How much does doping help?

probably no way to be certain.

Even if it was a 0.2 percent improvement there would be many who would try it.

no-one important wrote:

I was reading an article this afternoon about Danilo DiLuca, who was a 3 time convicted doper. In the article he claims that a systematic doping program can improve a riders condition by between 5-12%.

I find this very hard to believe. A 5% improvement on a 3:40 1500M runner would result in a doping aided time of 3:29. In the (many) articles on Lance, it was speculated that he responded better to doping than the average athlete...maybe that's the key?

What seems like a realistic % improvement? 2-3%?

If the impact is as profound as 5% it's no wonder that doping is so rampant.

Nowhere near 5-12%.

It varies from person to person. Also depends on how the doping is done. If someone could dope without being caught they could go nuts with it and get way bigger benefit that someone who knows they'll be tested and has to dope in a way as to not trigger positives.

I've heard an elite gets about a minute benefit over the 10K distance. But that seems on the high side to me.

Cathal Lombard:

http://www.independent.ie/sport/cathal-lombards-athletics-progression-25901242.html

5,000m 14:23 to 13:19

10,00m 30:33 to 27:33

http://www.irishtimes.com/news/customs-tip-off-led-to-lombard-being-caught-1.987232

Cheers!

There are some great articles where amateur but intense athletes have tried stuff out of curiosity and shared their experiences.

There are one or two threads on here where it has been argued that PEDs don't help elite athletes.

Not sure I agree, but I really have no authority on the subject, whereas at least one of those who have argued the above is working on a daily basis with elite athletes.

There are many reasons the question is meaningless.

When you say 5-12%, the next question is "percent of what?". For a cyclist, is it power, time to exhaustion, or time improvement in a time trial. Very different measures which would yield very different percentage ranges.

There is no way to reliably transform a percentage improvements in cycling to any running event.

Even for an individual runner, in any event, the answer is, it depends on many things, like the training history of the runner, his current level of fitness, how optimised his training is for reaching his/her true potential, and genetic factors.

rekrunner wrote:

When you say 5-12%, the next question is "percent of what?". For a cyclist, is it power, time to exhaustion, or time improvement in a time trial.

All things that would help any T&F event with any kind of aerobic feature.

And then there are all those records that haven't fallen since they were gotten by doping. And then, let's not forget ARD's report on the prevalence of dopers on IAAF international podiums.

Some of the sh!t is miraculous in the right body and we have records to prove it. Paula Radcliffe and Lance Armstrong being two great examples.

The question was "how much"?

Doesn't help at all. It's just an excuse slow Americans use to explain their running mediocrity.