Every Second Counts by Lance Armstrong

thought I would go through four cycles of chemo just to risk my life by taking EPO was crazy. It was one thing to seek to maximize performance, or explore a pharmacological gray zone. It was another to court death.
    I practiced another, more natural way to oxygenate my blood, and that was to train or live at altitude. I stressed altitude training—it was a big part of my regimen, and it was safe, but it was no fun. It was lung-searing, and dizzying, and inconvenient, but it was legal and it worked.
    Here’s how: with less oxygen intake, your body becomes more competent and efficient and produces more red blood cells. I went to St. Moritz for a month out of every year to train, and when I wasn’t in the mountains, I spent a lot of nights sleeping in an altitude tent.
    An altitude tent, as you can imagine, is not the most romantic thing you can bring to a marriage. It’s a regular tent, but it’s got a device attached to it that’s essentially a filter to suction some of the oxygen out of the air to simulate high altitude. I used it in Europe a lot, and I kept one at home that I sometimes used too, though it meant sleeping without Kik, and with a humming machine noise. Sometimes Luke played in it and I’d find it filled with toys and broken goldfish crackers.
    One night, Kik and I tried sleeping in it together. Kik said, “This is so romantic, let’s go camping.”
    We lasted about three hours before the alarm went off—signaling serious oxygen depletion. We woke up gasping, and with splitting headaches.
    “Sorry,” I said. “I didn’t know it wasn’t meant for two.”
    “You better get a double,” she said.
    The vague, distant nature of the investigation in France still frustrated me, but now that there were specific tests, I felt better. If I was a cheater, then it would be apparent when they unfroze the samples I’d given in the 2000 Tour, before the EPO test existed, and when I had no idea they’d been kept and frozen.
    Three forensic doctors would conduct tests for French law enforcement. Every drop of my urine and every trace of my blood, and those of my teammates, would be put through exhaustive analysis. Until now, we’d been in a position where we couldn’t defend ourselves. But according to the authorities, the tests should be completed by January, and that meant I would be cleared, soon. I looked forward to the big moment: total exoneration.
     
    B
ut it never
came. January came and went, with no test results, and the investigators refused to clear me, or to say why.
    The winter wore on, uncharacteristically dreary. I called it “the winter of discontent.” One setback seemed to follow another. I was beginning to feel harassed: our trash had been picked over, and my blood and urine microscopically examined, and now, the French government started looking at my tax returns as well.
    That spring, Johan Bruyneel was ordered to Paris for questioning and found the police station surrounded by press. Every journalist in town was there with a microphone or camera. Inside, he was questioned for three hours. “I felt like a criminal,” he said later.
    When his interview was finished, Johan asked one of the officers why the investigation was taking so long. Johan said, “All the tests have been done, everything has been done, and there is nothing, nothing, nothing.”
    The police investigator was sympathetic, almost apologetic. He told Johan, “The scientific expert who does the tests thinks he has overlooked something. He says it’s not possible that there is nothing.”
    Johan was incredulous. “
What?
”
    “He says the performance is on such a high level that it’s not normal. This guy wants to find something.”
    So there was our problem. We weren’t guilty, but that wasn’t necessarily good enough for the French scientist who wanted us to be guilty. All we could do was try to forget about it and go on about our business. But it felt like they were trying to make life difficult in every way