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At any rate, I've read about more about the bio passport program. Overall I think it's a good program. The description I read says that after using EPO, the body goes through a period of time where the crit (or hemaglobin count, which is preferred, and basically another way of counting the same thing) is higher than usual, and the reticulocyte count is lower than usual.
Lance has half of this, with a lower (not by much) than usual reticulocyte count. His hemoglobin is not higher than usual, unless you think it should have fallen during the tour. But let's just suppose that Lance was taking small doses of EPO, to increase his red blood cells. But then he was increasing the volume of his blood with an IV plasma solution to keep his crit/hemoglobin lower and avoid suspicion. Well, yes, his data would look pretty much the same way they look.
But of course, the big question to me is, how does altitude training compare to taking EPO? As far as I can tell the blood results should be identical. The mystery remains, why would his crit be this low after a few weeks of altitude training, and why wouldn't it drop even lower during the tour?
One additional thought. If someone does do training at altitude and raises their hemoglobin/hematocrit, then don't they have a larger than normal proportion of fresh cells to old cells? And given that the cells last about 120 days, should their crit fall more slowly than someone who had not done altitude training?
If nothing else, perhaps this reinforces the futility of trying to decipher anything from values this close to normal.
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You basically suggesting that Lance was dehydrated the morning AFTER his rest day. If anything, you would expect him to be hyper hydrated, and his Hct to be lower. They still train, so BV expansion should not suffer too much, and have all day to eat, drink and relax, doing 1/3 of the usual time on the bike (less sweating).
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