Racing - Boycott?

A few weeks ago I started thinking about permitting the Bethel Spring Series for 2013. This is later than normal - I've been a bit preoccupied with Junior and, honestly, I let time slide by before I put in my official request for permission to hold the race. At that point I'm waiting for the town to sign off on the races and then I'll start the rest of the process. I feel it's too presumptuous to go ahead and start working on stuff before hearing from the town.

Plus, in my eye, it's bad karma to start work on something before I know I'm allowed to do it.

All this stuff made me think of Greg Lemond's open letter to the UCI. He says many things but one thing in particular affects me - boycotting USA Cycling. He asks everyone to boycott USAC and not get a license for 2013.

This isn't like me skipping a year when licenses were good for 13 months, and where I could race for a year without actually paying for a license.

This is like not racing USAC for a year.

I've always believed in the system, forcing change through involvement rather than open rebellion. I don't know why but that's the way I am. I told other promoters that asked me about this that they should permit their races through USAC. If they really felt strongly about how USAC should be run they should run for the board of directors of NEBRA (or whatever local association serves their region) and, eventually, apply for a position in Colorado.

Other promoters have tried to hold races without USAC backing. Curiously enough they use USAC officials, USAC forms, and USAC rules. I attended one race that had always been USAC but, to my surprise, in 2012 the promoter went the non-USAC route.

It seemed a bit wrong - asking for my USAC license (why? what good is that in a non-USAC event?), using the same (USAC) officials as the other weeks, running by the same (USAC) rules...

For a moment I wanted to say that I wanted to do the Cat 3 race and I didn't have a USAC license with me. What would prevent me from racing without showing my license? What would prevent me from entering the Cat 4 race. Or a Pro/1 race for that matter?

I decided not to make waves and raced my race, somewhat unsuccessfully.

Apparently I wasn't as firmly entrenched in my support of USAC as I thought because I did that race. Generally speaking I wouldn't have attended an event that wasn't USAC permitted, but in that case I didn't realize they went non-USAC, it's a long time race (I think I did it in 1983 for the first time), and, although not necessarily the same one from '83, I wanted to support the promoter.

In fact I raced twice that day, paying the day-of fee for the first race. When someone at registration pointed out that I could have saved myself the day-of fee by registering online I pointed out in return that I would give more money to the promoter by registering on the day of the race.

Therefore that's what I generally do.

So anyway, that's sort of my thoughts on USAC vs non-USAC in a nutshell. I prefer USAC races, I generally don't do non-USAC ones, but I want to support the good people behind the races first and foremost.

This brings the topic back on track, to the Lemond's boycott letter. A while back I read the NYVelocity's posting of Lemond's letter, looking for other racers' and promoters' thoughts. Unfortunately I mainly found people sniping at each other. I didn't see many comments of substance.

In my family I was brought up to value the system more than the individual. I suppose it's my culture, infamous for cohesiveness and solidarity (the only looting that anyone could find after the tsunami in Japan was done by foreigners) but also known for its rigidity and inflexibility (failure means shame and shame means life is no longer worth living).

Although not as extreme as the second thought above, I still have this loyalty to USAC. To me USAC is not a faceless organization. It's not an evil board suffocating any hint of bad news. I don't know the board, I don't know what they do, I've never spoken with them.

However I do know some of the staff. I've spoken to at least three different people in Colorado, one regularly, and I speak with our more local Massachusetts-based NEBRA rep regularly but infrequently. In our conversations I've learned more about some of them than I know about some of my teammates.

There's also an infrastructure local here in Connecticut. There are officials that I work with regularly, folks I consider friends. They're about as anti-doping as anyone out there. Boycotting USAC would mean boycotting them.

I consider all those USAC staff and the local officials friends of mine. I don't want to do anything that would hurt them.

Mind you, I'm still trying to keep an eye on the prize here, the anti-doping efforts, the attempt to cleanse our sport. Unfortunately the staff members I know are sort of like the civilians in the doping war, innocent bystanders in the battle for clean sport. They're not in the news defending dopers or deflecting inquiries. They help promoters like me get their races to start on time, insured, with a reasonable infrastructure behind the promoter so that things work.

Casualties in the staffing folks would be, at best, difficult to justify.

Lemond's letter addresses racers, and I'm one of them. Unlike many racers I'm also involved in USAC as a promoter. If I stay with USAC and take out permits, and Lemond manages to convince 50k racers not to take out USAC licenses, I stand a big chance of having racers boycott my race simply because I took out USAC permits.

I, too, would become a "civilian" casualty, as would any promoter that looks to USAC for protection from litigation, for guidance on promoting a race, for a system that, at least for race promotion, seems to work well.

To me that doesn't seem fair.

On the other hand I'm a bit tired of the doping bombshells, the suspicious performances, the unfounded rumor talk.

I guess, in some way, I support USAC but I don't support the UCI. Is that possible? I believe in USADA absolutely (I was a chaperone a couple times) and that tempers any negative thoughts about USAC.

I have to admit that unlike other organizations USADA seems to do its antidoping work pretty well. We don't hear of positives before the rider learns about it. All the announcements have to do with races from months ago, not from two or three days ago.

If USADA keeps doing their thing then USAC will fall into their place. I don't see a problem there.

With that in mind I've decided to do is to go ahead with the USAC permitting, once I get word that the race is a go. I'll renew my USAC license.

In all fairness I'm going to post Lemond's full open letter. I've lifted it from NYVelocity, from here, in full.

Open Letter to Pat McQuaid from Greg LeMond

Thu, 10/25/2012 - 2:31am by Andy Shen

Greg LeMond posted this to his Facebook timeline this evening. Please pass it around. If you have a blog or a site take the copy and post it.

Can anyone help me out? I know this sounds kind of lame but I am not well versed in social marketing. I would like to send a message to everyone that really loves cycling. I do not use twitter and do not have an organized way of getting some of my own "rage" out. I want to tell the world of cycling to please join me in telling Pat McQuaid to f##k off and resign. I have never seen such an abuse of power in cycling's history- resign Pat if you love cycling. Resign even if you hate the sport.

Pat McQuaid, you know damn well what has been going on in cycling, and if you want to deny it, then even more reasons why those who love cycling need to demand that you resign.

I have a file with what I believe is well documented proof that will exonerate Paul.

Pat in my opinion you and Hein are the corrupt part of the sport. I do not want to include everyone at the UCI because I believe that there are many, maybe most that work at the UCI that are dedicated to cycling, they do it out of the love of the sport, but you and your buddy Hein have destroyed the sport.

Pat, I thought you loved cycling? At one time you did and if you did love cycling please dig deep inside and remember that part of your life- allow cycling to grow and flourish- please! It is time to walk away. Walk away if you love cycling.

As a reminder I just want to point out that recently you accused me of being the cause of USADA's investigation against Lance Armstrong. Why would you be inclined to go straight to me as the "cause"? Why shoot the messenger every time?

Every time you do this I get more and more entrenched. I was in your country over the last two weeks and I asked someone that knows you if you were someone that could be rehabilitated. His answer was very quick and it was not good for you. No was the answer, no, no , no!

The problem for sport is not drugs but corruption. You are the epitome of the word corruption.

You can read all about Webster's definition of corruption. If you want I can re-post my attorney's response to your letter where you threaten to sue me for calling the UCI corrupt. FYI I want to officially reiterate to you and Hein that in my opinion the two of your represent the essence of corruption.

I would encourage anyone that loves cycling to donate and support Paul in his fight against the Pat and Hein and the UCI. Skip lunch and donate the amount that you would have spent towards that Sunday buffet towards changing the sport of cycling.

I donated money for Paul's defense, and I am willing to donate a lot more, but I would like to use it to lobby for dramatic change in cycling. The sport does not need Pat McQuaid or Hein Verbruggen- if this sport is going to change it is now. Not next year, not down the road, now! Now or never!

People that really care about cycling have the power to change cycling- change it now by voicing your thought and donating money towards Paul Kimmage's defense, (Paul, I want to encourage you to not spend the money that has been donated to your defense fund on defending yourself in Switzerland. In my case, a USA citizen, I could care less if I lost the UCI's bogus lawsuit. Use the money to lobby for real change).

If people really want to clean the sport of cycling up all you have to do is put your money where your mouth is.

Don't buy a USA Cycling license. Give up racing for a year, just long enough to put the UCI and USA cycling out of business. We can then start from scratch and let the real lovers in cycling direct where and how the sport of cycling will go.

Please make a difference.
Greg

Comments appreciated.

Doping - Article From NYVelocity

I know I haven't written in a bit so this is kind of cheating. I found this article very informative and illuminating - a long interview with Michael Ashenden. It appeared in NYVelocity yesterday and it's long enough that I didn't even finish reading it yet.

Doping - Clarifying My Blood Passport Misconceptions

(Thanks for the anonymous help from a doctor that also follows cycling.)

