"the antithesis of a healthy lifestyle"

Recent allegations regarding Lance Armstrong's alleged use of performance-enhancing drugs have reminded me of a question that has bugged me for some time (see comments). Namely, how can one really tell if an athelete has doped with EPO or another performance enhancer (such as steroid hormones) that are derivatives of or, in the case of EPO, the exact same substance as something which the body produces naturally?

My understanding of these tests is that they look for abnormally high ratios or metabolites. The premise, of course, is that there is a "normal" range. However, this strikes me as a particularly absurd assumption from which to work, given that the people being tested are world-class athletes, who by definition are not "normal".

How could you possibly tell that someone like Armstrong--who likely falls in the top 0.00001% of all humanity in terms of cardiovascular capacity--has been "doping" with something that is going to be upregulated by the type of training he does anyway?

All of this is to introduce a post by Art De Vany, in which he relays a very insightful letter from someone with a vast experience on the enforcement side of banned substances in sports, and which seems to confirm much of what I have long suspected: that false positives are not uncommon, and that the rules are often arbitrary and based on shaky science at best.

He also makes some excellent points regarding training at the world-class level:

Most people don’t realize it, but training at the elite level is actually the antithesis of a healthy lifestyle. The definition of peak fitness means that you are constantly at or near a state of physical breakdown. As a peak performer on a world stage, you have done more work than anyone else, but you have paid a price. It is again ironic that the professional leagues and the IOC, the ones who dangle that carrot of millions of dollars in salary or gold-medalist endorsements are the same ones who actually created this overtrained, injured and beat-up army of young people.

Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go to the gym. For about 45 minutes.

By the way, if you haven't read Art's blog, it is an utterly fascinating look at issues of fitness and health from a very strong evolutionary perspective. It has completely changed the way I think about exercise and food, and to the extent that I have succeeded in implementing his principles (not nearly as much as I would like or intend to) I have felt much better and much stronger.