Maybe I just miss riding a bike.

I turned ten the day Greg LeMond won his second Tour de France by eight seconds, the slimmest margin in the Tour's history. I doubt I paid much, if any attention to LeMond or to cycling on that day, but growing up, Greg LeMond was the name I associated with professional cycling.

When Lance Armstrong won his first Tour, I was through my first year of college, and paying about as much attention to cycling as I was on my tenth birthday. By 2003, though, I was hooked. I would wake up early to watch the stages on TV, and I'd bought, and read, Armstrong's first book. I had heard the rumors of his drug use, which only grew louder as the 2004 and 2005 Tours rolled by, but I accepted the "he's never tested positive" line and thought no more about it.

In the middle of the 2004 tour, curiosity compelled me to a cursory Internet search on what exactly "doping" meant. A lot of different things, it turned out: riders could have some of their blood drawn, spun down in a centrifuge, and later replaced once they had naturally replaced the lost volume. This left them with more red blood cells, meaning more oxygen messengers, in their body. Another option was to have infusions of someone else's blood. Still more possibilities included taking synthetic EPO (a hormone your body produces naturally that helps improve endurance), taking CERA (a form of EPO), taking testosterone, human growth hormone, et cetera.

EPO grew popular in the early-to-mid nineties, but there was no direct test for it until the 2000 Sydney Olympics. Until then, anti-doping authorities had relied on an indirect detection method: looking at the percentage of red blood cells in total blood volume. Anything below 50% was considered OK; above that and you were suspect.

The more I learned, the more curious I got. I learned about the dangers of doping: an increase in red blood cells makes your blood thicker, which puts you at risk for heart attack and death, especially when your heart is beating slowly, as it does when you are sleeping. Many people blame an unusual rash of deaths among cyclists in the nineties on doping/EPO use.

The psychological damage garners less attention than the physical side effects, but shouldn't be ignored. Bjarne Riis, winner of the '96 Tour, admitted to using EPO from '93 to '98, and said that his Maillot Jaune was lying in a box in his house, and that officials were welcome to come and take it back from him. He'd ridden 2,426 miles to win that jersey, but because he knew he'd cheated, it meant nothing to him.

Riis never tested positive during his career, partly because there was no test for EPO then, but partly because testing has not proved to be an effective method to catch dopers. What catches the dopers is most often police-style investigations like room searches, and in the 2006 Puerto case, wire taps, confiscated records and DNA tests to match blood to cyclists.

After the Operacion Puerto case broke in 2006, I became suspicious of everyone in the peloton, and I remain so. And yes, my suspicions extend to America's cycling phenomenon, Lance Armstrong. His accomplishments got me interested in and excited about cycling, but I no longer consider myself an Armstrong fan. In fact, I don't even like reading or listening to Armstrong interviews. He always says something that sounds like it originated in the sixteen-year-old head of one of my brother's immature high school friends. Armstrong is 37.

It's complicated, though, by the fact that I recognize his accomplishments, especially the fact that he's a cancer survivor and that he's raised so much money for cancer research. When I was 11, one of my best friends died of a brain tumor. Another elementary school classmate of mine lost his older brother to cancer around the same time. One of my college friends is currently fighting lymphoma. Cancer is a collection of nasty diseases that we must do more to prevent, treat and beat. It's also complicated by my desire to believe in him, and the fact that watching him ride is fun. The main reason I watched the just-completed Giro was to see how he would fare.

There are people who argue that because "everyone" dopes, the playing field is leveled again. No. Not everyone dopes, and if everyone did, then athletic gift, training and equipment would not determine the winner. Athletic gift, training, equipment and doping regimen would. If nobody doped, then perhaps the results would be very similar to those we see now. I for one would like to find out.

And, it's not as if doping will turn you or me or any other average person into an elite cyclist. You have to be damn good and train damn hard to survive the Tour or the Giro or the Vuelta, let alone win a stage or the entire race. It takes an incredibly high level of fitness, plus a good team and smart strategy to win.

That's probably why I still love watching cycling, even though I believe it's tainted. It's like eating a chocolate chip cookie; it feels good going down, but leaves you feeling sick afterward, and no matter how aware you are that you're going to regret eating it, you do it anyway. I just wish there were something like a calorie-free cookie I could eat: a clean race. Yes, it would be slower, but does that matter to a television audience? I doubt it could. The cameras are moving as fast as the cyclists; videos of 45 kilometer/hour racing look about the same as 35 kilometer/hour racing. The climbs would be less astonishing, but more believable, and you'd actually see the riders suffering, which would make them more human, easier to relate to, and even more heroic to someone like me, who likes my heroes to wear their hearts on their sleeves. I guess that's why my favorite cyclist is still, and probably always will be, Greg LeMond.