If you could get your hands on some, out of interest? I certainly would as I’d be fascinated to see how it affected my cardiovascular fitness.

I suppose the alternative is to go and live in Addis Ababa at 10,000 feet for a month….

I think I’d give it a miss. I don’t subscribe to the mindset it represents.

Use it all the time, got 20l of O neg in the back too.

Only joking but loved the feeling of fitness feeling after 3 weeks at altitude.

Doesn’t EPO have some fairly significant side effects?

Seems fairly extreme just to satisfy an idle curiosity.

An american journalist who did:

http://www.outsideonline.com/outdoor-adventure/dropping-in/I-Couldn-t-Be-More-Positive.html

http://www.outsideonline.com/fitness/Drug-Test.html

… would I? Probably not, the risks are too high. HGH however…

I have,

Well, what I mean by that is that I stopped smoking. I suspect that the gains are similar 😀

No, but I’m fat, unfit, have no talent and don’t race.

I spent 20 years around bodybuilders and power lifters, and never dabbled for the same reasons, plus I saw some good friends really mess their heads and health trying stuff.

On the other hand, if I was a top 20 GC rider and believed most of those above me were on the gear, then I suspect the temptation may well be greater.

Na **** that, I don’t even take aspirin/paracetamol for a bad head. I’d be to worried about long the term health issues of stuff like that.

Doesn’t EPO have some fairly significant side effects?

Turn you into an arrogant, lying, deceitful, control freak scumbag with no friends?

What are the side effects? I thought EPO had exactly the same effect as training at altitude. You do have to be aware of blood thickening though.

I remember riding back from Malaga out to the airport after a week cycling in the Sierra Nevada and being amazed at how fit I felt.

I read a very interesting article online a couple of years back ( sorry no reference) were a 50 year old tried all the performance enhancing drugs.

As I remember he had a few issues with EPO, but recommended human growth hormone and testosterone, but they were quite expensive.

I tried creatine a few years back and it did make a difference to my endurance, but it was not for me long term.

To make it clear I am 100% against drugs in competitive sport.

EDIT: Mogrim did it better and faster ^^^^ 😀

After reading that Outside article (many years ago), I’d jump at the chance to take HGH. Less interested in EPO.

I’ve pondered the question before and come to the conclusion that I wouldn’t on the following basis: If it is as good as it is claimed to be, then riding while doped would be great and all would be rosy. However, the problem would come at the end of the experimental period when I returned back to my normal abilities. I’m sure I would miss the supercharged abilities of EPO fitness and there would be a temptation to carry on using it. Thus it would be best to stay clear of it.

EXACTLY what he said ^

got 20l of O neg in the back too.

Used to know a consultant doctor who was into high altitude skiing and hiking.
He told me that a couple of months before a big trip he’d drain off some of his blood and then transfuse it back in just before the trip to increase his red blood cell count 😯

If it takes ten to kill you, I’ll take nine…

Funny that, we had the same kind of discussion on a recent ride – and wondered how many riders on events we’d done where they don’t drug-test used stuff?

Yeah I’d be interested in seeing the difference it made, but not that interested since I don’t compete.

Like others I’d be very interested in trying/using HGH and Testosterone – especially since I’m in my 40’s.

Turn you into an arrogant, lying, deceitful, control freak scumbag with no friends?

So you are saying most of us are on it then 😉

Probably not. I suspect any good race results I’d get would feel somehow hollow as I’d think it was more the drugs than me.

Being able to train harder and recover quicker though, it would be a temptation.

HGH sounds awesome, even just for the effects it appears to have on your skin, eye sight etc. Not cheap though 😮

Tbh, anything that required regular visits to a dr would put me off. I’m not a big fan of anything that requires that much commitment besides going to work!

Not a chance but then I don’t want to win at all costs.

For Crit/amateur races its a case of WTF you idiot.

For Crit/amateur races its a case of WTF you idiot.

Wasn’t there a guy a few years ago who got banned by British Cycling for EPO. And he was a third cat!

So it won’t necessarly turn you into Lance Armstrong overnight.

I’ve read that stuff on HGH. If it was cheap and readily availble I would be tempeted take it. Feeling 10 years younger would be enough compensation for being unable to take part in competative sport.

My ex’s stepdad was a kidney transplant patient and had a fridge full of EPO to self-administer in little syringes. Once, after an extended hospital stay it all went past its expiry date. His clinic didn’t want it back so I took it to work and put it into the lab sharps bins for incineration.
I could easily have used it (or sold it 😆 ) but it never even crossed my mind. If I can’t win by my own endeavours then I’m not interested, I couldn’t sit back in thirty years and have any kind of pride in myself. I ride at a level where it would take me from top 5 to winning every week and right up there at national level – so hardly Tour GC contender with the money involved, but even so, still a good performance boost.

The health issues didn’t worry me in the slightest, nor being caught, as I know enough to get round those problems easily. That worried me slightly as I won’t be the only one….

For Crit/amateur races its a case of WTF you idiot.

Depends why you’re racing, though – if the important thing is beating the other guys in your club I can see why it would appeal.

