Its Not About the Bike: My Journey Back to Life By Lance Armstrong
دوست داشتم كتاب رو،حس ميكردي خودت هم تور دو فرانس رو داري ركاب ميزني اما نه با لباس طلايي دوچرخه سواري با لباس بيمارستان 294 I really enjoyed this, a fascinating and inspirational read even if you’re not a cycling fan or into sports biographies. As the title states this is “not about the bike” well not completely anyways, of course the bike is always present (even on Lance’s sickest days when he could barely stand from the chemo treatments he still managed to go for a wobbly ride around the block) but I would say more than half of this story deals with Lance’s brutal battle with cancer and his miraculous recovery. We also learn about his childhood and growing up kinda poor in a single parent home, his early days as a triathlete, falling in love and his 1st marriage (this was written in 2002) and a surprisingly detailed account about the IVF that allowed for the birth of his first child.
It’s well written, honest and unflinching, as some of what we read doesn’t always paint Armstrong in the most favorable light. Other reviewers have mentioned his ego (huge) and his single mindedness when it came to racing and training, bordering on obsession. I am of the mind that you don’t become the best in the world without developing an ego, without becoming preoccupied. I mean it takes everything to get to the top so personal relationships are bound to suffer. On that note while Armstrong praises his (now ex-wife) Kit I was shocked at how he treated her, expecting her life to just revolve around him. At one point she gives up everything in the States and follows him to Europe to just “be there” while he trains, then on a whim Lance quits the tour and he expects her to just pack up the house and follow him back home while he sorts himself out and plays golf.
When Lance is diagnosed with cancer it’s the first time in his life that cycling is not the foremost thing in his life however he handles his treatment and recovery like a big race. Finding the right doctors and learning everything he can about his disease. We the reader get the story down to the smallest of details; from the day he just didn’t feel well, through diagnosis, gut-wrenching fear, denial, dealing with the backlash from his team and sponsors and then a single minded focus on beating cancer through his day to day struggle through operations, chemo and near death. I actually had no idea just how sick he was, not only was the cancer in his testicle but he also had tumors in his chest and brain, his odds of survival at one point were as low as 20%.
His fight to make a comeback into the cycling world is almost as grim as his cancer itself; no team would touch him so there was a political side as well as a physical side to his return. And just because he was in remission and well enough to race didn’t mean his mind was in the game either. I found it fascinating how he entered into a sort of survivor’s guilt phase where he didn’t want to ride, he just wanted to play golf, eat crappy food and be a bum, like he didn’t know how to go back to his life before cancer.
If you’re into cycling obviously this is a must read. The longest chapter here deals with his first Tour de France win and it’s exhausting and totally exhilarating, leaving me feeling like I was grinding up the Alps and Pyrenees amidst a mass of spandex. (Yay me) There is also a freakin ton of inside information regarding well, just about everything you ever wanted to know about “the Tour” and cycling in general, specifically covering European terms, customs, the training regime and accounts of competitions and what it takes to get there. Yup the doping issue is brought up as well, and because Armstrong was an American winning a European dominated race he was tested persistently,(always negative) with such claims as his cancer treatments had given him an unfair advantage!
322jb4 294 Turns out it wasn't about the bike, rather the vast quantities of illegal drugs he was taking... 294 I read this right after my dad passed away from cancer. Lance was a hero of my dad's for some time, but I'd never seen his autobiography until I found it on my dad's shelf. Lance's drive to survive and win against all odds is an inspiration to anyone, but especially to cancer survivors & their family. It really helped me get through a difficult time, and inspired me to start doing triathlons with Team In Training (a great organization which helps benefit cancer victims).
Oh - and Lance is the shit :) 294 The cancer journey was interesting, and as far as I know, all true. Hard to know what to think of the rest of it really...
While being likeable isn't a requirement for an autobiography, he was hard to take even when his sporting achievements still stood. With that all in tatters, his attitude is even more irritating.
