asked if he used drugs and he said that he didn't and the thought never crossed his mind because he was winning without drug use.

He went on to say that the drugs that were used in his day were testosterone and sometimes stimulants. Some also blood doped.

Blood doping with your own blood is foolproof and is done all the time now. EPO can only be detected for about 5 days so all you have to do is stop taking the stuff a week before a race...the greatly increased hematocrit stays elevated for weeks.
ALSO and most importantly there are ways to mask the use of EPO....that's why Armstong had Ferrari as his doctor....Ferarri is a master at beating "the tests".




The reason blood doping never became that big is because it doesn't work as well as EPO. When you keep blood in a cold frige with preservatives many of the cells die and the increase in hematocrit is not as usuable as with EPO. With EPO the body simply makes more cells...and almost all of them are good. So a 55% crit with blood doping isn't the same as a 55 with EPO.

Tnx for the info.......but back again to youre first post: what does LA need to say then. 'Hey guys I'm a doper, put me in jail or something'. I mean ofcourse he's going to say he's clean.........and mind you that yellow wristband IS a good cause (whether he is a doper or not!)

Armstrong should have said "no comment" right from the "get go" like many others have.

The trouble with the wrist band is this.....part of his message to cancer patients, and to the public in general, is that you can not only recover from cancer but you can then go on to become a great athlete if you just believe and work hard enough. He also portrays a squeeky clean image to these people...drug clean that is.

The truth of the matter is that if he hadn't been so tinkered with by Ferarri and others he would have never made the top 20 in the tour. Also, if he hadn't had the most curable form of cancer that a young man can get then he would be dead right now since the cancer had metastisized to the brain and lungs.
He was transformed from an okay one day classic rider into an unstopable multi day tour machine in a very short peroid of time. This was all done after cancer and in a very short period of time...he forgot to mention that he was tinkered with so much that he was transformed from a quarter horse into a thoroughbred.

sigh.......it just never stops, does it.

And we all know that college sports are clean and untainted......

Obviously you wouldn't want to identify yourself, but could you say what country you are in? You had a team doctor help you?

Plenty of cat 1's and pro's in the US are clean (I'm not saying all), but from what I hear that is not so true in the amateur ranks in europe.

I am from the USA...Arizona to be exact.

Plenty of top Cat 1 riders are on juice here bro...plenty...they just keep their mouths shut. In fact epo use is not uncommon even in masters that I race in now.
BUT...as you say it is more common in Europe. In Europe it's pretty much "a given" that the best are on juice or at least blood doping with their own blood that has been saved.
Yes we had a team doc that was giving us the stuff and monitoring our crits/testosterone levels etc.....but most guys monitor themselves as well.

I don't mean to be oppositional - I'm interested in what you're saying, but how do you know that plenty of 1's are juicing if they keep quiet about it? Or that epo is used commonly in masters?

It is clear that there is some drug use here - Bergman and Fuentes prove that. I also know very well, well enough to trust, a couple of pro's and 1's who are not on the juice. If I rode full time I don't think I'd be far off the level of the lower tier pro's - especially as I get older - without juice. So I don't think it's necessary to juice to be at that level. So then the question is, hmmm, is it only Fuentes and Bergman (unlikely), or is it them plus a few other bad apples (which I'm inclined to believe) or is it prevalent (possible)?

Back home in Australia it was quite clear that there was a group of riders who almost certainly were doping (there was a culture of it), but that the majority were not.

Why take Lemond's word but not Armstrong's? Maybe EPO was not in use during the Lemond era, but steroids, stimulants and and blood doping were around. (BTW, the first time I heard of blood doping was the '76 Olympics when the Finnish double-gold medal distance runner Lasse Viren was accused of doing it.)

I'm not suggesting that Lemond used illegal methods, anymore than I'm suggesting that about Armstrong. I'm just wondering why we should believe Lemond more than Armstrong?

In fact, maybe we should be less inclined to believe Lemond because he raced in an era when testing was very lax and doping was more acceptable. If Armstrong supposedly gets away with doping now then why shouldn't we also believe that Lemond got away with it then. Lemond may be more personable than Armstrong, but he is not more credible.


I don't believe that either Lemond or Armstrong was guilty of doping. But these days it seems that the racer's only credible defense against doping charges is to be the lanterne rouge (last place) in the Tour.

__________________
"The Ventoux is a god of evil, to whom sacrifices must be made. A veritable sun god who reigns over the riders, it never forgives the weak." --Roland Barthes, French philosopher

I was racing Cat 1 in the late 80's and it is my opinion that doping was not as common back then.

Why believe Lemond and not Armstrong....well because Lemond didn't make MANY multi day trips to Northern Italy to spend a lot of time with a convicted doping doctor (Ferarri) who said that there is nothing wrong with riders taking epo....he also didn't get caught with a corticosteroid in his system and then produce a doc's script for a saddle cream out of nowhere, and he hasn't had former team mate say that his team WAS NOT clean(motorola)and used EPO because they were getting "creamed" without it.

Speaking of saddle cream...do you really think that any rider, or doctor for that matter, doesn't know EXACTLY what is in every "medicine" they use. They sure the hell would never use a cream with a cortico steriod in it.

So we should believe Lemond's insinuations about Armstrong because:

1. Lemond didn't go see Ferrari (is he the only doctor in the world who knows how to dope riders?)

2. Lemond "didn't get caught" (your words)...

3. No teammates publicly accused Lemond of doping (maybe they were doping too).

Again, I don't believe that either Lemond or Armstrong doped. I can't prove that but I do know that Lemond rode in an era when testing was lax (and blood doping was undetectable) whereas Armstrong rode in the post-1998 Tour doping scandal era when testing was tougher.

TiMan, you will have to come up with some other evidence other than "Lemond said so" to convince me that Armstrong has been doping. Your argument amounts to begging the question:

TiMan: Armstrong is a doper
Bob: How do you know?
Timan: Lemond said so.
Bob: So what?
Timan: I know that Lemond is telling the truth so that proves Armstrong is a doper.

__________________
"The Ventoux is a god of evil, to whom sacrifices must be made. A veritable sun god who reigns over the riders, it never forgives the weak." --Roland Barthes, French philosopher