Cycling and drugs – The real story

Cycling as a sport is associated with drugs. Tabloid journalists salivate at the merest hint of a cycling drugs story. Even if it is just a professional using prescribed medication to fight illness, with a therapeutic exemption form from the World governing body,  that’s good enough to make the front pages.

Competitive professional cycling, just like every other sport where money is involved will always have people who look for short cuts, and some will resort to using illegal means of performance enhancing. However, with such a spotlight upon the sport of cycling it is the most difficult sport in the World to get away with taking anything. Professional cycling is not clean but it is now under such scrutiny that it is probably the cleanest professional sport there is.

Cycling is not besieged by drugs, cycling itself is the drug, a drug that can actually negate the need for ordinary men and women to use prescribed medication for any number of physical and mental ailments.

Every cyclist experiences the effects of chemicals. Those chemicals are endorphins, natural pain killers that are produced by the body to numb pain and create a feeling of exhilaration. Pushing yourself to your limits on a bicycle gives a natural high far superior to any tablet that may be found in a back alley or corner of a night club.

Today I climbed to the top of a mountain alongside a friend and fellow cyclist. We both agreed that it would be impossible to feel depressed at the summit.

Surprisingly, the harder you have to fight and more you have to suffer to get to that summit, the better you feel when you get there. It is almost like a metaphor for life itself.

Cycling is a drug that is good for your heart and cardiovascular system. Cycling is a drug that stimulates weight loss. Cycling is a drug that improves your circulation. Cycling is a drug that clears your head and puts problems that weigh on your mind into perspective.

The real truth about cycling and drugs is that millions of ordinary men, women and children throughout the World have less need for prescription drugs because they cycle. That is the story worthy of the front page headlines !

Barry

www.thecyclingblog.com