Le dopage

With my recent month's focus on strength training, I've been spending time in GNC and the GNC aisle of Rite Aid looking at protein powders and other supplements. They have ferocious pictures of men looking like their limbs are being torn off with overblown claims in nonsensical language that calls up images of biting the heads off bunnies and pencil-like nerds. Words like "warrior," "beast," "unchained," and "monstrous" promise to turn you into a behemoth in language that seems better suited to a comic book than a supplement a few feet away from the Mylanta and diurrhetics that promise to fight kankles. They also have derivatives of words that I recognize from stories about doping cases in the news: "anabolic," "androgen," sterol," "testosterone"... I know that many of these products contain substances banned by cycling and triathlon (not by law), and it's tempting to try them out and see what they'd do to my power.

People walking into supplement shops are already vulnerable. They've come in with the intention of dropping $40 on pixie dust that will give them more of an advantage than food alone. And what makes one substance "bad" and another "okay" anyway? It's pretty arbitrary. I heard an interview once with some anti-doping specialist that said that caffeine was the single greatest legal performance-enhancing drug, and that if it weren't already so entrenched in our culture, it would have been banned long ago. And yet athletes have their careers terminated over traces of some chemical that's found is way into their blood through cold medicine. Sure, caffeine's natural and EPO isn't, but testosterone and HGH are natural and they're not allowed. Alcohol is way more dangerous than EPO (even back in the days when guys on EPO had to set their alarms for the middle of the night to do jumping jacks so that their blood didn't congeal in their veins), but alcohol is perfectly legal. If these drugs are banned, it's not necessarily because they're "bad" for you (or worse than any other pharmaceutical anyway).

The drugs aren't banned because they're unsafe, they're banned because they make you bigger/stronger/faster. Athletes spend hours every day busting their asses to get a leg up on the competition. They eat food that tastes like sand to optimize their power-to-weight ratio and muscle recovery. They take artificial supplements to pick up where food left off with electrolytes, protein, and even some vitamins. For a female athlete who takes iron supplements to fight exercise-related anemia, for example... how different is it physiologically to increase her red blood cell count with a few red blood cells from another person's veins? It's different ethically, but physiologically? When Greg LeMond was shot in a hunting accident, it was okay for him to get blood transfusions (he didn't). When Floyd Landis's hip was necrotic, it was okay for him to get cortisone (a steroid) shots. For those whose livelihood depends on it, the pressure to take that extra step to the other kind of enhancing supplements must be astronomical; especially in sports like cycling that have the perception (true or not) that everybody's already doing it.

So back to me standing in the aisle at GNC staring at the tubs of monster dust. I'm here because I want to burn fat, build muscle, improve explosive power, and I'm willing to pay for it. These bottles are saying they'll give me what I want. Running through my mind over and over with each outlandish claim on the side of a bottle is: I'd never even be tested!

I'm not doping. I have doubts as to whether this monster dust even works for meatheads who only care about bulk (not performance), let alone a spritely little cyclist like me who could care less about getting "shreaded." I'm not about to drop $58.99 on Andro Nitro X Triple Anabolic Formula and Penis Enhancement! If they had something proven to improve my performance though, like EPO, blood transfusions, or human growth hormone sitting there between the Incredible Hulk and Jillian Michaels pointing and smirking at me, I can't guarantee I wouldn't shell out the big bucks and take it home.

I like to ride my bike (and swim and run) because I really like putting the hurt into other people. I love the feeling when someone thinks, I can take her, and then I just blow them to pieces. I hate being on the other side of that story too, and it haunts me for months when I am. In short, I hate it when people think I can't do something. I have classic Little Man's syndrome, and I'm willing to go to great lengths to prove I have bigger balls than all y'all. If there were a button I could press, or a mantra I could say... or a magic pill I could take to never be shown up again... come on... yeah, I'd do it.

I've been watching a lot of old Tour DVDs during my trainer workouts lately. I personally believe that many–if not all–of the major players over the past decade are dirty. Do I care? Not really. Does it make me mad that Lancey Pants is probably a huge drug cheat and possibly a huge hypocrite for his professed dedication to anti-doping measures? Yes. Does it make it any less exciting when he schools Ullrich, Pantani, or Mayo (all of whom have their own sketchy pasts)? Not at all. Hey, all the EPO, HGH, anabolic steroids, and blood transfusions in the world would never make me a Lance Armstrong. Those guys are still fantastic athletes and genetic freaks. So what if there's a little Hollywood in there exaggerating their prowess and making a better show? It's not my career. If they want to gamble with their reputations in order to dazzle me a bit with a thrilling 200-km solo breakaway, I'm not going to object. Sure, I wish the sport were clean, but I also wish that all parking were free and plentiful, organic produce were cheap, and it were sunny every day. It ain't gonna happen and there's nothing I can do about it, so I'm better off not worrying about it to begin with and enjoying what I've got: lying, dirty cyclists who combine two of my favorite things–scandal and cycling!

And don't y'all act like you're better than me and that you would never consider doping. A couple of years ago I asked who would eat food that tasted like sand for an opportunity to be the best athlete in your sport. For those who placed athletic performance high on their list of priorities, many of them said that they would. The rest lied. Rumor has it that many triathletes with the means to do so choose to use performance-enhancing drugs in their quest for elite goals like Kona. With any reward that's tempting enough, a sport that requires so much single-minded dedication, and no consequences for cheating, can you really be surprised that it's happening? I'm not saying that everyone's doing it, but the fact that it's rare gives the athlete who chooses to cheat even more of an edge over his competition and makes doping even more attractive.

So yeah, if I were in the best shape of my life and in a position where I were just on the cusp of true greatness, and then my manager came up to me and said, "Here's a new drug that will enhance your performance 8%; enough to go from also-ran to sporting great. They won't be able to detect for another decade," I don't think I'd hesitate for long before dropping trou for the needle.