Mid Project Evaluation

For my project, I decided to explore the question “How can Doping affect the performance of a cyclist?”, this was due to both my love of cycling and of the sciences; biology and chemistry, I have been a keen cyclist for all my life and joined a cycling club aged seven and have progressed through the ranks ever since. I also thoroughly enjoy the subject’s chemistry, both of which I am considering studying at A level to expand my knowledge and understanding. Another reason for me choosing the question as I title is that over the years there has been countless offenses by cyclists for the use of drugs to improve performance, the most famous of all Lance Armstrong, he had won seven Tour de France’s only to have all his titles stripped away for the use of performance enhancing drugs. I have carried out a lot of research on the topics of: EPO, Blood bags, haemoglobin based oxygen carriers and perfluorocarbons, I have also begun research on anabolic steroids thought I wish to research more on this topic. All the research I have carried out has of course been secondary as administering drugs would be extremely dangerous (it would also be difficult to find the drugs and difficult to undergo the procedures to administrate it). Before starting my project, I decided to the read the book “The Secret Race” which is based on the life of Tyler Hamilton who was a cyclist who raced for U.S. Postal, the same team Lance Armstrong rode for, throughout the book he talks about how he was persuaded to use performance enhancing drugs and how his personal experiences with them, describing how he reacted before coming clean. The book is also littered with small pieces of scientific research and information some of which I included in my project. When lance Armstrong came clean to the world during his interview with Oprah countless documentary’s and internet articles were released, due to having a family of cyclists we were intrigued to find out how this had happened meaning going into the topic I had a reasonably high level of knowledge but also interest as I was wanting to understand more and the science behind it. Making it easy to get immersed into information I had collected on the internet over the summer months. I have come over some obstacles with my project as when carrying out research I found that there was few statistics or tests that had been performed, this meant that I could make it hard to answer my question as I wanted to back it up with figures. I later found that there was a reason that few tests had occurred, it was due to ethical reasons, with some drugs not being allowed to be administered and for some the company’s creating the tests could not find enough people who would want potentially dangerous drugs used on them. I did however find some tests but found that the data may not be completely accurate, this was due to the subjects undergoing the placebo not being told what they were getting but the people who were taking the EPO being told on ethical grounds, meaning that there could be some psychological effect. I have changed some aspects of my project for example I made my title more specific, as to begin with it was “Doping in Cycling” but after a discussion with my mentor we decided it was too brief and to really produce a detailed concise project I needed a more specific title. I would say that over the past months I have kept quite close to my original time frame with the research and refinement possibly taking a little longer than anticipated, I believe that undergoing the EPQ level 1 has helped me significantly in time management and research quality, as having vast amounts of research doesn’t mean that it is all relevant and necessary meaning you may waste time on something you don’t need.