I promised to try and clear up some misconceptions from an earlier post that perused some doping thoughts, and now, a bit late, here is some more information.

To review, I thought out loud (in font) that it could be possible that I might inadvertently alter my blood profile through some innocent action. Specifically I wondered out loud if maybe eating a whole lot of Angus beef would raise my hematocrit. I'm not aware of how blood stuff reacts to whatever I do, so would my hematocrit rise suspiciously if I went on a week long binge of Angus burgers? What if I rested and recovered and suddenly had a much higher hematocrit? Maybe drinking orange juice does something, or putting a lot of wasabi on sushi.

Well, now that I've learned a bit more, I can sleep better at night. It would be really hard to inadvertently screw up my blood profile.

It seems that the biological passport makes sense. After all it's not like a bunch of bike racers got together to figure out how to catch cheats. They're doctors, scientists, and they geek out on blood like I geek out on... gluing tubular tires. Or race tactics. So these doctor types know stuff I don't even know I don't know.

They understand how blood works and how things change when a less-than-scrupulous rider tries to manipulate their blood to their advantage.

So.... what's that mean about my prior post?

Well, let's go about shredding my unscientific thoughts.

First, don't go eating a lot of iron. The highest ever hematocrit I ever saw was 49%, and that was after eating a whole boatload of Angus beef burgers for a week. However, I didn't see 49% because of the burgers. Apparently eating iron doesn't make your hematocrit jump any higher than normal. It'll get you to your normal, but if you ingest too much iron it's poisonous.

If you're anemic (lacking iron, i.e. you're depleted), then a diet rich in iron will help your iron levels get back to normal. If you regularly eat iron rich foods (like those burgers), then your iron levels are probably fine. You store excess iron in your liver, and if you have even more than your liver can hold, you get poisoned (hemochromatosis, a term I learned from a doctor).

If you're iron deficient it shows up in your blood profile. You'll have smaller red blood cells, they'll be less red, but you'll have about the same number of cells. If such a person takes iron, the red blood cells return to normal.

But if you take extra iron, you don't get super fat red blood cells, you don't jump 10% on the hematocrit scale, nothing. You return to normal and if you take more, you just have more iron in your liver.

Incidentally red blood cells last about 100-120 days. That means that about 0.8 to 1% of your blood gets "renewed" every day. With my Angus beef diet over about seven days, that means that my body replaced about 6% of my blood. Even if my new blood was 100% red blood cells, I'd have increased my hematocrit only about 6%. Since my blood is naturally about 46-48% red blood cells, there'd be no difference in my hematocrit or % of red blood cells.

It's like cholesterol. Most of the cholesterol in your body is created within. It's not diet as much as it is other factors, like exercise or whatnot. Food accounts for about 15% of your cholesterol level. Other stuff counts more.

Likewise, blood parameters are basically set by the body. Diet only fulfills the parameters; it can't force them outside those boundaries.

EPO works because it boosts your red blood cell production. Rumor has it that some racers had as high as 60%-64% hematocrit levels.

I've mentioned a term, hematocrit, so I'll explain it a bit further. It's the most elementary of blood parameters - "what percent of your blood is red blood cells?". It's easy to manipulate - you can inject fluid that doesn't have red blood cells and you immediately lower your hematocrit. Basically you just diluted your blood. Hematocrit stands out to me because it was the first test for EPO around (if your hematocrit was over 50% you were given a two week "health break"), it's gotten racers in trouble. Probably the most significant event was when Pantani tossed from the Giro the day before the finish, while in the leader's jersey.

Hematocrit is unique in that it's something that a normal physical will mention in the course of a physical. In other words it's something that us normal people can actually understand. We can find out our own hematocrit level without much trouble.

I, of course, checked out all my hematocrit readings from my physicals. I'm proud to say I hit over 49% once, although recently I'm bang on around 46%. Disappointing, as it's one of the only things I'm "good" at relative to the pros.

Or, if I put it this way... I just did a 20 min FTP test and held 221 watts for 20 minutes. That's not so impressive. A 46% hematocrit makes me grin, a 49% is worthy of a fist pump. But 221 watts FTP? Err...

Racers figured out how to beat the hematocrit test. They'd travel with a centrifuge, check their blood, and either drink lots of water or inject fluids into their blood to thin it out. Even with the 50% checks there was rampant drug use, so I (and probably more than a few others) lost faith in the system.

The blood passport seemed to yet another easily beaten system. But it's not.

You see, hematocrit can be manipulated easily, but if you manipulate it, you alter several other blood parameters. Hiding those manipulations is tough, and that's what the passport looks at.

These parameters include:
1. Reticulocyte count ("Reties" are red blood cell precursors)
2. % of reticulocytes as part of total red blood cells

And some less significant ones:
3. Red blood cell shape (volume)
4. Red blood cell color (Hb)
5. Hb concentration

Like any system that reacts to changes, if you start fiddling with stuff, the various parameters start to change. Such changes, in certain combinations, can be a strong indication of doping.

For example, if I were to infuse blood, I'd have a lower Reties count because apparently infused blood would have more mature cells. If I took EPO (which stimulates red blood cell growth), I'd have a higher Reties count as my marrow started cranking out red blood cells like there was no tomorrow. There'd be a lot of brand new red blood cells zipping around.

I could inject saline solution to dilute my blood, to keep my hematocrit low, but I'd just pee out the extra fluids. I'd have to inject the solution immediately before a test, which is hard since once you're notified you're being tested, you're not supposed to do stuff like, oh, take a shower alone or go to the bathroom alone.

This is why a racer cannot leave the sight of the dope control chaperone until the racer gets handed off to the actual dope control officer. It's also why it's so unusual if the racer is left alone for any amount of time once they know they'll be tested.

Plasma would help keep the hematocrit down longer than saline solution. There were some racers busted for using plasma expanders - that would compensate for a blood transfusion, i.e. an insertion of a lot of red blood cells. The expanders would keep the hematocrit down, but then you have to hide the expanders. Life is tough.

(I like how a doctor says he "unintentionally" ingested an intravenous thing. Also, he states confidently that the tests detected no EPO. Probably not since it seems like he was simply transfusing his own blood. A Retie count would be in order here.)

Before the blood passport testers only had a snapshot of the rider's blood profile. You couldn't really judge someone unless they had some weird baseline numbers, like a 60% hematocrit level. For other parameters you wouldn't have any idea if a particular Retie count was normal or not (for that individual).

With the passport testers could see other bits of information over the course of time. For example, someone commented on my post about my 46% hematocrit that my number is a "high normal" number for a sea level guy. One of the first blood passport cases wasn't even in cycling - it was in speed skating. The busted skater, Claudia Pechstein, had a high normal hematocrit (which isn't a problem by itself), but, more significantly, the Reties count was all over the place. The latter pointed to blood manipulation. The skater was suspended for two years and the penalty stood.

I assure you that Reties values are pretty stable, whatever it is. Unfortunately that's one of those blood values that you don't see on a regular basis, so I don't know what mine is.

Granted, there are innocent factors that affect blood parameters, but, apparently, as part of each test, the athlete gets asked questions relating to these parameters. I suppose that a doper could always say, "Yeah, I've had a fever" (or whatever else affects hematocrit) every time they get tested but that'd also throw some red flags.

So what's all this mean?

It means that list the UCI leaked (involving suspicion levels based on the blood passport) is pretty significant. Weird blood parameters are weird because they're not normal, and weirdness is bad when it comes to dope tests.

I'll have to review that list and compare them to the top finishers in the Tour. It'd be interesting to see if some of the higher or more suspicious racers in the list suddenly lost a lot of performance in the Tour. It would also be interesting to see if a racer low on the list, i.e. not very suspicious at all, suddenly does better.

Both scenarios would indicate the blood passport is helping clean up the sport.

And that makes checking race results a lot easier.

Life - Training, Prednisone, HCT

In light of my recent incredibly inaccurate thoughts (I still have to post the corrections) on how my own blood profile would look to a biological passport sleuth, I figured it's only appropriate that I mention that I recently got to look at a snapshot of my blood parameters.

Yep, I went and had a physical.

Now, curiously, when I went there, they mentioned that I'd "lost some weight", about 14 or 15 pounds, from the mid 180s to just a touch under 170.

I realized pretty quickly that I hadn't seen the doc for any reason in 2010, when I was a svelte 158 or so. Disappointed, I realized that my weight loss had never been official - no health insurance company would ever say, "Oh, look, see, he lost all that weight in 2010. He should be insurable."

Since I went to the doctor's office with no instructions except to fill out a form, I thought that they wouldn't be doing a blood test. Since the main reason I go get a physical is to see what my hematocrit is, I immediately asked about any possible blood work, if that's covered under a physical.

