posted Wed, 10/10/2012 - 14:39
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Lance Armstrong Doping Book, "The Secret Race"
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Anybody read it? Inside, Tyler Hamilton (Lance's longtime teammate and eventual rival) talks about little red pills he used to be given to recover from hard races/training sessions. Any idea as to what that pill might have been? He describes it as testosterone, which to me, is vague.
The book doesn't have a whole lot of anabolic steroid use - mostly EPO, some blood doping, and some test to recover; but that's about it. However, I still thought it was an amazing book. I highly recommend it. I finished it quickly over a weekend.
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What a phaggot post.
Yeah that sounds legit...He'd take oral test after sessions, and never test positive..C'mon, weak claim.
Just saw this article. Twenty-six people testified against Armstrong, in addition to him failing drug tests and covering it up.
http://sports.yahoo.com/news/11-teammates-testified-case-against-1534142...
If you read the book, you'll hear about the many strategies they could use to avoid the drug testers. All the drugs they used had what they called a "glow" period. That is, the amount of time you would test positive after taking the drugs.
They also had different techniques of taking the drugs to avoid detection. For example, there was no way to detect EPO (erythropoietin, a red blood cell boosting drug). However, going above a 50% hematocrit told the testers that you were doping. So, in order to avoid the spike in hematocrit that directly injecting EPO would give, they would inject it subcutaneously, where it would release more slowly and be far less likely to spike their hematocrit above 50. Importantly, a hematocrit >50 can also be fatal. A few cyclists died from excessive EPO use - it thickens the blood so much their hearts couldn't pump it any more.
The drug testers also usually called ahead of time to make sure they weren't wasting a trip to an athlete's house. If the athlete was "glowing", they would simply turn off their cell phone. Athletes are supposed to check in with testing agencies and let them know where they are at all times, but they could be unreachable 3 times a year before they faced any real penalties. Given how infrequent the testers visited, athletes could dope constantly during the off-season as long as they followed precautions.
Furthermore, some of the drugs only had glow periods of 8-10 hours, and the drug testers were only allowed to test you from 8:00 AM to 8:00 PM, leaving the night time open game for doping.
There is much more information in the book, but suffice it to say avoiding drug detection was laughably easy, and taking oral test was done on a routine basis. What I'm curious about is what type you guys think was taken. It's described in the book as a gelcap that they could actually prick and take half of if they didn't want the full thing. Tyler Hamilton described it as an oil. Sometimes they would take some of the oil out and mix it with olive oil and take it orally.