Still, he does a powerful personality that is oddly captivating, perhaps even more so in an odd way, when you know so much of what he saying is false. 294
People around the world have found inspiration in the story of Lance Armstrong--a world-class athlete nearly struck down by cancer, only to recover and win the Tour de France, the multiday bicycle race famous for its gruelling intensity. Armstrong is a thoroughgoing Texan jock, and the changes brought to his life by his illness are startling and powerful, but he's just not interested in wearing a hero suit. While his vocabulary is a bit on the he-man side (highest compliment to his wife: she's a stud), his actions will melt the most hard-bitten souls: a cancer foundation and benefit bike ride, his astonishing commitment to training that got him past countless hurdles, loyalty to the people and corporations that never gave up on him. There's serious medical detail here, which may not be for the faint of heart; from chemo to surgical procedures to his wife's in vitro fertilization, you won't be spared a single x-ray, IV drip, or unfortunate side effect. Athletes and coaches everywhere will benefit from the same extraordinary detail provided about training sessions--every aching tendon, every rainy afternoon, and every small triumph during his long recovery is here in living colour. It's Not About the Bike is the perfect title for this book about life, death, illness, family, setbacks, and triumphs, but not especially about the bike. --Jill Lightner, Amazon.com Its Not About the Bike: My Journey Back to Life
Review ↠ PDF, DOC, TXT, eBook or Kindle ePUB free ☆ Lance Armstrong
On second thought, Lance, I stripped the extra 4 stars I gave you when I first read the book. It just so happens that you were a big fat liar, and now feeling sorry or happy for you is really hard to do.
But here's the original review of the book I wrote, when I had assumed the author was an honest and hard-working person without all the issues he developed during the Tour de France, all of which are entirely 100% his fault.
---- the old review ----
I picked up this book in the juice store in San Jose on a trip in 2007. Someone I knew had given a moving speech on Lance, and I love inspiring stories. The words, the descriptions, and the story, is so deep, and so well-written, that it was incredibly hard to put down. You start to get to know a real person, and all his defeats, his hardship, his anger, and his emergence as a real winner in face of it all. It is the best read in all of my carefully selected dozen books in the last few months. I highly recommend it!!! I love you Lance Armstrong! You are amazing!!
----------------- 294 There is no more remarkable story of surviving cancer than Lance Armstrong's, and perhaps there is no better athlete in history. His rise from poverty and being raised by a young single mother is quite impressive too. But I have to give his memoir 2 stars, because
1) He's such a cocky son of a bitch. Really, it gets quite annoying.
2) He couldn't keep his marriage and family intact, especially after putting his wife through the IVF, twice. Before they even began dating, she was concerned about his reputation as a player. I guess she was right to be. Check out how she's the spitting image of his mother, 20 years younger.
3) I don't think Lance is telling any big whoppers, but you do get the sense that some (many) of his anecdotes are embellished, crafted, varnished, just a little. This tends to happen when people are great storytellers, as he is. I saw him on Charlie Rose several years ago and he was riveting. I could have listened to him for hours. In the book, ghostwritten by Sally Jenkins, these anecdotes are perfect little packages tied up with bows.
I do think he makes a valuable point in the epilogue, that the point - of cancer, of any struggle, of life - is not to be a survivor, but to be a fighter. I'd also like to see new photos in any subsequent editions, of all the blond women he's dated - Sheryl Crow, Kate Hudson, Tory Burch, the new one - I'm sure I'm leaving out dozens. 294 If one knows the scandalous last few years of Lance Armstrong's life, with the breakdown of his marriage due to his adultery and the collapse of his legacy due to the exposure of his sophisticated doping operation, it is impossible to read this book without a feeling of ironic distance from the feel-good sentiments that Lance and his co-writer are trying to convey. That does not mean that this book is not worthwhile or even interesting, but merely that one goes into this book, or at least I did, with a strong sense of cynicism about its contents and approach, and a determination to read between the lines. That this book still stands up as being noteworthy under such circumstances is credit to its authors, even if it is not quite the reading experience that it was originally intended to be or that it likely was in the period where Lance Armstrong was seemingly miraculously winning all those Tour de France titles after having recovered from a near-fatal battle with metastatic testicular cancer. Even now, Lance Armstrong is right that it's not about the bike, it's about a man so driven to win and so consumed with himself that he pushed through cancer and showed a total disregard for the feelings of others as well as the rules and traditions of his chosen sport of cycling [1], and one can see that here clearly enough to see what Armstrong was eliding in these pages.