"Of course, I'm going to give you a form to get some blood drawn, and we'll review any findings with you."

Heh.

The rest of the appointment was a blur. I don't remember my heartrate, blood pressure (but it seemed kind of high, like 120/70, instead of the 105/60 like I hope for), whatever else stuff.

Oh, he did ask me about the prednisone.

That, my friends, is a cortisteroid (that's my made-up-from-half-forgotten-things-I-read-on-the-web).

It's used to treat all sorts of stuff, I think like saddle sores (for example).

It's also used to treat poison ivy.

Somehow I got poison ivy. Little spots, not streaks, on my arms, legs, neck, torso, even almost my upper thighs.

Coincidentally the blonde next door from work also got poison ivy (she had to go get a shot as well as pills). Although nefarious minds may suspect the worst, I suspect that I got the poison ivy partially from handling the same extension cord as she did, when she exchanged it for another one.

And, yes, the Missus knows about her. Even met her one day. Plus everyone knows she's my boss's girlfriend.

Whatever, the end result was that for almost a solid week I was also itching and whining and being an all-round grump. The missus, exhausted with dealing with a 5 year old stuck in her husband's body, finally convinced me that maybe seeing a doctor would be a good thing.

Because, as you well know, dealing with a 5 year old is much easier if said 5 year old doesn't have poison ivy.

Although not necessarily convinced of the cause of the itchy, bumpy rash, the doc pointed out that he could prescribe treatment for said rash. He also suggested Claritin (which I already take) and, at night, Benadryl. Apparently, since poison ivy is an allergic kind of reaction, an antihistamine will help reduce the effects of the cruel plant.

Prednisone, of course, is a steroid. I checked the side effects. The ones that stood out are things like liver things and some achiness or something like that.

What?

No "Caution: May cause explosive muscle growth"???

I looked up the effects of cortisone, and, after some skimming, realized that it really doesn't do much, at least not in the way I'd be taking it. Plus my extremely abbreviated cycle would hardly affect anything except, hopefully, the little bumps all over my body.

I'm writing this post late enough that I'm actually done with the 12 day cycle, a tapering one designed to wean my body off of the stuff. I also took the Benadryl, and, in fact, am still taking it. I skipped one night, the night before the physical, in case it affected my stats, and found myself awake until about 5 o'clock in the morning.

After the physical I called the Missus and gave her the news that, no, I didn't have any explosive muscle growth, and, yes, I seem to be living okay.

She countered by asking me about my sleeplessness.

"Yeah, I'm kind of tired today."
"You know what the first side effect is that they list for prednisone?"
"What is it?"
"May cause sleeplessness."

Oh.

So it gets you wired but doesn't explode muscles. Great.

A couple days after the physical, like yesterday, we got the results of the blood test. Luckily I'd skipped breakfast before the appointment (keeping the body "neutral" before the appointment, no jacked up metabolism from coffee or whatever), making it possible for me to go get the blood drawn immediately afterwards.

I was waiting to hear from the doc and then ask politely to have them fax me my blood profile. But, luckily for me, they sent me the results directly, with the doc's comments on them.

The missus opened the envelope.

"Oh, what's my hematocrit? What's my hematocrit?"

"It says here that your something cholesterol is blah blah and that your blah cholesterol is blah."

"Hematocrit?"

"I think this is good, it's better than before. Last time your blah was blah, now it's blah."

"Um, do you see the letters HCT anywhere?"

"It says that your blah is good too. In the normal range."

"Anything about red blood cells?"

"Oh. Here. Red blood cell blah. 52."

52?! Was that right?

FIFTY-TWO?!

The world was spinning ever so fast. Oh, man, that's how I became a Cat 2! My blood is so thick! I'll have to take an aspirin. Two aspirin! I'll have to drink a lot more water. Heck, I should try doing something like time trialing or climbing. Wow. 52. Incredible. 49 was great, in 2006 or whatever. But 52, that's just unbelievable. 52. Holy smokes. Maybe I should do jumping jacks at night, keep that thick blood flowing.

"Um, wait, here it is. Hematocrit. 46.3"

Ehhhh. What?

My world stopped spinning. Three point something points lower than my record. No sludge. No rich red corpuscles coursing through my veins. Just ordinary blood. Well, with a bit of extra prednisone in it. And some sleepy Benadryl.

"Yeah, the other number was red blood cell blah-blah. Your hematocrit is 46."

Ah well. So much for that.

It reminded me of the time I woke up in my dorm room, in the middle of the night, and looked across the room. The digital clock stared back at me. I could see the time, but the clock was 10 feet away. Being extremely nearsighted, I normally can't see more than about 6 inches before things go blurry quickly. But these numbers, across the room... I squinted.

The numbers stayed in focus, just in a squinty way.

I thought, holy smokes, my cornea did something, or some nerve got un-pinched, but whatever it is, I can see again! Wow! I can buy some Oakleys! I can see! It's a miracle!

I quickly felt the side table for my glasses (out of habit), couldn't find them, started patting my chest, thinking maybe I fell asleep with them on, and they slid down to my chest... wait... fell asleep with them on?

I touched the bridge of my nose.

My glasses got in the way.

I was wearing my glasses.

I took them off.

The red numbers virtually disappeared, a slight red smudge in the blackness of the dorm room.

Ah well.

At least I can say one thing - hematocrit does not the rider make. My threshold power is something that is so low that a bonking pro would still outride me. On the forums someone asked if I was pulling their leg, talking about my sub 3.0 w/kg threshold (it's about 2.85 w/kg).

Well, yeah, it's really about that low. I'd dreamed about getting to 3.5 or even, if the stars all lined up, 4.0, but that never happened. I guess I just didn't want it that bad.

Of course the other way of looking at it is that I'm maximizing my potential.

"2.85 w/kg? No problem, you can be a Cat 2. Next patient please."

(It helps to have a decent sprint, but even my sprint isn't that impressive, with a typical 1200w peak and 900-1100w sustained for, usually, just under 20 seconds - but that's all I have, so if you have it, you can be a 2 too).

With that elation/deflation little roller coaster out of the way, I could think about the next block of riding. My blocks don't have much to do with enormous cycles of training. They have more to do with "When's my next race?"

I hope to do the Keith Berger race in East Hartford, but we'll be 18 hours away 36 hours before the race. That means we'll need to drive at least 12 hours, if not 13 or 14, the day before the race, meaning I'll probably skip a ride then.

Going backwards, I'll be able to do the Tuesday Night Worlds, weather permitting.

And today, in order to try and get stuff done at home, I skipped my ride. I did a short ride yesterday, nothing major, under an hour.

My next training block, then, is Tuesday race, hopefully an hour somewhere in Thursday or Friday, then Sunday race.

One day of training before Sunday, maybe two. Sounds like a plan. I mean, heck, I've been racing at 2.85 w/kg. The race can't got that badly, then, right?

Right.

Doping - My Misconceptions

I'll be expanding this temporary post with a more comprehensive one but I've learned a bit more about Iam Doper vs Iam Clean, specifically how various factors affect different blood parameters.

Suffice it to say that you shouldn't eat 10 pounds of ground beef a week, nor down a bunch of iron pills every day. I mean you can but it won't help your blood parameters and the pills may end up poisoning you.

New information to follow below....

Doping - What Would My Blood Profile Look Like?

What would my blood profile look like?

It's a question I hadn't thought of until recently. The blood passport thing that the UCI maintains for each professional rider is a bit out of my regular world. I'm not a pro, I don't do well in races that require any substantial fitness, and I've never been asked to pee in a cup after a race. Or had someone wake me up to take blood some random morning.

To me the passport thing was something a bit arcane, not really real, just some concept that pros have to deal with so they can race.

A little while back someone leaked a UCI list of riders (specifically those in the 2010 Tour de France). The UCI ranked the riders by just how suspicious their blood profiles appeared based on the changes in various parameters. The UCI noted a few of the things that changed a rider's ranking, but they didn't explain it in any detail.

Basically any weird changes to the blood profile, especially those that seem like targeted changes (boosts in races for performance, declines in training when extracting blood, declines over the year because they eased on the doping), make your profile jump up and shout, "Me! Me! Me!"

It's like deducting $10,000,000 in losses when you have $1,000 in income on your taxes. The IRS gets really interested in you real fast.

With even a hint of what the UCI is looking for, the passport thing became more real to me - I could relate to it a bit now.

And that got me thinking - "What would my blood profile look like?"

Let's take a hypothetical doper named Iam Doper.

Doper will follow what I think would be a sensible doping program. There'd be three phases to the whole thing.

First, in the off season, Doper would be extracting blood pretty regularly. This blood would be stored for much of the season, re-injected into Doper's bloodstream at "critical" points of the season - big climbing stages, time trials, or, if Doper was a sprinter, maybe for critical sprint stages.

