Book Review #25

It's Not About the Bike: My Journey Back to Life by Lance Armstrong

This book devastated me. Lance didn't hold anything back. First, he made me love him. He took me through his intense childhood and introduced me to his beautiful single mother. Lance didn't fit in the Texas world of high school football so he took up triathlons and before long was winning races with professionals and making $20,000 a year. He got a sponsor and headed over to Europe to ride with a cycling team.

The man was so honest! He told me about all the stupid, immature things he did. About how he talked crap to the best cyclists out there and lived to regret it. About how he broke away too soon and didn't even make the podium.

Then he took me back to Texas where I watched him cough up blood and grow a testicle the size of an orange. The cancer was in his brain, lungs and testicles. He really had about a 3% change to live even though the doctors told him otherwise. We went through brain surgery and four rounds of chemo. They put liquid platinum in his veins. I cried. It was the most horrible thing I never could have imagined. They put a catheter in his chest and had to rip it out of him because it had grown into his skin. Eventually he developed burn marks on his skin because the chemo was burning him alive. I still have sympathy pains.

But the man came out of it. It was a new era of endurance for someone who already had extra lung capacity and produced less lactic acid than most. He married my role model Kik, who bore three of his babies by IVF, and went on to win the Tour de France. We all know the rest.

Or do we? The part that still haunts me is his divorce from Kik. He talked about her like she was the most perfect creature ever to live. She went to France with him and moved back to Texas when he changed his mind with zero complaints. Then she moved back with him when he changed his mind again. She told him gently but firmly to make a decision when he was so down on his future all he did was golf and eat Tex-Mex food, and that she loved him no matter what he chose. And she was the true champ when she went through the IVF procedure with her fear of needles. What could have gone wrong so fast? I feel like I was a part of their life and now it's been ripped away without any explanation.

Time to read: 2 days
General consensus: Phenomenal, however still coping with my Gone With the Wind type grief.