Doping : the effects/causes

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I was out on the club run last night and we got talking about the Museeuw case.

Several of the older guys in the club are big Museeuw fans but nonetheless the spread of opinion even among them was interesting.

On the one hand, some expressed the view that Museeuw was only doing what the rest of the peloton are doing and that no matter how much dope he took, without training bloody hard, he wouldn't have won any of the races that he did win.
Other expressed the view that one cannot assume that "everyone dopes" and that Musseuw cheated, full stop whether he trained hard or not being incidental.

This got me thinking.

Does doping improve performances significantly ?
I have never doped.
But if I was perhaps a real contender, maybe I would dope and if I did how much would I be likely to improve by ?

Actually I just answered this same sort of question over in the health and nutrition section, to sum up my answer basically it all depends on how much baseline training you have so if you can generate 500 watts for an hour before you dope and add 10% for the PEDs you get 50 more watts out of it, while if you can generate 200 watts before dope you only get 20 more watts after doping.

the whole response is here:
http://www.cyclingforums.com/t277820-epo-curiousity.html

Edit to add that I have never used drugs to enhance my performance in cycling, and everything in the responce is concluded from stuff I have read on the internet (mainly bodybuilding forums) so I am not an authority/expert on this in anyway.

Outside magazine 2003/2004? has an article about the gains of doping. It was written by an amateur cyclist? / journalist that did dope for a year and he details the process, cheats, doctors appointments, etc.

Outside magazine 2003/2004? has an article about the gains of doping. It was written by an amateur cyclist? / journalist that did dope for a year and he details the process, cheats, doctors appointments, etc.

Yeah I believe this guy was already pretty fit before dope and he was training his ass off for a long distance endurance bike ride/race (paris/brussels/paris, I think).

Well, if you enjoy recreational drugs, you'll enjoy doping once you get past sticking needles in your ass. A basic beginner's course of testosterone will give you noticeable results -- increased strength and red blood cells (http://www.mesomorphosis.com/articles/llewellyn/steroids-and-red-blood-cells.htm).

At rest you'll notice an increase in libido and -- this is true -- women can smell it (test) and they'll come around.

I've never done EPO, but my understanding is there's a high associated with having that many rbs in your brain, so even at rest you'll notice a sharpness that wasn't there before.

HGH repairs muscles making recovery almost instantaneous.

EPO, test and HGH (or the new IGF-1) combine with amphetamines: you'll be able to train all day, party all night and blow the doors off guys you never thought you could beat.

And, all that stuff can f_ck your body up permanently -- just like recreational drugs. If you use, be careful, and from a moral standpoint, don't do any sanctioned racing.

Here's the link to the article;

http://outside.away.com/outside/bodywork/200311/200311_drug_test_1.html

When I used for strength, muscular gains and recovery aspects I would guess it would be no more than a 10% increase for me over my natural level.

I stopped using about 1996 but around 2000 I set an unrecorded PBR on squats on several occassions that I never could reach while using.

Training while drug free I had to reduce my training load for longer recovery periods and there are some days when I just can't get my body to go. In other words I can have a great squat day one week and a horrible squat day the next week. While using I would have a great squat day everyday even if I was running a fever. Which I experienced a few times while training with an illness.

I really enjoy training drug free now. Love it actually. Makes for a whole new challenge even though it is very limited in some ways. Yesterday I did a spin class and then trained chest afterwards and by the evening my lymph gland under my arm was swollen. Which lets me know I may have pushed my body a little too hard yesterday. Love it though. Makes me watch every little thing about training and nutrition.