Doper would try and keep the immature red blood cell count a bit consistent by waiting some amount of time between extractions. I don't know the science with cell life cycles but let's say that it takes 7-10 days for the ratio of immature:mature red blood cells to stabilize to some acceptable number. Doper would extract blood based on that schedule so the blood profile of the blood extracted would look right.

It's possible that extracting a small amount of blood daily would do the same trick. Whatever the scenario, this would be phase one.

Second, Doper would be microdosing EPO and maybe some drugs for recovery like testosterone and HGH. By microdosing, i.e. taking very small quantities regularly, the drugs will raise Doper's blood parameters to a slightly higher level, but since it's regular, the blood parameters appear consistent, i.e. "natural". The biological profile would appear to be that Doper is one of those higher hematocrit/testosterone racers, not of someone taking drugs.

By setting a higher bar to start with, Doper gives himself leeway for blood manipulation. Any drops could be explained by fatigue and the like. With a higher-than-normal baseline, though, Doper can consistently boost blood parameters and hopefully performance.

Third, Doper would carefully plan re-injection schedules. Doper should have an idea on how his blood would respond to various training and racing stresses, and therefore can figure out a way to stabilize the expected declines. A really careful approach would include allowing the numbers to drop off just a bit over the course of a hard block of riding - like a Grand Tour for example.

Fourth (I know I just said there'd be three phases, but bear with me), there'd be the stuff I don't know about. I don't know if riders who re-inject blood also inject saline solution to thin out the blood. I don't know if there are other ways of "normalizing" blood parameters. There may be other drugs available to aid recovery, mask EPO/testosterone use, boost this number or that value or whatever. I don't know what I don't know so I can't include this in Doper's phases. I am guessing that there'd be a fourth or fifth phase to a doping calender, I just don't know what it would be.

Let's contrast Doper's schedule to his erstwhile counterpart, Iam Clean.

Mr. Clean, contrary to Doper's very detailed annual plan, races a bit more by the seat of his pants. His season breaks out into three phases too, although they differ a bit in emphasis.

First, he does a lot of off-season preparation. This includes some long rides, rest, and getting any changes to the bike squared away. Powermeter, heartrate, yada yada yada. Compared to the medical level treatment of Doper, Clean simply monitors training and its effect on his body. He cannot manipulate his body directly, not in a fitness sense.

Second, he starts his "race to train" phase, starting racing for the season and doing speedwork otherwise. He'll return to this phase whenever not peaking for a race.

Third, he'll hit a few peaks, maybe three or four for an amateur, perhaps three for a pro. They'll target important (to Clean) races, which may or may not coincide with races the world considers important. Each peak gets preceded and followed by a slight break or easing in intensity, the former to build reserves, the latter to recover a bit.

During those phases diet may change a bit. Clean may emphasize more proteins and carbs during the harder training phases. I know that red meat really helps boost various blood parameters relating to iron levels. Clean may also take some vitamins (say a multi) and mineral supplements (iron, calcium, stuff like that), depending on either a set schedule, or, if taken less regularly, based perhaps on how Clean has been feeling for the past few days, or maybe with an eye towards a particularly hard block of training.

Although Clean may have a physical at some point during the season, that's the only expected blood work planned for the season.

In other words, Mr. Clean is flying blind as far as his blood profile goes.

I thought of something relating to this idea.

I wondered out loud what my profile would be, what would the UCI think of my blood parameters.

I've gotten perhaps 4 or 5 physicals in the past 6 or 7 years. I also got blood drawn for various purposes a few times over the course of just a few weeks.

Each time I had blood drawn I asked to get a copy of my blood profile. I don't know what everything means, but I looked at the stuff that the doping articles mention - hematocrit (HCT, % of blood which is red blood cells) mainly, with a glance at the iron levels. I also look for anything that's out of normal range, since pretty much everything on my blood profile is within normal limits.

I know that I've hit as high as 49.3% HCT. In the blood tests done over the course of a few weeks (I had different people give me physicals), my HCT level varied by a good few points.

I'm not a dietician but I think I may have affected the blood profiles simply through my diet. When I hit my record 49.3% HCT, I had just finished a huge pack (Costco huge) of really high quality ground steak beef patties. My sister-in-law asked if I wanted a pack, and since I hadn't been eating a lot of red meat just before, I figured, what the heck, it'll be good to have. I don't know how big it was but I'm guessing it was about 10 pounds of ground beef.

I ate it in about five days.

Then went to get my blood drawn.

I happened to spike my cholesterol up too, so I'm thinking that the beef affected my blood parameters. When I had another physical done (my primary physician changed or something), my blood parameters for HCT and cholesterol both dropped. Prior to that physical I hadn't done a week of my "ground beef diet".

But say it was the UCI who tested the blood. What would they think of my Costco Ground Beef HCT Boost? Would that result in an uptick in my rating?

I don't know what my blood profile looks like during the season - I try and avoid physicals (more specifically the needles and normal bruising and pain that occurs during needle use) when I'm riding regularly.

A rider who doesn't dope and is in pretty good shape (i.e. not always overly fatigued and whatnot) probably doesn't get blood drawn all that often.

However a well supported Doper would get blood drawn all the time - he'd want to make sure things looked okay. That's where the interesting dilemma pops up.

What if Doper carefully manipulated his blood parameters to fit the expected average, and therefore had a perfect plain-Jane profile?

And what if Clean inadvertently screwed his up by eating, say, hamburgers three times a day for 5 days? These spikes in HCT could indicate illicit doping, unsophisticated EPO use for example.

Or it could mean that someone gave my Two Pounds Of Ground Beef A Day Diet a try.

I'm sure you've been in a situation where you're driving normally on the highway, 5-10 mph over the limit. (5-10 over is good - at a town meeting a DOT person told us that speed limits are set a bit low for normal conditions and that they expect people to drive faster than the posted limit most of the time.)

Let's say you're passing a slightly slower car. You speed up just a bit, maybe close to that +10 mph threshold. You look in your mirror and see someone approaching at a rapid pace.

A really rapid pace.

They're going well over 100 mph, slowing as they approach your 75 mph bumper.

You goose the gas pedal, get around the car, and move over to the right lane.

The other car doesn't go by. Instead, it sits about where it was, 50 yards behind you.

Unbeknown to you, that driver has a sophisticated and expensive radar/laser detector and jamming system. And just when you goosed the go pedal in your car, his detector started blaring at him.

He braked firmly, slowing within seconds to under 75 mph, his detector hitting the "Jam Now!" switch automatically and sending a bit of fuzz through the airwaves.

And then you pass a State Trooper on the shoulder.

You're out there trying to get out of his way going 82 mph, a beautiful reflective car for the trooper's radar/laser gun.

That would totally suck, right?

You were following the principle of the law, that of driving about the same speed as traffic (no more than 15% difference in speed - that's the safest range of speed, and in a 65 mph zone, that's about 10 over for the high mark), going just over the speed limit, just like the DOT thinks is appropriate.

The other driver is driving, by definition, recklessly, exceeding the speed limit substantially. Because they know they'll be breaking the principle of the law, they also prepared a bit of possibly illegal defense. Perhaps they spent some money on a radar/laser detector. A more serious effort would involve an illegal radar/laser jammer.

The most sophisticated speeding setup I've read about is the setup a guy used to try to drive across the US in record time. Just to give you an idea of the goal, when he set off for the cross-country drive, the record stood at 32 hours and 7 minutes.

Using public roads.

The car's setup included all sorts of stuff, some of it stuff I'd thought of too, some of it just crazy.

I'll leave you to read the article since I found it fascinating.

But you'll see my point.

In such a (hypothetical for the doping bit) scenario, it's possible the clean riders look dirty and the dirty riders look clean.

Fine, if an M5 goes blasting by you at 160 mph, yeah, that doesn't look right. But if he's equipped to the nines to avoid getting a ticket, then he's beat the system.

A naive and innocent rider could pedal into disaster by inadvertently changing his blood profile, while the hardened doper could skate by the controls by carefully manipulating his numbers.

So, the question remains.

What would my blood profile look like?

*Addendum*

Apparently I didn't understand a lot of what happens with blood. Here are a bunch of corrections. The take-away? The blood passport, if used extensively, can and should discourage all common of blood manipulation techniques.

Link to Pinotti Interview

I was browsing the intraweb (surprise!) while munching on some food and drinking coffee, and I found the following interview on CyclingNews. I like the tone of this guy. I first noticed him in some of the DVDs I have, when he raced for T-Mobile, but never really got a feel for what he was like. Hopefully this article represents him properly. If so, I'm impressed.

http://www.cyclingnews.com/features/marco-pinotti-exclusive-interview-with-italian-cyclings-voice-of-reason

Doping - A Director's Assumptions

I like this article by Jonathan Vaughters. He assumed something. We all know what "assume" means (makes an "ass" out of "u" and "me"). I wish the best of luck to both him and Xavier Tondo.

http://www.cyclingnews.com/blogs/jonathan-vaughters/connecting-the-dots

Doping - Comment on Flandis

(I'm interrupting Interbike 2010 posts to mention this.)

