This article from masters track talks about how they address the issue, in the form of suspension.
Thanks for posting that link, quicksilver. I found this statement by Rex Harvey interesting, but think he got some details wrong:
The current system of convicted dopers being given a certain period of suspension from competition does not serve masters athletes well at all. It is well-known that aging beyond a certain age results in a loss of muscle mass at an ever increasing rate.The Age Grading tables (Sheahen style not Repenning style) show this very clearly.
So if I dope and increase my muscle mass at any point in my life, I have not only an immediate increase in strength but also a bump-up in my normal aging muscle mass curve. And even if I then completely stop doping for the rest of my life and start the normal muscle loss curve again, I am starting at a higher muscle mass and therefore remain at a relatively higher muscle mass than someone who never doped. And this effect I feel is longer termed than most imagine. It is almost like “once a strength doper, always a strength doper.”
...
Are the 2- and 4-year penalties appropriate? I don’t think they are long enough to dissipate the advantage gained.
While he's correct that at the point where the athlete stops taking PEDs, s/he will have higher performance in some dimension (oxygen uptake, muscle strength, whatever), the body is going to fairly quickly return to its baseline values. (How "quickly" will depend on which dimension(s) increased.) For instance, someone taking EPO is probably going to return to their "normal" levels in the time it normally takes to replenish your red blood cells. EPO itself will disappear from the bloodstream very quickly, with a half-life of about five hours. If I remember correctly from my college days, red blood cells have a lifespan of about 120 days. So, after stopping EPO treatment, the athlete's hematocrit should be back to normal within a couple months.
I believe anabolic steroids work by enhancing recovery of muscles from overload, allowing the athlete to exercise again after a shorter rest, and to exercise at higher levels while still retaining the ability to recover in a reasonable amount of time. There are so many different natural and synthetic anabolic steroids that it's probably impossible to state a precise half-life for them in your system, but they will eventually get metabolized or excreted, and fail to offer positive effects during recovery. (Besides, they and their metabolic byproducts have to disappear from the blood and urine rather quickly so as not to be detected by USADA and the like.) The doping athlete's ability to recover from overload will return to normal, and their muscle mass will as well. This might take longer, as the doping athlete can continue to provide some overload stimulus, but sooner or later the loss of the anabolic steroid's benefits will catch up to the no-longer-doping athlete and s/he will fail to preserve their artificially large muscle mass and/or injure themselves trying to maintain the overload levels they attained while taking drugs.
To support my contention that these benefits are short-lived, I offer comment #3 in the Master's Track link from Randy Harris (emphasis mine):
When I began my 6 week cycle, I weighed 200 lbs,and my max bench press was 275 from about 2 years of weight lifting. After 6 weeks of the juice, I weighed 220 and my max bench was 330! I was thrilled, but I wanted to stop the drugs and keep what I gained from it. I ate like mad, ingested 200 grams of protein per day, and worked out hard 3 days a week. No matter, I continued to get weaker every workout until My weight had fallen back to 200, and my max bench actually went down to 265 which was 10 lbs lower than my starting max!
Just my two cents...
This article from masters track talks about how they address the issue, in the form of suspension.
Thanks for posting that link, quicksilver. I found this statement by Rex Harvey interesting, but think he got some details wrong:
The current system of convicted dopers being given a certain period of suspension from competition does not serve masters athletes well at all. It is well-known that aging beyond a certain age results in a loss of muscle mass at an ever increasing rate.The Age Grading tables (Sheahen style not Repenning style) show this very clearly.
So if I dope and increase my muscle mass at any point in my life, I have not only an immediate increase in strength but also a bump-up in my normal aging muscle mass curve. And even if I then completely stop doping for the rest of my life and start the normal muscle loss curve again, I am starting at a higher muscle mass and therefore remain at a relatively higher muscle mass than someone who never doped. And this effect I feel is longer termed than most imagine. It is almost like “once a strength doper, always a strength doper.”
...
Are the 2- and 4-year penalties appropriate? I don’t think they are long enough to dissipate the advantage gained.
While he's correct that at the point where the athlete stops taking PEDs, s/he will have higher performance in some dimension (oxygen uptake, muscle strength, whatever), the body is going to fairly quickly return to its baseline values. (How "quickly" will depend on which dimension(s) increased.) For instance, someone taking EPO is probably going to return to their "normal" levels in the time it normally takes to replenish your red blood cells. EPO itself will disappear from the bloodstream very quickly, with a half-life of about five hours. If I remember correctly from my college days, red blood cells have a lifespan of about 120 days. So, after stopping EPO treatment, the athlete's hematocrit should be back to normal within a couple months.
I believe anabolic steroids work by enhancing recovery of muscles from overload, allowing the athlete to exercise again after a shorter rest, and to exercise at higher levels while still retaining the ability to recover in a reasonable amount of time. There are so many different natural and synthetic anabolic steroids that it's probably impossible to state a precise half-life for them in your system, but they will eventually get metabolized or excreted, and fail to offer positive effects during recovery. (Besides, they and their metabolic byproducts have to disappear from the blood and urine rather quickly so as not to be detected by USADA and the like.) The doping athlete's ability to recover from overload will return to normal, and their muscle mass will as well. This might take longer, as the doping athlete can continue to provide some overload stimulus, but sooner or later the loss of the anabolic steroid's benefits will catch up to the no-longer-doping athlete and s/he will fail to preserve their artificially large muscle mass and/or injure themselves trying to maintain the overload levels they attained while taking drugs.
To support my contention that these benefits are short-lived, I offer comment #3 in the Master's Track link from Randy Harris (emphasis mine):
When I began my 6 week cycle, I weighed 200 lbs,and my max bench press was 275 from about 2 years of weight lifting. After 6 weeks of the juice, I weighed 220 and my max bench was 330! I was thrilled, but I wanted to stop the drugs and keep what I gained from it. I ate like mad, ingested 200 grams of protein per day, and worked out hard 3 days a week. No matter, I continued to get weaker every workout until My weight had fallen back to 200, and my max bench actually went down to 265 which was 10 lbs lower than my starting max!
Just my two cents...