Like a good Aristotelian drama, this particular book begins in media res with an apparent contrast between the pre-cancer Lance Armstrong and the post-cancer Lance Armstrong, although, as we have seen in subsequent revelations, the contrast is not as great as we may hope, and in both periods Lance Armstrong comes off even in his own account as more than a little bit of an aloof jerk. The book then goes to his childhood where he shows an almost emotionally incestuous relationship with his mother and is extremely critical about his birth father and his first stepfather and then shows his early athletic success in triathlons and as a competitive cyclist. The rise of the young cyclist is interrupted by his battle with cancer, which is described in vivid and sometimes brutal detail, as Armstrong first tries to soldier through early symptoms, then fights cancer and has to deal with chemo even as he faces concerns over not having insurance and dealing with a cycling team that is trying to renegotiate or cancel a deal under duress. The book then moves to the whirlwind courtship between Lance and his wife Kik, surviving, and then returning to form and winning his first two Tour de France titles, told from his perspective as part of a growth and success narrative.
Even though this is clearly a whitewash and clearly not the full story, there is a lot of worth in this book anyway, even after the truth of Armstrong's victories and the fact that they were owed to a sophisticated doping regime and a sport willing to look the other way at least for a time. For one, Lance Armstrong tries to promote himself as belonging to a tight-knit cancer community that he mines for sympathy [2]. For another, Lance Armstrong shows himself throughout as being hostile towards protocols and established traditions, whether that is regarding his senior year of high school in Plano, Texas or his insistence that his mother come along with him on a meeting with the King of Norway after his victory in the cycling world championships or his refusal to go by the arcane rules of the road in European road cycling. Over and over again Lance seems tone deaf to the demands of the social world he finds himself in, a lone wolf demanding loyalty from others but not being sensitive to the needs and concerns of others, and relying on ruthlessness, predatory aggression, and his own God-given natural gifts and talents. The result is a fascinating look at a man that even at his peak was someone who was quite willing to let the darker side of his personality show, or perhaps had such a dark side that it was impossible for it to be completely hidden however he may have wanted to portray himself.
[1] See, for example:
https://edgeinducedcohesion.wordpress...
https://edgeinducedcohesion.wordpress...
[2] See, for example:
https://edgeinducedcohesion.wordpress...
https://edgeinducedcohesion.wordpress...
https://edgeinducedcohesion.wordpress... 294 Long overdue (and subsequently updated) epilogue .... And part of me is relieved .. and definitely not surprised ... to see that others, increasingly, have revised their reviews on this book. Unlike some, however, I'm not deducting stars from my initial rating, ... indeed, I've elevated it to a five-star ... for uniquely personal reasons. In retrospect, I can't think of a single book that more directly, dramatically, and positively impacted my life ... even if it was published as non-fiction, and later had to be re-shelved as fiction... Alas.
I am forever indebted to Lance Armstrong and this book ... for (to some extent) saving my life. As a cyclist and (at the time) a huge Lance fan, I read and enjoyed the book ... and, only later, it was Lance's story, indelibly imprinted on my mind, that led to an early self-diagnosis of (and, thankfully, a successful treatment and recovery from) testicular cancer.
Lance fundamentally changed the conversation - in the US and around the world - about cancer and post-cancer quality of life - and for that I respect him ... and I'm glad to have donated/raised serious money for the cause....
Which makes it all more heart-breaking ... and disappointing ... and disillusioning ... to later find out that so much of it was ... a lie.
Again, alas. 294 On Wednesday, November 17, 2004 I wrote on bookcrosing:
I had to decide what to read next and decided to read this book. Although I do not like Lance Armstrong I love The Tour de France and want to know as much as I can of the event and the participants.I have heard that this is a very good book and while reading I noticed I forget the arrogant guy who treats the other cyclists with not enough respect. Now I just want to read how he dealt with the cancer and I know a lot of the names and persons he is talking about which makes it more interesting.will update this journal while reading.
Update November 18 2004 Oh My God. I tried to read this story with an open mind but after the first 2 chapters the way this guy is ranting, it made me sick. This guy is full of himself, does not have any respect for others, he is a narcistic arse. This is one angry man with one of the hugest ego's I ever experienced in my life! Everybody is tiptoeing around him. Some of the bycicle facts are not correct and the story about Pantani? don't get me started. He made a big show how he gave the win to Pantani. He humiliated Marco which was not unnecessary at all in 2000, calling him El Elefanta (because Marco had big ears) since then I have no respect for this guy and this book proved I was right.He is just an angry little selfish child.
Update: I wrote this nearly 10 years ago. I can't tell you how satisfying it is for me to see this bully finally got his come uppance.
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