I wrote something about Flandis a long time ago. The relevant part of the post is below:

"I'm sure that as soon as the positive news came out, Floyd and his parents talked on the phone. And I'm sure that one of the things his mom asked was, "Floyd, did you use this testosterone stuff?"

And how he answered at that moment would decide years of trials and tribulations.

I'm guessing he said something like, "Mom, I didn't take that stuff."

And that was it."

Now, it seems, he admitted as such:

"'As much as it hurts to sit and tell my mom I lied, and to tell other people that I lied, it's better than the alternative.'

The American acknowledged he waited too long before coming clean."

Personally I'm glad he has revealed his doping experiences.

Doping - Floyd Comes Clean?

Got this from a friend who saw it from a friend in Europe. It originally broke on the Wall Street Journal but since their articles "expire" sometime after seven days for non-subscribers, I'll link to a non-expiring one.

Not that this will go away any time soon.

Link: VeloNews.com

One cynic said that this was a pre-book publicity thing. Which, when I think about it, makes a little bit of sense. If he writes a book that reveals doping habits it'll be huge - but he doesn't need to send out emails about doping before the book comes out. The book itself will be enough.

One of my original thoughts at the beginning of this blog was to use it to "editorialize" on doping in cycling. But then it got ridiculous. The turning point came when Floyd and Tyler both used their fans to raise money for their defense. Instead of letting cycling fans (in general) watch the proceedings, they got them involved.

In Europe riders were a bit more succinct in their responses. Almost all of them quit or played out their suspensions. Currently my peeve rider is Valverde who just won't stop (but then again, no one's told him to stop except the Italians).

I like the Swiss rider's response when he got caught. Thomas Frei promptly admitted to doping; not just that, he told us why he did it.

The problem is when Floyd starts talking about other riders, he opens himself up for lawsuits and such, not just from the riders but from their sponsors and associated companies. To wit - one book never made it into English after its subject matter sued everyone associated to the book. An internet copy (seemingly laboriously translated into English and then scanned into a pdf file) found its way onto, and then off of, the internet.

I hope Floyd has a good lawyer.

Doping - Bike Pure

A couple weeks ago I found a lost treasure - my 2007 Giro DVD set. I hadn't seen extensive coverage of the Giro, and the whole atmosphere seems a bit more chaotic, a bit less controlled, and a lot more random than the much more austere, dignified, and somewhat predictable Tour.

So with eager legs I got on the trainer and popped in the three different DVDs in the set.

I forgot about all the controversy surrounding that particular race, but it came back to me pretty quickly. Lack of male hormones, the Oil for Drugs thing, blah blah blah.

On the other hand, I discovered something today.

I must have been dozing at the keyboard in the last few months... err year... because I just discovered a cool new site. Pezcycling, who I haven't been visiting as often as I used to, had an interesting article on Joe Papp. He's a guy that raced around here, used to have an online diary, doped like crazy for a while, almost died due to a hematoma caused by blood thinners, got tagged in a test, and confessed to doping. The article was a "post-tag" interview, where they asked him some questions about doping and stuff.

That article linked to Bike Pure.

And Bike Pure, well, that was a new one for me.

In the last year or so, with the various dope positives (apparently there were 60?), the fall of ACE, and all sorts of depressing doping news... I kinda sorta lost interest in things. Somehow, it seems, I either missed or wrote off this new "Bike Pure" announcement.

Anyway, I haven't fully explored it but it seems pretty interesting.

First order of business - donate enough money that they can send me a cool bracelet, sticker, and headset spacer without losing money on the deal.

Okay, admit it. You think that's kinda cool too.

I'm tired so I'll stop here, but it gets old watching DVDs of bike races and thinking, "Okay, he got tagged... he did too. So did he. Oh, man, that guy is riding like an idiot, and, yeah, he got tagged too."

A lot of those guys don't ride really smart. It makes me wonder what came first - not riding smart because they don't have the wherewithal, or not riding smart because they think they're so superior because they're doped to the gills.

Whatever, I feel sorry for Phil and Paul. How can you marvel at a new star racer when you think, "Man, the last time I talked about some new star, he got tagged a year or two later." So what do you say?

I don't know either.

The 2007 Giro DVD set, which I so eagerly retrieved from its hiding place, seems to have lost some of its luster.

But, you know, it's still cool watching all the attacks and stuff at the end of the flat stages. That's where, regardless of doping and dopers, it's still a lot of instinct and planning and tactics and adaptation.

And, ultimately, because of that, the racing still thrills.

Life - Doping Temptations

So I've been working in a hardware store. Sort of an entry level position, ringing up people, helping them out, etc. The biggest things are to be trustworthy, helpful, and motivated - this is a town where people trust one another.

I had a bunch of different adventures during my first week of work.

I learned that horses eat a LOT of food. Straw and stuff, sometimes flavored with molasses, preferably dry. I learned that although feeding horses costs a lot, feeding the birds costs a lot of money too, ditto dogs. I'm glad our cats are good with a couple scoops of dry and 2/3 of a can of wet a day.

I also found out that if you drop a heavy bag of horse feed on your head just right, your neck crackles just like you went to a chiropractor.

I didn't experiment with different drops so I can't report on different techniques, but suffice it to say that a two foot drop hitting about the top left quarter of my head wrenched my head sideways pretty hard, resulting in that comforting crackle. My neck felt really good for a couple days, I have to admit.

I also found out that my self-perceived IT skills (relatively basic) is, in fact, a touch more than basic. My typing skills are okay too, considering there are no ergo keyboards and I have to delicately peck at the keys so as not to irritate my wrists. To illustrate my wrist endurance, it takes perhaps 30 seconds of consistent typing before my wrists feel like they just did an intense interval. But I can type while looking elsewhere and talking about something else, something that apparently impresses others.

I have very understanding bosses - they remind me to leave on time so I can ride or race, and twice now they've poked me out the door to make it on time. I haven't missed a ride, and I made it to the midweek race fine too.

I also learned that having literally tons and tons of feed around (horse, dog, cat, bird, goat, bunny) is sort of like a huge "all you can eat" buffet for mice. I think this last week, with one person who studied mice in college, we (they) caught about 30 or 40 mice. Personally I have no problem with mice (rats are different) so it's a bit difficult to learn about their demise. To put things in perspective, when I moved the Bethel van the other weekend, a mouse ran under it, looking for shelter or something. I made sure the mouse was clear before I moved the van again.

They also bug-bombed the place but I haven't learned the results just yet - I'll find out tomorrow. Bugs bug me so I have less problem with eliminating them, but the last time someone bug-bombed a place I knew of, I was still in it! I and the whole bike shop was working in the same building and we ran out, coughing, a couple guys who really got fogged getting violently ill. So fly swatters are okay, bug bombs I'd rather do without.

This coming week is the first week where three full timers return to their "real" jobs, teaching school or going to college. I got a week of trying to figure out where everything is - it's got to be the biggest little hardware store around.

I also learned that bike shop margins are huge compared to hardware store margins. I thought they made tons of money on each sale but that's not true. When you make the same margin on a $50 sale as you do on a severely discounted high end bike, it's not good.

So what's all this got to do with doping?

Well, it doesn't. But it sets the tone of my job, my work, how I spend my 7:50 AM to 5:30 PM during the week, 30 minutes less than that on Saturday. It was on that shorter day Saturday that I was helping a couple load their SUV with very heavy bags of horse feed. 50 pound bags, and their "dead body" firmness made it hard for me to carry even one - the ends would droop or the bag would slide or I'd be afraid of ripping the corner of the bag off.

Obviously I wasn't a pro at this, but the guy buying them was - he deftly picked up TWO bags, plopped them in the SUV, and repeated the process. I said something about being impressed with his skill.

He grinned and looked at me.

"I did this for a living. It's what motivated me to go to college."

Then, realizing that perhaps he'd said too much (i.e. implying that perhaps I didn't go to college), he abruptly turned and left.

As I walked back to the front, past the mouse-kill spots, past the dead-bird spot, past the "where I got bit by a bug" spot, I thought about what the guy said.

Okay, I know that I can do something else and make more money. I took a whopping pay cut to work at the store but that's okay. I don't need to make much money and, honestly, I want to focus on doing what I want to do, rather than what I can do. I've been fortunate enough that I bought a bunch of nice stuff, I don't feel the need to buy other things, and so being in a status quo type of situation is fine.

But that approach to life is a luxury.

What if I didn't have my fun car? Or my Cannondale. Heck, what if I didn't have my Giants? My lights? Down Low Glow? Computers? Laptop? Weight lifting thing?

