[ed - This review was written on 05/27/2002 after my wife and I had been waiting a week for her to go into labor “any minute now”. She went into later early on the morning of 5/28/2002]
It’s not about the Bike proclaims the title of Lance Armstrong’s book, the sub-title “My Journey Back to Life” tells you what it is about :-)
The book is worth-reading. I didn’t know anything about the man other than he had cancer and had won Tour de France twice. I didn’t know much about Tour de France either.
Reading the story takes you alongside Lance’s journey. Sally Jenkins (who probably did most of the real writing, converting coversations into chapters) draws you into each scene, from the mountains and the cheering crowds to the oncology unit.
By the end of the book, you understand what it truly means to win the Tour de France, even if you were (like me) completely ignorant of what it meant or required to do. Winning the Tour de France had less to do with winning bike race than it had to do with finding his way back to life. To win meant not that you had the best bike, but that you had “enough iron in my legs and lungs and brain and heart.” It meant growing up, maturing.
Armstrong wrote that if he had to choose between overcoming cancer and winning the TDF, he’d choose cancer. I’d think that anyone who read the book would understand, but apparently not because the new chapter in the current version of the book includes this explanation:
What I mean is that I wouldn’t have learned all I did if I hadn’t had to contend with cancer. I couldn’t have won even one Tour without my fight, because of what it taught me.
Armstrong is quite a character, his story is quite interesting and his character, like most, is much more complex than it would seem if you didn’t know.
One quote that stuck with me, especially during this time of waiting, is this:
If there is a defining characteristic of a man as opposed to a boy, maybe it’s patience.
I suppose that’s been the lesson of the past week here too :-)