Could a dehydrated/doping cyclist climb faster?

[jamix]

Doubt this is known, but could guys like LA and Marco Pantani cycle faster up-hill after cruising for 4-5 hours then they themselves could do on fresh legs on account of weighing less (hence higher watts / kg) due to water-loss / dehydration incurred from cycling for so many hours (while simultaneously being relatively fresh because of the drugs they took) ??

[Wu wei]

IIRC, dehydration improves performance to a point for runners... but not the same for cycling because running is weight bearing.

The loss in performance from dehydration would not offset the very marginal increase in W/kg...

[jamix]

IIRC, dehydration improves performance to a point for runners... but not the same for cycling because running is weight bearing.

The loss in performance from dehydration would not offset the very marginal increase in W/kg...

I would think the performance increase would be greater for up-hill cycling; With running, its mostly the weight of the lower limbs / legs thats correlated with performance.

As for running, I suspect there is no performance gain, even if elites do lose >2%. If this were the case, you'd see some 10km track races where the second 5km time-split would be faster than the time for the 5km race itself; Nevertheless, despite the fact that the first 5km time-split is often slow resulting in a significant negative split (think of the 10km Olympics in London 2012), the second 5km still isn't as fast as the 5km race.

[Pat Menzies]

Uphill cycling is about weight as well. Moderate dehydration helps in every scenario.