What if I was struggling just to make a living.

And college simply wasn't an option.

And, to extend the "what if" a bit further, what if I had a hint of cycling talent? What if I go on the group rides after working all day, exhausted to the core, yet manage to demolish all the local Cat 2s and such. I go to road races and end up vying for the win, perhaps foiled now and then by substandard parts failing at critical moments?

What if I knew I could make 100 hours of salary by winning a race? 200 hours? I'd have to work 1000 hours to make the amount that one guy won at a huge purse, mass start, one mile sprint event. And that event was something like 10 or 15 years ago.

And what if someone told me that taking this or that would help me win.

Tough, isn't it?

That's a big problem. A big one. It has nothing to do with ego, nothing to do with being more cut. It has to do with "Can I make it till next week money-wise?". I have to think that desperate people do desperate things.

I've mentioned before how I've been at the bottom of the barrel, struggling to find food on the weekends because during the week I relied on handouts from the bagel shop. I didn't mention how I rode whatever I could, using less than ideal things simply because they were free. My cranks and rings for a long time were 167.5 mm. They went to 170 mm when a customer had cranks and his bottom bracket swapped and gave the shop his old parts. They promptly went on my bike, saving me from having to buy a new bottom bracket (I had to use both because they weren't compatible).

But I always had a shelter, I had family worried about me, willing to help me. And though I didn't rely on that crutch too much (my dad would discretely give me too much money for helping with stuff around his house), I knew that if all else failed I could just go home, regroup, and try again.

Some people don't have that luxury.

For me the point is moot. I have so little ability that when I'm feeling really fit I just get out of the "untrained" category of power to weight. Everyone drops me on climbs, everyone. So cycling or any athletic thing is out of the question for me.

But for those slightly less than totally gifted cyclists? It has to be tempting.

Toss in some hard luck, struggling circumstances, maybe a bad decision or two, and you have a very bad mixture - a huge potential for doping.

I make a big assumption that the biggest problem with doping is when a struggling athlete succumbs to temptation. I'm studiously ignoring the individuals who don't need anything yet still dope. That's a different thing motivation wise and although the net results are the same (they doped), I think of it as a different path.

Unfortunately I don't have a solution. Credit counseling? I think it's a bit more universal than counseling for cyclists only, but perhaps it would be a start. If you're not in dire straights then you won't have to give in to temptation. Post cycling career counseling?

I'll let it stew for a bit. But I think that this is something that ought to be addressed.

Doping - Working With Manufacturers

I've vocalized some ideas for anti-doping controls before. My anonymous mobile anti-doping testers, doing random checks in testing labs, and finally what would happen if there was a movement towards clean cycling.

One idea I had and sort of discarded was to put markers in all the various drugs that could be used to enhance performance. EPO type drugs are an obvious candidate for this - although there are legitimately anemic people all over the world, I don't think there are too many of them in the pro cycling peloton.

The problem with inserting a marker into an existing drug is that this marker could potentially turn out to have some side effect. Since the drug has been changed, it has to be retested. And that takes lots of time and lots of money that would drive the cost of the drug up. And it isn't because the drug doesn't work - it's all because some pharmacist somewhere is selling the stuff "under the counter".

As a manufacturer I'd be a little unhappy if I had to spend a bunch of money to retest a drug simply because someone is using it illegally. Why should, say, Vicks, for example, pay tons of money to insert a marker into one of their standard cough medicines? Used legitimately their products are safe. It's the abusers (or home meth concoctors) who make it a problem.

So other controls are in place - instead of buying the real NyQuil over the counter, you have to buy the stuff at the desk, give ID, and you're limited to 2.5 grams of pseudoephedrine a day (that's what my receipt said for my purchase of DayQuil and NyQuil).

I didn't think of a particular scenario in my "marker musings" - one of a new drug. In this case it would be simple to insert a marker somewhere at the beginning of the process, something unusual that would show up in users but have no effect on them. All the testing would be done with this marker in place and the drug would be approved with the same.

This testing with the marker in place would mean that the drug can't be sold without the marker.

Fine, an illegitimate manufacturer might try and replicate it without the marker, but who's to say what part is the marker?

The drug manufacturer could quietly perform the work with this inert marker, sort of like diamond sellers who somehow put serial numbers on their diamonds (laser?). It's not immediately obvious, so a legitimate patient could use the drug and not have their skin turn purple (although that would certainly be a strong deterrant from illegal drug use...). But just like a jeweler can check a serial number on a suspect diamond, someone checking some fluid samples of a suspected user would be able to immediately pinpoint use of any marker-type drug.

We could take it one step further and require that all drugs have some marker if they are not readily identified. So, for example, I think morphine breaks down into "normal" substances in the human body, but if there's a "morphine marker" then morphine use can be tracked even after the actual morphine is gone.

Back to the cycling, because that's what this is about.

Ricco, who tested positive for a barely released drug, was caught by a marker inserted by the drug manufacturer.

Well now.

If such work continues on all new drugs, it will become very difficult to dope without getting caught. Of course there are the current unmarked drugs, like the various "normal" EPO drugs, but if new drugs have markers, the anti-doping labs can spend more time on developing better tests for those unmarked drugs.

Combined with better testing schedules, a more accepted anti-doping culture, and acceptance of year round testing, I think that cycling (as well as other sports) can rid itself of much of its doping controversy. I'm sure people are thinking of new and better ways of beating the system, but for now it seems that the system is finally getting up to speed.

*Edit July 24, 2008* - Apparently there is not a marker molecule in this new EPO. Instead, by focusing on a unique and particular molecule in the drug, WADA was able to test for that particular molecule.

Pro Cycling Manager 2007, Doping, & Me

I recently had a post on this now-somewhat-outdated game Pro Cycling Manager 2007, but I realized that I had no pictures to illustrate the obsessive compulsiveness required (by me anyway) to play this game.

So to remedy that situation I decided to take a picture of my little setup.

The kitchen table where my laptop normally lives.

You'll notice of a few critical things. Clockwise from the top:

First, the Gatorade (and Powerade too, since they now come with Coke Rewards codes, which I've been collecting for a couple years). This is important for the electrolyte draining stress that the player undergoes while trying to schedule 20-odd racers' training camps and races.

Second, the Novell/Compaq pad (came with one of the many servers sold by Compaq, in a little notepad thing filled with various CD-ROMs and such), remnants from my IT days prior to Y2K. This is good quality scrap paper, narrow lined, thin, and I can scribble all over it without feeling guilty about wasting paper. I knew I saved it for a reason.

Third, the black appointment book under the pad of paper. This is where I write down my real life appointments, training hours (I write notes on my ride in there, but I also have WKO+ for an electronic record of stuff), etc.

Fourth, Road Bike Action. This particular issue has yet another "fill out a survey and get a chance to win a bike" survey, so I gave it "near the laptop" priviledges. Most of the recent bike magazines get placed in the rest room where I read while I rest.

Fifth, black roller ball micro-tip pen. I like really fine tip roller ball pens because they offer just enough resistance to enable me to write neatly. Normal ball point pens slide too quickly and I end up with a messy scrawl. Roller ball pens (the super fine points) are just right for me.

Sixth, Pro Cycling Manager 2007 notes. There are three pages. The top left has my team roster with some notes beside each name. The top right one has notes on my February campaign - who is on which team and where they'll travel at what time for which races. There are some sponsor-pinpointed races and those are duly noted. The bottom page have the team racers (left column), the dates (across the top), and the schedule (in the middle). The left column has an extra column for notes on the racers (fitness level, morale, etc). I copied a "master" sheet eleven times to make them.

Seventh, various colored super fine tip roller ball pens. This is for doing the various scheduling. I've assigned three different colors (pink, green, light blue) to the three different teams (of 8, 7, and 6 racers), dark blue is for training camps, and red stars for the sponsor-important races.

Eighth, and probably most important for playing a computer game - a computer! This is the laptop where I do most/all of my writing. My desktop has been reduced to a picture gatherer and sometimes MS Office work (I have OpenOffice installed on the laptop). The game screen is displaying my team roster and their fitness levels (boxes which are dark, orange, or silver - indicating everyone is pretty weak right now), mood (green boxes with arrow pointing up or to the right), experience (bars on the right), and their average "rating" (column to the right of their names) which indicate their base/genetic abilities across different disciplines like climbing, sprinting, time trialing, etc.

Ninth, my real SRM. My laptop is also my WKO+ machine. I like checking out my training stats after I ride, more a curiosity than anything else. It's not very inspiring to see that I rarely hit 200 watts per hour, but at the same time it's interesting to see how fast I really went on that 50 mph downhill (45 mph).

Tenth, my cell phone. In case someone calls to offer me a cycling team manager position :)

A close up of the sheet with my team's February schedule. I started with black ink in the schedule before I realized I had to color coordinate things for my own sanity.

