How could Lance Armstrong be clean?

Friday, July 6, 2012
Maybe I’m just being naïve about one of my sports heroes, Lance Armstrong.  So many people are convinced that he used performance enhancing drugs to help him achieve his record breaking performance of winning the Tour de France seven times in a row and I’ve seen the expression if it walks like a duck, and quacks like a duck…  Then there are the teammates who claim he used the drugs in their presence. 


But the most drug tested athlete has always passed every test.  The people accusing him are the teammates who were actually caught…using the same tests Lance passed…and in the same years they were busted and he was supposedly using the same drug.  Their confessions only came some years after the initial findings and when they were convicted absolutely, during which time they swore they didn’t…statements they later retracted.  You know, “I was lying then, but now I’m really, really telling the truth.”  Yes…maybe I’m naïve, but I take the following approach.

Superhuman achievements in sports have happened throughout history.  Jim Brown was an unstoppable force for nine consecutive seasons, Michael Jordan’s ability to handle and shoot a basketball defied explanation, Tiger Woods has won more championships in his relatively short career than any other golfer save one, Muhammad Ali was absolutely unbeatable before he was stripped of his title, Joe Louis and Rocky Marciano were invincible in their prime, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar was untouchable, Edwin Moses won 122 consecutive finals in the 400 meter hurdles in a span covering almost 10 years, Jesse Owens was head and shoulders above any runners of his time, Jim Ryan made the Olympics as a high school senior and broke the world mile record by over 3 seconds, Joe DiMaggio and Ted Williams, Ty Cobb, and Babe Ruth were head and shoulders above their peers, Wayne Gretzky in hockey, Bjorn Borg in tennis and on and on and on.  These athletes who, for some reason other than dope...genetic gifts, a burning desire to excel and win, the ability to train excessively without breaking down and the combination of all the above were what they were. Why can't a cyclist do the same? Lance won seven titles in a row because he was an absolute, single-minded fanatic about being prepared to win that one defining race. Everything he did in his training regimen had that as his goal.  He was the hardest working man in the world.

So go ahead, ride a bike...train as hard as you possibly can for months on end.  Ride 200-300 miles a week doing multiple century rides with overwhelming hills, or ride in a train and pedal to stay in line until you’re ready to puke up your guts.   Once you think you have an understanding of what it means to work hard on a bike, google some training videos of how Lance prepared himself.  Then, and only then, will you be ready to offer a valid opinion or have a glimpse of understanding about what he was able to accomplish.  Like me, you may start to feel that not only is it possible, but rather completely likely that he did what he did without the aid of anything illegal.  He was and is, quite simply, the most gifted physiological cycling specimen with an unmatched ability to push himself to human limits in training…and racing.  He’s not the first…and will not be the last…human to be far better than all of his peers in a given sport.  Sometimes heroes don’t cheat…they are what they are…superhuman.

Bike Duration: One hour 20 minutes.
Training Heart Rate: 120 bpm.
Calories burned during workout: 1100.