I am relatively new, so I can’t really compete on the merits. I was wondering if blood doping or use of performance enhancing drugs is prohibited for Ride the Lobster?
OK, I’m KIDDING! But, we were talking about how competitive some of the riders are, and given that I live in the Bay Area (BA) as in BALCO, think Barry Bonds, I had to make this post Just to be clear, I am not suggesting that anyone is so competitive as to do the above.
That is, if you gave Mike some steroids, he’d ride so fast his tire would melt. If you gave Corbin some hormones, his ginormous forearms would explode.
We’ve already got a number of riders whose talents are nearly beyond human… it wouldn’t take much for them to go over the edge.
i think with a prize of $10,000 in an unmonitored sport leaves the possibility open…if not this year, soon enough.
because it’s an unregulated sport, we’ll just have to assume the winner is clean.
as event videographer, i’m open to bribes from the 2nd place finisher…if fancy editing can make people think Criss Angel is somehow doing those tricks, who knows what I filmed the 1st place guy doing
I don’t think it will be as effective as blood doping or performance enhancing drugs for bicycling. In bicycling, the fittest riders have a much greater advantage. In unicycling you’re limited by a much lower gear. It tends to be the person who can pedal the fastest without falling off that does best.
In unicycling you have 12yr olds who can almost match the speed of the top riders in races like the 10km and Marathon.
I can’t speak for the RTL organizers, as they can make or add their own rules. But as for IUF rules, there is nothing about performance enhancing substances. As there is no testing (meaning no budget, ability or hopefully need), we do not assume the winner is clean.
Not sure what you mean by that. The fittest rider should be able to pedal really fast longer than the less-fit riders. But in any case, I don’t think you would get a measurable advantage from blood doping, for instance, unless you were already trained out to your absolute limits. I think the effects would be pretty minimal at best.
In unicycling, you’re not limited by your VO2max, so blood doping probably isn’t an effective strategy (except for pure hill climbs). But you could almost certainly improve your unicycling performance via drugs; steroids to improve fast twitch muscles, and amphetamines to speed you up.
I don’t know much about Blood Doping, but whilst on an RTL training ride a couple of weeks ago I had a bit of a crash and ended up with Blood Dripping. A couple of Ibuprophen tablets helped when I got home. Does that count?
There could be the use of some inhalers that dialate bronchial tubes, so you can get more oxygen into your blood, and maybe quicken recovery time.
I think we can all agree, though, that nothing can compensate for lack of training / experience / skill.
However if anyone is looking for some grey market drugs that might make you ride better, I might be able to acquire some items from the pharmacy I work in, if the price is right.