There's a chance this tale is apocryphal, but the 90s was a pretty dark time for professional cycling and it is of course 100% drug use (EPO etc) related. I've

There's a chance this tale is apocryphal, but the 90s was a pretty dark time for professional cycling and it is of course 100% drug use (EPO etc) related. I've heard this story in several cycling books/pro cycling talks usually in connection to Marco Pantani. Marco Pantani stories are often exaggerated as the man was almost like a folk hero to many fans and sad stories about his death historically sold well especially in Italy. There are a great many "legendary" stories regarding EPO use in the pro peloton in the 90s and riders were often deeply paranoid bordering on superstitious about what the training and new drugs were doing to their bodies, hence the rich vein of apocryphal tales and dubious advice. To be clear, it's definitely not a practice that is at all required of 99% of healthy pro-cyclists! Top cyclists wear heart rate monitors to train more efficiently just like many other athletes. I could certainly believe some riders would have been _paranoid_ enough to wear one regardless of merit in bed while taking EPO though. These were often young men heavily pressured into injecting for first time etc and in 90s not like you could just google "EPO side effects" like you might today. EPO use was rampant in cycling the 90s, largely because there was no good test to detect it widely used in sport till early 2000s, and the advantage it could confer was pretty significant in cycling - see Lance Armstrong's career.