It's a big mistake to try to compare the type of effort of cycling and of running.
These are the differences :
1) The duration. In cycling the average duration of every race (included the stages of big tours) is between 5 and 6 hours, in this similar an ultrarace of 100 km or longer.
2) The lack of even efforts. While in any athletic distance (from short till marathon) we have a very little variations in the speed, so the efforts are at even pace (with a final increase only, of course when the athletes have still energy...), and is possible to run at a well defined percentage of the max aerobic speed, in cycling we have continue change of speed, with intervention of both aerobic and anaerobic systems, in continue modulation.
3) Depending on the above point, in running we have a level of lactate that can only grow, from the start to the end, since there is not the possibility to recover DURING a race, also reducing a little bit the speed (something, instead, possible in training, for example when we use tests on track, modulating intensity and recovery). On the contrary, in cycling we alternate long periods at very low level of intensity (when they are in group at 40 km of speed, the HR is under 120, in some case 100) with periods where the most important quality is the anaerobic power (for example, 20' at 12-15 mml in the lactic area, using physiological characteristics that marathon runners don't have because of their training, never looking at increasing the lactic power because their effort is ALWAYS submaximal)
4) In long running events, the increase in max strength is not important, instead sometimes can create problems to the best aerobic level. More muscle strength means to increase the consumption of fuel at the same well defined speed (the speed of the race), while the physiological goal is to REDUCE the consumption of fuel, and to maintain the right and even level of thermodinamics, for the time of the marathon. In cycling, the performance depends not only on the technical action of the cyclist, but on a technical use of a machine. This means that there are more variables for increasing the speed, for example the ability to use a gear developing, for every revolution, 30cm more. So, while the speed of a runner is the product of the frequency per the length of every stride, in cycling we have the frequency of pedaling per the power of every single action, and one of the causes of the increasing speed is the improvement of the muscle strength.
5) For that reasons, the doping of cyclists is very much complicated, including a lot of substances with the goal to increase MAX STRENGTH and FAST RECOVEY, situations that in the running endurance are less important, but, shorter is the event, more important they are.
6) Reading the interview with Heredia, we can understand how the knowledge of doping from all these "DOPING ADMINISTRATORS" (like Conte too) is limited to what they did for enhancing the muscle strength and for acting on the nervous system. They speak about sprinters, throwers, jumpers, and about other sports where the only important resistance is not aerobic, but LOCAL for producing anaerobic effects connected with max intensity, and subsequential recovery. Under this point of view, EPO had the function to support all the substances part of the cocktail used by athletes of explosive events, having in this case not a direct effect on the performances, but effect on the VOLUME of training at high intensity.
But when we speak about AEROBIC EVENTS, there is the wide spread idea that EPO can be a DIRECT AID for the performance, something that Heredia and Conte don't know, because was not part of their illegal experience.
7) For runners, we have 350 days of training every year, with normally 2 session per day (we can suppose an average of 600-650 training sessions per year) for preparing 10-12 competitions, in case of marathon runners 2-3 races per year.
This means that the recovery between one session of quality and the next session of quality is not very important : what is important is the LEVEL of SPECIFIC QUALITY, connected with the event the athletes go to prepare.
This means that we need to give the priority to the SPECIFIC SESSIONS, and we can decide the time of recovery looking at the INDIVIDUAL ability in that direction. If, for example, after giving an athlete a session of 32 km including 7 km + 6 km + 5 km + 4 km + 3 km + 2 km at Marathon pace or faster (in the case of an athlete with the goal to run the full marathon at 3' per km (2:06:36), for example, 7 km at 3'02" + 6 km at 3' + 5 km at 2'58" + 4 km at 2'56" + 3 km at 2'54" + 2 km at max speed) alternated with 1 km of recovery run in 3'25" every time, something we use with top athletes, the next session of specific quality can be after 4 days, or 5 days, or 6 days, depending on the individual recovery, BUT THIS DIFFERENCE DOESN'T HAVE ANY INFLUENCE IN THE FINAL PERFORMANCE.
For cyclists, we have about 70-90 days of competition in one year, and, with the only exception of periods of preparation BEFORE the beginning of the season, IT'S NOT POSSIBLE TO DECIDE THE RIGHT MODULATION OF THE LEVEL OF THE EFFORT, since this depends on the situation of every race (and in big tours, of every stage), so in some case the assumption of substances for helping recovery becomes a must. Look, for example, what happened in Giro d'Italia to Yates, who was able to dominate the first two weeks, and was exhausted in the last 4 days.
In the big stages on the mountains, cyclists can go 5-6 times in 6 or 7 hours between 300m and 2500m of altitude, with temperatures moving in short time between 5 degrees (Celsius) and 30, creating a very high stress to their body. For example, the dehydration after a big stage in Tour de France (run in July, in full Summer) can increase the level of Hct, for a cyclist having 45 at the start, till near 60 at the arrival, and this means that he needs to have physiological solutions after the race for recreating the previous balance.
All these situations in running don't exist.
So, please, stop to use Lance Armstrong as example when we speak about EPO and doping for runners, particularly African runners, whose income in all their career can be 1/10 of the cost of doping for one year for the cyclists of Postal....
I understand your strong feeling against doping and doped athletes, but there is doping and doping, and it's always wrong to put everything in the same pot.