I find that a combination of EPO and cortisone helps me look mega ripped for posing next to my Cervelo at the coffee shop. And that’s what counts.

HGH sounds awesome, even just for the effects it appears to have on your skin, eye sight etc. Not cheap though

Trouble with HGH, and what that article doesn’t really mention is that it enhances cell growth in every way, so things like tumours also grow far faster and more aggressively. Not ideal!

I’ve come back from high altitudes ( walking and doing exercise but not training specifically) and the next race I ran in ( a 10k )was my fastest ever, a couple of days after i returned normally I’m a just under 45min runner but this flat-ish Milton Keynes run was just a shade under 41mins

Could have been the terrain, could have been the altitude, who knows, felt amazing at the time though, and that high for an ultra competitive personality (such as a pro athlete) would be hard to resist

I would certainly never dream of using it in any kind of amateur competition because that would be cheating on my fellow competitors, plain and simple and I was brought up to believe that cheating is shameful.

However for those summer evening hooligan rides with my buddy, we both agree that it would be fascinating to see how it improved our time round one of our standard test circuits.

Don’t recall the 3rd Cat getting banned?! Remember Dan Staite getting popped though, and his subsequent lack of remorse on the internet! That was a few years back now, is he back racing?

Wasn’t there a guy a few years ago who got banned by British Cycling for EPO. And he was a third cat!

Google “Dan Staite Drugs cheat”, although he wasn’t 3rd cat. Used to ride with him in local chain gang and he wasn’t *that* good even on juice…

Although to be fair “Turn you into an arrogant, lying, deceitful, control freak scumbag with no friends?” was pretty close…

On one of the other forums I frequent, there is a ‘2014 fitness goals’ thread, and the bodybuilding.com crew will quite happily admit to the use of drugs such as HGH and clenbuterol.

Given that people are people, I would imagine that there are quite a few amature cyclists who are ‘cycling’ in more ways than one. It’s just a bit more taboo and hush-hush in the cycling community.

The mind boggles with men who cheat not to even win or win money but merely to elevate their perceived rankings in their cycling club to their peers. Weird.

O/T but at my gym growth hormone/steroid use is big. Its kidding yourself- maybe its a self confidence thing or to look scary to others so they wont try it on but WTF- you know its not real/not you and as soon as your off it….bam.

The mind boggles with men who cheat not to even win or win money but merely to elevate their perceived rankings in their cycling club to their peers. Weird.

No different to Strava though, people take it really seriously yet aren’t prepared to see how good they really are and enter an actual race.

(I know I’m missing the point here)- they are doing it to look better but not be better. Madness. Oh well.

Like opening up all the gates in the Peaks to have a clean run to improve their strava position on a section.

The mind boggles with men who cheat not to even win or win money but merely to elevate their perceived rankings in their cycling club to their peers. Weird.

Mind doesn’t really boggle. Even a decent level club cyclist, the amount of time and effort they can put into their training, they (ok, we) take it very seriously. It really doesn’t surprise me at all that people would choose to take that next step (which compared to some stuff people do probably doesn’t seem like a very big step.)

O/T but at my gym growth hormone/steroid use is big. Its kidding yourself- maybe its a self confidence thing or to look scary to others so they wont try it on but WTF- you know its not real/not you and as soon as your off it….bam.

Vanity. No different to cosmetic surgery I suppose.

All the races I do now are enduros so there’s constant dubious behaviour anyway, EPO just seems like a more honest way to cheat 😆 and I already inject myself every day so I don’t die and take pills so my bones don’t crumble so I don’t have any taboo or anything.

I dunno… I ride to ride, if there was something simple I could do to get fitter faster, without side effects, I can only see one reason not to… It’d enhance my weekend rides, or let me achieve the same “results” with less effort, or maybe just let me be less knackered after a ride. It’s not often my riding is really about a fitness challenge, fitness is just something that lets me do what I do and sometimes stops me from doing what I want to do.

But I do race… I’m a perennial also-ran, but it’s still a race with the other also-rans, I wouldn’t want to make some dude 101st instead of 99th. But then maybe someone else would be doing that to me, whether it’s drugs or cheeky lines or whatever. I’m already a mug, I play by personal fairness rules that are tighter than the actual rules so I guess I’d be a mug about this too and choose to be 101st.

For the majority of riders, even those who compete at a good level, the benefits and side effects of EPO could be replicated with better training. There’s more your body can give before it reaches it’s limits, EPO would only be showing you what your body could do.

I work with a bunch of gym monkeys. All but one are natural, just lots of hard work. One is so pumped full of juice he’s a twitching nervous wreck of a Gomer Pyle. He’s openly said its just vanity that makes him do it.

Sure, it would be interesting. Getting hold of it is easy but you really need medical support for blood tests etc to use is safely, so it’s not really a performance drug like the favourites in the gym.

And… unlike the gym favourites you don’t get to keep most of the benefits when you stop using it, so it really is a competition drug more than a training aid.

Don’t rugby players get tested for steroids? I’d have thought they were the most obvious abusers.