Well, oddly enough the news from our “hero” Marion Jones didn’t surprise me all that much. I sucks for everyone to deal with stuff like that, I mean each time someone else gets caught it makes us second guess our heroes. I don’t think any less of all the guys preparing this week to race in Hawaii because of a stupid decision by an athlete and coaching system back in 2000, but I’d be lying to say that it didn’t make me wonder a bit about the cleanliness of my sport.
I certainly wasn’t the only person wondering what it’s like to take drugs in the past week, it’s a topic of conversation that’s running rampant on internet forums right now. Someone dug up a feature story from the Outside magazine of a guy who went on a collection of drugs back earlier this decade and competed as a steroid loaded machine in the Paris-Brest-Paris bike race. The story is from 2003 and is available online here.
Here’s a snippet that gives you an idea of what kind of enhancement he was getting.
“Within three weeks, my hematocrit level had risen to 48.3. By this time, my testosterone levels had shot up to 900 nanograms per decaliter, from a previous mark of 280. (My starting level was just below normal.) My HGH had increased only slightly, which Dr. Jones found unusual. He upped my HGH dosage to 1.2 IU a day, speculating that the long hours I spent training might be keeping the level down.“
Those numbers, for those of you that don’t know what they mean, are great! I would estimate my hemocrit level as “good” but that means I’m somewhere around 42-44. You get ejected from competition at 50 because you’re superhuman.
The guy went on to add an anabolic steroid to the mix and I think that’s where things started to get a bit past where he was comfortable as he writes:
“I got a glimpse of myself in the glass of a freezer door. I had a light on my helmet and a bunch of other blinking gizmos attached to my arms and ankles. My face looked like one of those “thousand-yard stare” photos from Vietnam. What have I done? I wondered. I had a life once, and now I’m standing in the Easton WaWa in the middle of the night, looking like a cyborg, with thousands of dollars of drugs coursing through my veins.“
Basically the author decides, as I had known all along, that if you’re looking to use some drugs to gain a bit of an edge, to improve yourself as an athlete without damaging yourself as a complete person, your best bet is HGH. He started at 0.1 IU of HGH, which I think is really at the low end, but was up to a daily 1.2 IU of HGH by the time his race rolled around, I think that’s pretty high. This is under the advice of a doctor though, so maybe 1.2 is ok, I’ve never really read of anyone dosing above 0.5 or 0.6, maybe that’s because the only people who I read about are those who aren’t taking the drug with anticipation of making serious performance enhancement.
So 1.2 IU of HGH in my opinion is intelligent, but I would suggest that anything anabolic is unintelligent, any testosterone supplementation in excess of the 98th percentile of natural testosterone production is unintelligent. I would say that use of EPO to put your hemocrit level at anything more than 5 points above natural would also be unintelligent. I think this guy is nuts to go so extreme with the drugs if he’s only trying to explore them for personal interest. His numbers suggest to me that some people must be really hyped up on stuff if that doctor was prescribing those doses without really being pushed or convinced to make the guy into a monster.
Am I ever going to take HGH? Maybe it sounds like I’m considering it because I know what kind of dosage I’d be comfortable at. Well the answer is yes I’ve done my research but it’s out of interest and the answer regarding putting the stuff into my body is a resounding no! Triathlon is a challenge against myself, it’s an opportunity to see what I can get myself to do. If I start taking something, I have not treated myself fairly, what kind of success is it if you’re not pushing for your absolute (real) best. I suppose the perspective exists that you’re still competing against yourself, but you’re just doing it at a higher level. To that I’d say, bullshit, I can bike fast enough that it’s scary without drugs. There is no “entertainment” enhancement achieved by competing against yourself at a higher level than the one you’re at. If you’re a pro there is certainly a reason to dope though, you’re not competing against yourself, you’re competing on a playing field with everyone else and you’re manipulating the topography of it. I’ve got very little respect for those that are doing so.
I also feel like adding a few reasons why drug use is not honoring to God, as I believe I’m a created being. I’m 6′5” tall for a reason, I’ve got funny knees for a reason, and I don’t have a hemocrit level of 55 for a reason. I’m not going to elaborate a ton here though. I just feel like you’re not really honoring God if you’re enhancing yourself via chemical means. God calls us to worship him in all things, doing things that human beings do is honoring to him.
“Mountains, and all hills; fruitful trees, and all cedars… Let them praise the name of the LORD: for his name alone is excellent; his glory is above the earth and heaven.” Psalm 148: 9 & 13.
That means that riding bikes, running in the river valley and swimming in freezing cold lakes are expressions of worship and praise to God if you participate in them as such. I have a hard time justifying doing those kinds of things through a means that was not created is as honoring to God as those people who aren’t.
