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Tech Talk: Lance may be going to great heights to avoid doping
Everyone wants to know what Lance Armstrong is doing to make him so much faster than Jan Ullrich and the rest. In this day and age, you cannot be that much better than the cream of cycling’s crop and not attract suspicions of doping, and Lance has certainly faced innumerable questions about that. The assumption that these questions are based on is that most of the riders are doping, so he must really have found something strong to take.
Not being privy to the private lives of any of the riders, I have no basis to comment one way or another. Being married to a cancer survivor, however, I find it almost inconceivable that Armstrong would squander his second chance at life by knowingly doing anything that would endanger his health (not that riding the Tour isn’t a danger in itself). Doping would seem to fall into the category of things that would make a long, healthy life less likely.
Like Armstrong, I am of the opinion that this has been the cleanest Tour in a long time, due to the testing for EPO and countless other substances and the hematocrit maximum. But I also was present during the drug raid during the Giro, and I hold no illusions that there are not a lot of efforts being made to cheat and not get caught.
So, if a lot of riders are doping, is it possible Armstrong could beat them without doing so himself? In other articles on this site, I have gone into some of the myriad details the Texan phenom pursues to gain a legal advantage, and I think they are extremely important, especially when they are considered as a whole. But one thing that Armstrong revealed during his press conference on the rest day in Pau that could make an enormous difference -- in and of itself -- is his use of an altitude-simulating tent.
The idea of the benefits of altitude training have been around a long time, and the ground-breaking work of Drs. James Stray-Gundersen and Ben Levine of the University of Texas on the benefits of living at high altitude and training at low altitude opened the floodgates of a new way of using it. The oxygen-carrying ability of the blood is enhanced by living at altitude, while training in the lowlands allows more effective building of power, since the muscles have more oxygen available to them and can work harder.
Sustained time at high altitude stimulates the body to produce erythropoeitin (EPO), which is the naturally-occurring hormone that triggers production of red blood cells, which carry oxygen to the muscles. Because of its abuse as an injected substance, EPO has a bad name, but every one of us has it in our bodies and would be in big trouble if we did not. Injecting EPO, however, tends to just increase hematocrit, which is the percentage of total blood volume made up of red blood cells. When living at high altitude, on the other hand, the body tends to not only increase hematocrit but also total blood volume, which offers innumerable additional advantages.
Think of it this way. If you have a liter of a person’s blood with a 40-percent hematocrit, you have 0.4 liters of red blood cells. But if you can, say, increase that blood volume by 10 percent while increasing hematocrit to 50 percent, you then have 1.1 liters of blood, half of which is red blood cells. Thus, you have 0.55 liters of red blood cells! Injecting EPO, to get that may red blood cells, you would have to go up to a 55 hematocrit, which is not allowed. Furthermore, the blood would be harder to pump, being thicker.
The higher blood volume allows the blood to be pumped easily, and the stroke volume of the heart tends to go up as well, which is also an advantage. High-altitude living also tends to increase the mean size of each red corpuscle, also enhancing its oxygen-carrying capacity. The blood also helps with cooling the body, so having more of it can reduce overheating and consequently improve muscle function. Clearly, if you can get these effects legally, you can compete with someone who is raising his hematocrit by doping.
Bringing altitude to where you are is the most efficient way to get these results, and there are three main systems available to do that. Creating hypoxic (low-oxygen) conditions is what these are all about.
Vacuum chambers
The first is to actually reduce the pressure, just like altitude does. This requires sleeping in a partial vacuum, so a very strong chamber that can withstand high crushing forces, like a submarine, is required. Dr. Igor Gamow of the University of Colorado invented such a chamber, originally called the "Gamow Bed." This chamber for a time became the CAT HATCH (Colorado Altitude Training’s High Altitude Training Chamber), and after a falling-out between CAT and Gamow, lives on as the MAF (Maximum Aerobic Function) Hypobaric Chamber, from Phil Maffetone, famous as Mark Allen’s coach.
Another way to simulate altitude is to reduce the partial pressure of oxygen in the air you breathe, without changing the air pressure. This is done by either flooding an enclosed space with nitrogen, or by pumping oxygen alone out of an enclosed space.
Hypoxic rooms
CAT now sells a system developed in Norway that allows the user to simulate altitude in any room in their house. The doors, windows and heat registers of your room are sealed up, and much of the oxygen is removed. Instead of 21 percent oxygen, your room is stabilized closer to 12 percent oxygen (it varies, depending on the altitude of your house), to simulate 15,000 feet -- all for about $14,500.
The system consists of two electronic boxes, each about the size of small file cabinet. One is an oxygen concentrator, similar to what is in a hospital to supply the oxygen in the little tubes above the beds. It concentrates oxygen and nitrogen with a "molecular sieve," a high-tech screen, if you will, to separate nitrogen and oxygen molecules out of the room’s air. The concentrator sits outside of the room, and is run in reverse of an oxygen concentrator in a hospital; the nitrogen is sent back into the room and the oxygen is vented off. It is about as loud as a refrigerator.
