Shakin’, Not Stirred

For those who might’ve missed it in the documents provided by LNDD to the Landis camp, there’s an interesting note about monitoring caffeine levels. Among the documents presented at TBV are the three reconstructed “Ferret” documents. Page 2 of the Ferret documents has a note to the effect that a caffeine level is being reviewed or monitored by WADA.

Now, above a certain level caffeine has been listed as a banned substance for years. According to what I’ve heard and read, you need to drink the equivalent of 6 cups of strong coffee in less than 2 hours to exceed the maximum allowable level.

So, to see that WADA is taking an interest in caffeine levels makes me suspicious that they’re going to set about to change what it takes to test positive. And if the changes over the last several years to the criteria for a positive testosterone test are any indication, you can pretty well bet that they’re going to lower the threshold and not raise it. The operative question is: How far?

I got to thinking about caffeine Sunday night while I was unable to sleep. You see, me and caffeine have been close friends ever since I was a small fry. The old wives’ tale was that it would stunt your growth (maybe that’s why I’m only 5’8″) couldn’t scare me away from the stuff. I found the flavor of coffee irresistable from a young age.

I used to drink 4 to 5 cups of regular a day and then switch over to decaf for the evening, so I wouldn’t have trouble sleeping. So it was a black day, indeed, when my physician started asking me some questions (which I was planning on asking him) and in the ensuing discussion he informed me that I would have to stop consuming caffeine.

So no more regular Coke, no more of the ultra premium high-strength Peets (boy, do I miss that), nothing containing caffeine. I was sentenced to a life without the substance I call “vitamin C1.” (C2 is chocolate and C3 is that citrus-derived compound.) And for the most part, I’m good and avoid the stuff. The only soda I drink these days is caffeine-free (Sprite, 7Up, Sierra Mist — and usually only when sitting on an airplane) and I only drink decaf coffee (yeah, I know it has some caffeine in it, but a little won’t kill me, will it?). Well, mostly decaf anyway.

Occasionally I have a regular coffee. Most frequently when I’ve traveled to Europe and needed to keep myself going in order to adjust to the time difference (which isn’t very often). And I have it sometimes because the barista at a coffee shop slips me a regular. Which is what happened to me Sunday at a Starbucks near where we live. I ordered a decaf cappuccino, and from the first taste, something didn’t feel quite right.

Within 10 minutes, I knew something was terribly wrong, as I suddenly had the urge to climb Mt. Everest, K2 and the whole rest of the Himalayan mountain range before dinner time. My wife doesn’t believe that I can taste the difference between decaf and regular, but I can. And this wasn’t unleaded I drank. It was premium.

By dinner time I was pretty much flying around like parts of an old barn in a tornado. It wasn’t a pretty sight. And by the time I tried to go to sleep, I couldn’t. Amazing how powerful this stuff is when you’re no longer used to it. I wonder if they put something else in my drink, like say a couple of Vivarin.

In the early 90s, when I raced in the Michigan area, there used to be a family who were well known for consuming just enough caffeine to get a boost without testing positive. You could pick them out at the starting line because they were the ones shaking like a palm tree in a hurricane. Best to avoid them, as they were more than a little twitchy on the bike. Fortunately for me, I never got into a tangle with any of them. But I know a couple of guys who did, and it was just plain ugly.

So, yeah, caffeine can have an effect on you. Whether it really helps athletic performances is another matter. For me, it’s been a mixed bag. Maybe once a good cup of Peets got me going a little faster in a time trial (though I suspect it was nerves or the determination to pass my minuteman that really did the trick), but I think most of the time the dehydrating effect of caffeine left me a quart or two low on the H₂Ola front, which led to decreased performance.

I don’t know what the threshold for caffeine should be, and perhaps the current threshold is too high (though I doubt it). But what concerns me is that WADA will set the threshold so arbitrarily low that if you ate a small square of dark chocolate you’d test positive (because there’s a small amount of caffeine in chocolate, and various types of tea, and a whole load of other things, too). Can you imagine the ruckus if, instead of testing positive for testosterone, Floyd Landis’ Tour victory was in jeopardy over testing positive for a miniscule amount of caffeine?

The problem with re-adjusting the threshold is that there are many foods that contain caffeine, including a wide range of food products for the athletic set. Think GU, PowerGel, CliffShots, for example. There’s probably a little bit in your favorite PowerBar (if it has chocolate), or Cliff Bar (ditto) or Snickers. Don’t chow down on a Toblerone or Lindt 85% Excellence bar before a race — you might send the caffeine readings off the chart!

Assuming that Dick Pound or whoever replaces him reduces the threshold as much as I suspect, it could very well guarantee that the whole peloton will test positive and be banned from racing.

Then again, maybe that’s what WADA wants.