A few questions before I begin-
1) Testicular cancer-after chemo treatments and removal of a testicle, what sort of testosterone levels can a normal, otherwise healthy male expect to produce?
2) Do these individuals go back to living normal lives or do they have to take testosterone supplements for the rest of their lives?
3) Can they produce enough sperm to have children?
This is why I ask-Armstrong's' vital numbers, like weight, power output and VO2 max have always been shrouded in secrecy. There is no doubt that an increase in power, heretofore unrealized pre-1999, took place. Hard work and maniacal training?
No. Something happened between the time he left Paris-Nice I believe in early 1998 (someone please chime in with the exact date-the timeline is important) and the Vuelta/World championships.
This is what I've been told, in layman's terms-the cocktail he was ingesting wasn't anything Earth-shattering but it does lend credence to his power output increase. The stamina came from blood manipulation, the tried and true method of combining EPO micro-dosing and transfusions. But the power, how was it able to increase so much?
I've been told this weekend that Armstrong had a special dispensation that allowed him to take up to 7 times the normal amount of testosterone that a normal male his age produces to make up for whatever deficiency he may suffer after having a testicle removed.
Granted this is overkill, as I doubt any normal male would need this amount introduced exogenously, but this is what he was doing. He was taking this amount during the times he was riding the Tour. The medical dispensation was never recorded by the UCI that I know of for whatever reason, but given the cozy relationship he had with the UCI it is not a stretch to say he probably made them verbally aware of the situation but wanted to keep it quiet so as not to take away from his mythological persona as the strongest rider in the peloton, which at the time both he and the UCI profited greatly from. So not a stretch to see why he would find an ally to keep this quiet within cycling's governing body.
This, in combination with HgH, cortico-steroids and blood manipulation was what made his doping regimen different than the other riders. This is aside the assurance that he nor any of his teammates would test positive for anything after the 1999 incident, which was another advantage riders from other teams didn't have. So they were able to behave as if the rules did not apply to anyone of the US Postal riders.
This is what makes the theory of the doping "super responder" harder to believe. Or at the very least that he was one of these cases, which I believe he was not.
The day Jan Ullrich took one and a half minutes out of Armstrong in the 2003 Tour, Lance was visibly suffering not from heatstroke but from a bad transfusion. Either the blood was not stored correctly or it belonged to someone else. But the situation was righted by the doctors that evening and all was well after that. It only seems right that one of the few bad days Armstrong had in the Tour wasn't due to loss of form but from a glitch in the doping regimen.
Having a high hematocrit that never decreased due to blood transfusions/EPO injections only tell part of the story. Many people feel in this regard he wasn't doing anything the other top contenders weren't also engaged in. So what made it possible for him to fly away from climbers whom he outweighed sometimes by over 20 pounds? Climbers he never in any other race in his career could keep up with much less leave in the dust?
It would seem a foregone conclusion that the Federal investigation will reveal systematic doping on the US Postal squad. But that is not enough. How did he do it? What made his regimen so much more effective? His transformation wasn't merely a consolidation of previously exhibited strengths-he morphed into a totally different rider.
Many people have underestimated the use of testosterone in cycling. In combination with the right amount HgH it makes for an incredible combination. If it's true that Armstrong was jacked up on such a great amount of testosterone, along with everything else, this would appear to be the missing ingredient, the one product he was able to use with impunity that others could not touch for fear of testing positive. At least not in the prodigious amounts he was allowed to ingest.
1) Testicular cancer-after chemo treatments and removal of a testicle, what sort of testosterone levels can a normal, otherwise healthy male expect to produce?
2) Do these individuals go back to living normal lives or do they have to take testosterone supplements for the rest of their lives?
3) Can they produce enough sperm to have children?
This is why I ask-Armstrong's' vital numbers, like weight, power output and VO2 max have always been shrouded in secrecy. There is no doubt that an increase in power, heretofore unrealized pre-1999, took place. Hard work and maniacal training?
No. Something happened between the time he left Paris-Nice I believe in early 1998 (someone please chime in with the exact date-the timeline is important) and the Vuelta/World championships.
This is what I've been told, in layman's terms-the cocktail he was ingesting wasn't anything Earth-shattering but it does lend credence to his power output increase. The stamina came from blood manipulation, the tried and true method of combining EPO micro-dosing and transfusions. But the power, how was it able to increase so much?
I've been told this weekend that Armstrong had a special dispensation that allowed him to take up to 7 times the normal amount of testosterone that a normal male his age produces to make up for whatever deficiency he may suffer after having a testicle removed.
Granted this is overkill, as I doubt any normal male would need this amount introduced exogenously, but this is what he was doing. He was taking this amount during the times he was riding the Tour. The medical dispensation was never recorded by the UCI that I know of for whatever reason, but given the cozy relationship he had with the UCI it is not a stretch to say he probably made them verbally aware of the situation but wanted to keep it quiet so as not to take away from his mythological persona as the strongest rider in the peloton, which at the time both he and the UCI profited greatly from. So not a stretch to see why he would find an ally to keep this quiet within cycling's governing body.
This, in combination with HgH, cortico-steroids and blood manipulation was what made his doping regimen different than the other riders. This is aside the assurance that he nor any of his teammates would test positive for anything after the 1999 incident, which was another advantage riders from other teams didn't have. So they were able to behave as if the rules did not apply to anyone of the US Postal riders.
This is what makes the theory of the doping "super responder" harder to believe. Or at the very least that he was one of these cases, which I believe he was not.
The day Jan Ullrich took one and a half minutes out of Armstrong in the 2003 Tour, Lance was visibly suffering not from heatstroke but from a bad transfusion. Either the blood was not stored correctly or it belonged to someone else. But the situation was righted by the doctors that evening and all was well after that. It only seems right that one of the few bad days Armstrong had in the Tour wasn't due to loss of form but from a glitch in the doping regimen.
Having a high hematocrit that never decreased due to blood transfusions/EPO injections only tell part of the story. Many people feel in this regard he wasn't doing anything the other top contenders weren't also engaged in. So what made it possible for him to fly away from climbers whom he outweighed sometimes by over 20 pounds? Climbers he never in any other race in his career could keep up with much less leave in the dust?
It would seem a foregone conclusion that the Federal investigation will reveal systematic doping on the US Postal squad. But that is not enough. How did he do it? What made his regimen so much more effective? His transformation wasn't merely a consolidation of previously exhibited strengths-he morphed into a totally different rider.
Many people have underestimated the use of testosterone in cycling. In combination with the right amount HgH it makes for an incredible combination. If it's true that Armstrong was jacked up on such a great amount of testosterone, along with everything else, this would appear to be the missing ingredient, the one product he was able to use with impunity that others could not touch for fear of testing positive. At least not in the prodigious amounts he was allowed to ingest.