On Tuesday, November 24, 2020 at 1:13:11 PM UTC-8, wrote:
On Monday, November 23, 2020 at 11:31:59 PM UTC-6, wrote:
On Monday, November 23, 2020 at 4:10:41 PM UTC-8, Andre Jute wrote:
On Monday, November 23, 2020 at 9:38:15 PM UTC, wrote:
I have never doped and my marathon PR is 3:06. I think possible under perfect conditions and a group not necessarily even drafting I might be able to do a 5 hour century? My guess is that probably many 60 year old cyclists can do that but I just never have yet. My best with no rest and completely solo 5:15 a few years ago.

What dope will get me there?

Deacon Mark
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I think you have this the wrong way round, Mark. First you train and bring your body AND your skills to perfection, same as the other competitors are doing, THEN you dope for the extra edge. This is why total body blood doping -- the exchange of all the blood in the body for fresh blood -- which allows the body to burn more oxygen for greater output is so effective. But even such an extreme measure will do nothing against professionals for an overweight old guy who, let us say, gave up cycling twenty years ago and anyway wasn't a top class athlete even twenty years before that. All it will do for the latter guy is help him beat fat old guys who had developed similar amateur skills way back in their day.

Sorry to disappoint you.
Well, they were exchanging blood. As you work very hard red blood cells get worn out and are excreted. Blood doping was merely adding additional transfusions so that you recovered to your natural state. Testosterone would make you more aggressive but NO drugs can allow you to extent past your bodies capacity. Pain killers would allow you to ride harder for longer but the damage to your body would be the same with or without the pain killers. I forgot the doctor's name now but he knew what was going on very well and the programs he developed for cyclists caused them the least hard compared to what those fools were doing before he came along.
Blood transfusions were effective because they added extra red blood cells to your body. Your body only makes so many red blood cells. Red blood cells are not like hair or fingernails which grow forever and continuously. Your body only makes so many red blood cells. Enough to get enough oxygen to all your cells during exercise. The blood transfusions would add extra red blood cells. So your blood could carry extra oxygen and you could do harder exercise exertions. But after awhile, few weeks probably, your body recognizes it has extra red blood cells in the blood and cuts down, stops making new ones. And your body returns to having the normal amount of red blood cells. And then you have to blood dope again by shooting more stored blood back into your body.

Russell, when you exercise to exhaustion you "wear out" red blood cells and they die and are removed via your kidneys. Normally RBC's wear out and are evacuated from the body via your normal bodily functions. The idea behind blood transfusions wasn't so much to increase red blood cell count during a race but to replace the lost ones that would lead to lower and lower VO2 Max during the race. Before the race they could either use EPO or excess blood transfusions to boost your red blood cell count and VO2 Max but during a Tour you couldn't even keep up with the RBC loss.

Your entire blood supply is replaced every 4 to 8 weeks for a normal healthy individual in their 30's. This is also the case for some old but healthy people. My RBC count is pretty low because of the damage from the poison gas and the medication I need to take to prevent seizures.