The other major part of the CAT Colorado Mountain Room is a CO2 filter. It takes carbon dioxide out of the air and traps it. It is noiseless except when turned up high to deal with the high CO2 production of someone working out on a trainer, for instance. Then it sounds like small fan. With all of the filtering that is done of the air in the room, the air in this room will be the cleanest in the house, free of airborne bacteria, dust and pollen.
Hypoxic Tent
The oxygen/nitrogen relative concentration is monitored and displayed on the control panel, normally converted to simulated altitude. Altitudes up to 15,000 feet can be simulated. Carbon dioxide concentration is also monitored, and alarms go off and vents open if CO2 concentration goes too high or O2 concentration goes too low or the power goes out.
Former British Olympic track rider Shaun Wallace’s Altitude Tent has been popular with triathletes. Wallace has now combined efforts with Hypoxico, which offers an altitude tent as well as a hypoxic room with clear walls. The system works on the same theory as CAT’s room, but the approach is different. The tent is clear and portable and drapes over your bed. Wallace’s early nitrogen concentrators were quite loud, but a new version is purported to be quieter. The tent is zipped closed to hold the nitrogen inside. It has no system for measuring concentration of N2 or CO2, and it offers an O2 monitor and claims a CO2 monitor is unnecessary due to high air flow. Hypoxico claims the tent offers either 9,000-foot or 14,500-foot altitudes, depending on whether you use an optional adapter or not. Systems start at under $6,000.
Hypoxico’s Hypoxic Rooms start at 9x5x8 feet with soft clear vinyl walls and aluminum frame. Hypoxic Rooms are meant for training in, rather than sleeping in.
So what is Lance using?
Chris Carmichael says that Armstrong uses an altitude tent both while traveling and at home. He says that the protocol changes depending on how hard he is training or racing. Recovery is slower at high altitude. On the other hand, Phil Maffetone says, "After three week of not using the chamber, the benefits gained typically begin to decline rapidly." So Armstrong would probably have to still the tent during the Tour after easier stages in order to not lose his altitude acclimatization.
Carmichael went on to say that, "Michele Ferrari (the doctor about whom there has been doping questions based on an ongoing investigation of him by Italian officials) developed the protocol for hypoxic training. The specifics of what hypoxia does are tied in with what I have set up for his training. It is a confidential protocol." He did say that the duration in the tent had to be at least four hours at a time, but it did not necessarily have to be sleeping at night; relaxing or reading was fine as well.
Carmichael also said that the team experimented with making the team bus hypoxic but could not seal it up well enough. He said that other riders on the team also use altitude tents and mentioned specifically George Hincapie and Dylan Casey.
I checked with Telekom’s team PR director, and he said that Ullrich does not use an altitude tent. When I told Carmichael that he said, "I almost cannot believe he’s not. His coach is a former East German, and altitude training was pioneered behind the Iron Curtain. Maybe he (Ullrich) should be (using hypoxic training)."
I checked with the above three companies and got these responses:
Phil Maffetone, President of the MAF group, says that Armstrong has not purchased a chamber from MAF.
Larry Kutt, President of Colorado Altitude Training wrote, "Armstrong (or rather U.S. Postal) bought a CAT room from us last year. Michele Ferrari is also a customer (he owns a CAT HATCH). I haven't heard from them exactly what they are doing.
We will introduce a tent product later this year."
Shaun Wallace Vice President of Hypoxico, wrote "I can confirm that Lance has purchased altitude-simulating tents from us. I've never peeped in his bedroom to confirm that he is sleeping in them, but if he says that he uses them then I presume he must be!
"Chris Carmichael (my old Wheaties-Schwinn team-mate) has developed a good understanding of the hypoxic tents and now has a growing number of his CTS clients using them including Ironman champion Peter Reid. Before this, Michele Ferrari recognized the significance of being able to sleep at altitude without having to re-locate, and so most of the Mapei team were equipped with our systems. Axel was the first one to take one over with him.
"This was a couple of years ago, and I was just so proud of these riders at the time, like Axel, because I knew what it meant they were NOT doing."
Wallace went on to suggest reading the recent report in USA Today: See the first story and the sidebar.
Contacts: Colorado Altitude Training, 2505 Walnut St., Suite 303, Boulder CO 80302; Toll Free: 877-ALTITUDE (877/258-4883), fax: 303/440-4105; or www.altitudetraining.com
Hypoxico, 50 Lexington Avenue, Suite 249 New York, NY 10010; 212/726-3654, fax 212/213-3247; or www.hypoxico.com .
MAF Group, 718 Main St., Boonton, NJ 07005; Toll Free: 877-264-2200; or www.philsbar.com.
Wallace Altitude Tent Systems, 2111 Manchester Ave, Unit A Cardiff CA 92007; 760/632-9443, Toll Free: 877-ALT-TENT (877/258-8368); or www.altitudetent.com.