Within the game I was telling these guys to go 2 or 3 hours easy, or 4 or 5 hours medium, or even 6 or 7 hours easy. I figured they'd like a 2-3 hour day between each long day, and it seems the game agrees with that.

I decided to schedule my guys to do alternating hard and easy days. Since I ran two different training camps (in two different areas, to prepare for races in two different hemispheres), I had to write down the schedule so I wouldn't accidentally tell one camp's riders to do the other camp's schedule. Once I figured out which camp was which, I quickly and easily jotted down the racers' training hours. 2-3. 6-7. 2-3. 4-5. And so on.

(Note: A non-feature of the game is that if you hold two camps, your daily messages don't distinguish between the two of them - I had to guess which one was which, get a report on what rider was doing well - or not - and then deduce the camp's location).

After putting my racers through a couple training camps, I realized something sort of external to the game.

I wasn't riding that much.

So, just like I'd scheduled my racers, I pulled out my appointment book, conveniently situated within hand's reach. And wrote down some decent sounding numbers for the weekdays ahead. With the 3 hours I did on race day (Sunday) I wanted to continue a longer hour, less intensity trend. With no races coming up I wanted to do what I always seem to need to do. Lose weight. Get some fitness back. Return to a late February form, almost 20 pounds lighter than I am right now.

Anyway, for myself, it was easier. I just wrote down some numbers, mentally picturing a route or two for each day. It was easy and painless.

Monday: 1 hour (easy one hour loop)
Tuesday: 3 hours (do a 2.5 hour loop, go easy so take more time)
Wednesday: 2 hours easy (two of the easy one hour loops)
Thursday: 5 hours (hilly cross-MA route, took 4 hours last time but I exploded so I'd go easier)
Friday: 1 hour (easy one hour loop)

Not bad, right?

Unfortunately reality intruded with my plans. Funny how things like that happen in real life. My body didn't like the numbers as much as I thought they would and my actual hours didn't match very well with my planned ones.

My one hour on Monday was enough to bury me after my long and difficult Sunday. My 3 hour day turned into a zero hour day as I was simply exhausted, so much so that I fell asleep in the afternoon in a state of uncontrollable fatigue. I did my 2 hour day as planned. Okay, it was 1.5 hours due to heat issues - I could barely average 140 watts, and I was severely motivated to go faster as I was late picking up the missus.

I drank tons of Powerade and water to prepare for the long Thursday. My 5 hour day ended up a 4 hour day because I went easier but I didn't explode. I felt pretty good at the end of 4 hours, enough so that instead of turning into the driveway I sprinted after a truck, caught it, and drafted it for a while.

Then I took the last day of my short five day plan off - I had some weird poison ivy type spots and I spent way too much time itching to get a ride in.

Based on my own plan, I shorted every "longer" ride and I missed one of them.

It made me think of cycling as a career. Not for me, but more as an abstract concept.

It's not as easy as it looks, this pro cycling stuff. I watched a short bit of the Tour on TV today (our bed and breakfast had Versus). I watched these guys suffer. Felt that pressure to perform. And to do it day in, day out, every day, all the time.

There's no sleeping on the bed in the middle of the afternoon instead of throwing a leg over a bike and going out for a couple hundred hard kilometers of racing. There's no time-outs, no "I'm taking a day off because I'm not feeling too well", no excuses.

It looked tiring. It looked hard.

And it looked spectacularly unappealing as a profession.

I'm glad that the closest I'll get to racing as a pro is to click on a guy on a video screen and tell him to attack, because frankly, even with talent, I don't think I'd have made it as a pro racer.

In some twisted and convoluted way my real week showed me how easy it would be for a racer to start doping. You're exhausted, tired, you've done 30 hours in the last week, and now someone wants you to do another 5 hours today.

Then someone, maybe someone who pounded you into a pulp yesterday, says "No, yesterday was fine. I felt pretty good. I started taking some stuff and it really helped me recover."

What do you say? You're barely able to get out of bed, you almost fall down the stairs because you miss a step because your mind is so fuzzy, and now someone says they can make it go away?

Wouldn't it be easy to give in to such temptation? If your career depended on it?

Have you ever taken DayQuil and gone to work because you felt it necessary to work? Because you wanted to finish that project or make it to the launch of the new platform or cover for your "on vacation" coworker?

As a very amateur racer I can just skip a day if I feel like it. And I do that regularly, without any feelings of remorse or "I should have". Pros don't have this luxury.

I can see how difficult it'll be to fight this doping thing. But I think it's necessary. I think that the day will come where everyone has an off day in a Grand Tour, where everyone cracks and loses 5 or 8 minutes. If they do it right they'll do it when a no-hope break goes up the road and they'll hide in the peloton's group anonymity. I think the days of "no bad days" is severely limited.

And, for racing, I think that's a good thing.

Doping - 2008 Tour Or Why I Feel "Good"

The AFLD (French initials for French Anti-Doping Agency), the organization responsible for anti-doping controls in the 2008 Tour, has, over the past several days, announced that three riders have tested positive for some form of EPO booster type drugs.

Contrary to the suggestions in my last post on the topic, the AFLD has a policy of announcing a non-negative A-sample. In addition the Tour has a policy of ejecting any A-sample non-negative racers out of the race. So the three racers whose A-samples have tested non-negative are out. Although this may not be ideal, it is, for now, the way it is.

The first was a sort of unspectacular, simply another somewhat anonymous racer testing positive. The only interesting thing was that he's a former Lance Lieutenant (LL), "Triki" Beltran. He's the last in a line of LLs to test positive, after the likes of Heras, Hamilton, Landis, Andreau (self admitted but never positive), perhaps Vaughters (he hints at it), and finally, the only positive I know of while actually on the team, Joachim Benoit. Interestingly enough the test result was thrown out and he was quietly resigned, spending almost his whole career on Johan Bruyneel's teams.

I'm not counting Lance's positive with the post dated TUE because no one else seems to count it.

The second 2008 Tour positive was perhaps not unexpected. Someone who grabs the climber's jersey out of nowhere? When someone does well at all stages of his career, it would be no surprise for him to perform. When a somewhat anonymous racer suddenly wins a huge prize, that's a bit unexpected and therefore suspicious.

The third one is and probably (hopefully) will be the best known one - Ricco. I say "hopefully" because I actually hope there are no more stars which are doping. The brash young man will have no allies, no friends in the toughest battle of his career. Unlike the first two positives, reports show the team left the race. This to me indicates that this was a team doping effort, not an aberrant individual breaking the rules. The other two teams were okay with continuing on, but with Saunier-Duval, they felt it necessary to withdraw. I wonder if any more of their samples will come back positive.

Even more interesting will be whether or not later samples of the three who tested positive will come back positive. The various EPO drugs don't wash away after a day or two so samples from the days after the "positive" should come back positive as well.

However, all this pales in comparison to something that's been irritating me for a while - the ease at which racers, directors, and journalists throw around the word "positive".

In cycling, positive (now) should only mean one thing - a B sample with traces of some illegal performance enhancing drug or drug side effects. "Positive" should not be used anywhere else.

So let me ask, as a somewhat rhetorical question, why do racers and directors insist on using the word "positive" when describing the fight against doping?

For example, when asked about the third positive, George Hincapie has this to say:
"We can look at the positive side..."

It would be nice if he used a different word. I would suggest words like "good", "progress", "bright", etc. Admittedly they sound less sophisticated as the multi-syllabic "positive" but they get the message across.

"We can look at the bright side..."

This may be a bit too PC for some, but really, it makes sense, especially for sponsors. Using the word "positive" in a cycling sentence can have incredibly negative connotations, and even if the quote is something about how it's good that dopers are getting caught, there's got to be some negative little tic filed away by the readers of the quote.

Other (made up) potential quotes:
"It's good (not positive) sign of the times.."
"I feel that the sport has made progress in the fight against doping."

Racers also use the term when describing their form. Instead of "feeling positive" a racer (and journalists reporting on the racer) should use words like "good".

I should point out that "good" clarifies whether or not the racer is feeling doped or if he is feeling good. Racers, if they're doping, don't want to give it away, so if someone says, "I feel really posi.. I mean I feel really good" then journalists can check the guy out. If the racer just says, "I feel really good" then we can leave him be.

A better word might be "confident". It matches "positive" in syllable count and has an aura of invincibility about it.

"I feel very confident about tomorrow's stage."

Now, if they want to use an even better multi-syllabic word, they can use a word like "optimistic" - that word even has has four syllables, one more than the negatory "positive".

"I feel very optimistic about tomorrow's stage."

There are some even more esoteric words to describe an optimistic thing.

Sanguine might be a good one for describing one's mood.
"So, Cadel, how do you feel for the upcoming stage?"
"I feel very good, my mood is sanguine."
"Excuse me?"

