Legal Doping: Musings from the V-Bunker

Un Caffé

I’m not even talking about all the pseudo-asthmatics out there, vaping their way to better breathing. My breathing is just fine. It’s my little citron sized heart that is slowing me down. Is there a street-legal injection or vacuum pump for heart enlargement, or a trip to a doctor in the Congo that would transplant a badass Mandrill heart for me? That would have to improve my uphill sprint. The transplant shouldn’t be illegal; possibly unwise- but not illegal. I digress.

We can’t all do up a block of training on Tenerife so I rely on un caffé, an espresso. This is legal doping at its finest. One can do it in public. There is no shame attached to drinking an espresso with your teammates before a ride. Faema, a company that Eddy Merckx rode for is still in business, in the espresso business. It’s sort of like Amgen, a producer of EPO sponsoring the Tour of California. The UCI limit is 12 micrograms per ml in urine which is a lot of espresso, like ten of them. That much espresso would just make one a wild slavering beast (a mandrill for instance) who would burn very brightly and then be found trembling in a ditch when the lights went out. I’m sure there are some kermis racers who get all jacked on coffee and burn up the course. That might be the only way to actually dope with caffeine; a race that only lasts an hour and never slows down.

If I enjoy a pre-ride espresso, am I doping or am I just feeding my caffeine monkey (or mandrill) that rides on my back and needs to be serviced? It’s not effective doping if you dope every day of the year,  just to get to nine AM, is it? My dose is just to get me back up to baseline functionality. I can’t even tolerate much caffeine in the middle of a long hot ride. After dosing mid-ride, I get a very uncomfortable hypo-glycemic out-of-body experience and my brain detaches. My brain and eyeballs floats above and I can see that poor suffering bastard down below, with the pre-adolescent sized heart, barely in control of his bike. 

I will, on occasion, do a morning ride sans caffé. Some rides start too early in the morning for me to even think about brewing up and sometimes the ride’s terminus is a café so I hold off. It is never good. A long climb without coffee is much less fun than a long climb with a little caffeine pumping around the nervous system. That small does of caffeine makes the sweating, front wheel staring, and bartape chewing so much more fun and interesting. A jour sans (coffee) is no fun unless one is into a ride so exciting and exhausting (and that started before sunrise) that the lack of buzz is completely unnoticed. Espresso and climbing go well together. Is that why the Colombians are excellent climbers? Espresso and cycling are a good match, like cycling and beer. I’m not saying one needs to develop a coffee or drinking habit to be a cyclist. If you already have them, chapeau, here is a sport that embraces both, completely. 

Gianni

Gianni has left the building.

View Comments

  • Great story - and great picture -  Gianni.

    There is a growing amount of data on caffeine's ability to reduce the sensation of pain along with its well known property of causing the bronchi to open up.

    During my time at Cannondale, I was always disappointed that there wasn't a spot-lit, red enameled Saeco machine under a life-sized photo of a Briko-ed Cipollini, arms raised, at the victorious end of a Giro stage.  It was gone. The engineers had tossed it at some point - evidently tired of running into NYC for parts to keep it operating.

    Probably better for my heart in the medium-run. I could never have consumed enough to keep up with my 20 and 30-something  year-old colleagues anyway.

    When they moved, last year, they tossed the Cipollini poster too.  Word is, he's still in working order, though.

    Such is life.

  • @PeakInTwoYears

    There is a lot of good sense being talked here about espresso. Let me add a thing about "coffee"-the kind one can and should drink in a porcelain "coffee cup."

    It doesn't have to suck.

    Especially not at home, where you have control over the process. I will pass over the absolute requirement for a decent burr grinder. Everyone knows about that. I want to correct a potential misconception, that roasting one's own beans is a fussy, inconvenient, unnecessary hobbyist approach to making coffee.

    With a simple, relatively inexpensive roasting device (there are several) and a bit of experimentation with beans and roast times, you can make better coffee than you can get almost anywhere in public (outside Portland, I mean). I spend roughly twenty minutes every three days or so roasting, and I fill our home with a delicious aroma of roasting coffee beans. And I save us 40USD per month on beans. And we drink fabulous coffee.

    I've just finished roasting my second ever batch, and I'm sipping the last of my first as a type.  Sensational.  Thanks for the push in the right direction.  Did them on the stove top in a skillet.

  • Just found something that reminded me of this article"”a coffee supplier in Bristol with a sense of humour: http://paniagua.myshopify.com/collections/epo/products/perfect-shot-bundle

1 8 9 10
Share
Published by
Gianni

Recent Posts

Anatomy of a Photo: Sock & Shoe Game

I know as well as any of you that I've been checked out lately, kind…

6 years ago

Velominati Super Prestige: Men’s World Championship Road Race 2017

Peter Sagan has undergone quite the transformation over the years; starting as a brash and…

7 years ago

Velominati Super Prestige: Women’s World Championship Road Race 2017

The Women's road race has to be my favorite one-day road race after Paris-Roubaix and…

7 years ago

Velominati Super Prestige: Vuelta a España 2017

Holy fuckballs. I've never been this late ever on a VSP. I mean, I've missed…

7 years ago

Velominati Super Prestige: Clasica Ciclista San Sebastian 2017

This week we are currently in is the most boring week of the year. After…

7 years ago

Route Finding

I have memories of my life before Cycling, but as the years wear slowly on…

7 years ago