Roseate would be an excellent one for a sunglass sponsored racer.
"George, tell me how you feel about your new shades."
"I love them, I call them my roseate shades because I feel good when I wear them."
"You mean rose-colored?"
"No, I mean roseate. You know, like optimistic."
"Um, thank you for your time."

Panglossian is a good one, another four syllable word that rolls off the tongue nicely. It would be a great Phil Liggett quote:
"And such and such launches another attack. Oh to feel so Panglossian, only a Tour rookie would attempt so many attacks in the first part of a long climb like this!"
"Phil, what did you just say?"
"Paul, I said that he's simply too Panglossian for a Tour veteran, only a neo-Tour racer would attack like that."
"Panglossian?"
"Panglossian."
"Could I ask you what is in your coffee cup?"

There is a second and much more significant reason for not using the word positive except in describing the result of a dope test - it will be MUCH easier to Google for "positive doping" when looking for positive drug test results. Well I'm sure there would be some weird results as well.

But there'd be no question about "Panglossian" showing up, that's for sure.

Doping - Standards Apply to Everyone

Floyd's appeal denied.

Rasmussen suspended for two years.

It seems like the whole anti doping thing is working.

Or is it?

Govenor Rell signed a landmark ethics bill earlier this year. It gives a judge the right to revoke a crooked official's pension. I guess that makes sense, right? If you broke laws while you were "earning" your pension (and perhaps using power you had in that position to break laws, like a corrupt politician or law enforcement officer), then it's only right that if you are convicted that you lose the right to that pension.

It's like if, say, I won the Tour de France by using massive amounts of illegal performance enhancing drugs and then I got caught. It would make sense that I would have to give up my prize money.

The big thing with this type of penalty is that it takes away something already promised. The law says that you broke the law while earning your pension and therefore you don't get to collect it. As a normal citizen, the whole "taking away from you" is a big deal, so the whole conviction process has got to be right.

A long time ago someone local to my old home got pulled over for driving under the influence. The fact he was drunk was pretty irrefutable - when he rolled down the window to talk to the cop that pulled him over, he vomited on the cop. A bit perturbing, I'm sure, but the cop duly did the breathalyzer test. It came back with some whopping number, I forget the actual number but I want to say it was like a .25 or .30, something where the driver should have been dead, not driving.

He was charged, arrested, and went to court, and plead not guilty.

And, unbelievably, he was released.

The cop, in his perturbed state, forgot to check a box on some paperwork. And therefore the whole procedure was nullified.

I was really upset when I read about the drunk guy getting off, ranting and raving for a day or two. But then a lawyer friend of mine pointed out that, look, the cop made a mistake and legally the drunk guy was improperly charged (or something).

Recently a certain Tom Boonen tested positive for cocaine. It happens to be illegal in general wherever he was, just like it is here, but from a sporting point of view it's different. Technically it's considered cheating in cycling only if you take it so that it's in your system during competition. And since Boonen wasn't racing, it wasn't a sporting violation. It was a non-cycling issue.

So what prompted the anti-doping authorities to release the essentially clean results?

That's where I have a problem with the whole thing.

Okay, if they are legally obligated to report illicit drug use to the authorities, then fine, they can do that. And then the police would announce that they are investigating Boonen for cocaine.

But the anti-doping agency really has no business announcing what is effectively a clean (from a sporting point of view) drug test.

I started thinking about how unfair it is for Boonen. Just to clarify, I'm sort of a fan of his but not really. I prefer to cheer on riders more like me, and someone who rides a 60 cm frame is nothing like me. I choose to cheer on the McEwens, the Abdus, the little sprinters.

Anyway, that's not the point. The point is that I thought about other doping convictions or announcements relative to this, and relative to some other procedural things I had to do or that I witnessed.

A recent doping fiasco is that of Floyd Landis. A friend asked me what I thought would happen - at that time it was well into the Wiki defense thing and it'd been dragging on for a while. I told him that I thought that Floyd seems guilty, based on the carbon isotope test, but their reasoning to do that test was what I consider (my opinion) to be a flawed ratio test. Therefore I figured he'd be found not guilty on a technicality.

See, the anti-doping procedure was to do the ratio test, and if that came out non-negative, they'd do the isotope test. If the ratio test was negative, they'd stop at that point. The ratio test didn't seem conclusive but they went ahead and did the isotope test anyway.

That's where I thought Floyd would triumph.

It's like the missed check box. If you don't follow procedure in collecting evidence, then you have to dismiss your findings. It's only fair.

However, Floyd was found guilty and disqualified from the Tour. In the process he lost out on about $400k in prize money as well as other stuff I don't know about (daily prizes etc).

In contrast to that "positive", think about Tyler's Olympic Gold medal. His blood tested positive for an external transfusion (i.e. blood doping) but the anti-doping laboratories froze the B-sample, destroying it, at least as far as testing was concerned. Because Tyler had only one of two samples confirmed as a non-negative, he was found not guilty on a technicality. It seems the labs followed proper procedure there and they correctly let Tyler go because they couldn't prove the first non-negative.

Again, the missed check box. But this time the offender was released, as per the rules.

Let's take this Governor's bill again. Say a state official is arrested on some charge which, if true, would allow a judge to revoke the official's pension. Based on a technicality, perhaps a missing check box, he's found innocent.

Should they take away his pension?

Absolutely not.

He could be guilty as sin but if he's found innocent for whatever reason, he cannot be punished for that crime. Heck, I would hate to pay taxes to pay a convicted official's pension. Yet that's what I'm doing now. The law says that those corrupt officials get their pensions. If they did the same crime now, they wouldn't, but back then, the pension wasn't part of the deal.

The prosecutors and law enforcement folk are all obligated to follow procedure, to do the right thing. And if they don't follow procedure, the person who allegedly did something will walk. That's the way things work.

If the prosecutors or law enforcement folk cheat in order to convict a state official, that's criminal and they can be tried. At that point the prosecutors or law enforcement folk are the ones in the hot seat, and they're the ones who could lose their pensions.

That is how anti-doping should work.

If a lab screws up somehow, say by releasing a test result, they should be penalized. Perhaps the technicians can be suspended for two years on their first offense, for life for the second. Maybe the lab would be considered "dirty" and have to go through its licensing procedures before doing another test. It's only fair because they are the ones that find the solid evidence used to suspend racers.

And if they do something to hurt a rider, like release results of a test, they should have to forfeit their salary, just like a rider forfeits his.

Trust goes two ways here, and right now I don't think either side is trustworthy. Do I trust a leaked non-negative test result?

No.

The simple fact that it was leaked is a problem because it's supposed to remain secret.

A leaked test result should nullify the test result, no matter what. Remember Joe Papp? When did we first hear he was positive? When he testified at Floyd's hearing. There was nothing before that, nothing to suggest any unusual activities, save the fact that he'd retired from racing. Whichever organization did his testing did their job and never let anyone know about it.

If a test result is leaked, the test result should be nullified. Okay, fine, you can target that racer for a gazillion more tests, but the particular test which was leaked should not count.

After losing a few "positives" like this because of a lab's loose lips, I would bet that either the lab would tighten up or the anti doping authorities would use a different lab.

The first time we should hear about a positive is after the second sample is tested and it's official. We should never, ever hear about a "non-negative" (the first test is not a positive since it hasn't been verified by a second test, so it's called a "non-negative"), a name associated with a non-negative, not even rumors that "a highly placed rider" tested positive.

There needs to be one major change in the doping procedure for this to work. Every single second sample needs to be tested. There are a number of benefits to this and two huge drawbacks.

First, the benefits.

Every rider will be asked to verify that the second sample was not tampered with prior to the test. This means it won't be unusual for a rider to do this verification. The rider cannot be the source of the leak because they won't know if they were non-negative or positive. Therefore the rider cannot leak a result to get it nullified.

Testing the second sample will verify the lab's results, good or bad, not just the sample's contents. Any difference in results would throw out the case and nothing will happen to the athlete.

The drawbacks.

Okay, fine, it'll cost a lot of money. Right now it takes $1000-1500 for the most primitive tests. The test itself is inexpensive - about $450 or so. It's the (in the US) USADA personnel and the courier fees that cost a lot (some tests may cost $800+ in courier fees alone!). Getting a rider to verify the second sample will be a pain but it has to be done. This way there is no way the rider will know they're dealing with a non-negative.

By doing this, USADA (and WADA) will restore faith in the testing system. No lab will go running off its mouth because it'll be suspended from performing further tests for two years. And since the athletes won't know if they're non-negative, they can't spread rumors either.

If things worked this way, I'd have faith in the system. And I'd be satisfied with every single suspension. As it is now, it seems too shaky. I think both sides break the rules and that's not good.

Note: since I thought of this in a haze during Tour of PA, someone should drill holes in this idea. Otherwise I'll send it to the USADA :)