I'm one of the few people who did not know much about Lance Armstrong except that he raced bikes and there had been a drug scandal. So I was receptive, ready to hear what he had to say.
He comes from Plano, Texas...but before Plano he lived in Oak Cliff, the same community that Stevie Ray Vaughan comes from. Frisson.
Then reading about his daredevil stunts on his bike as a teen; racing stoplights and not wearing a helmet. I recognized those stunts, the stunts I didn't hear about until later but still made my hair stand on end. I have a son who rides a bike. Like Lance, he was also hit by a truck, bike destroyed. Both Lance and my son escaped truly serious injury. Lance also experienced the death of another rider in a bike race, something my son experienced as well. I was relating to Lance and the biking.
Then Lance gets cancer. As he puts it in the book,
"It had been a busy week, I thought to myself. I was diagnosed on a Wednesday, had surgery Thursday, was released Friday night, banked sperm on Saturday, had a press conference announcing to the world that I had testicular cancer on Monday morning, started chemo on Monday afternoon. Now it was Thursday and it was in my brain. This opponent was turning out to be much tougher than I'd thought. I couldn't seem to get any good news: It's in your lungs, it's stage three, you have no insurance, now it's in your brain."
Lance survives. He has such a bullish personality, he was going to defeat cancer just as he defeated anyone and anything that got in the way of his winning; winning cancer, winning bike races, winning women. The man was a bull, still is I imagine. He kind of fools himself that cancer has changed him, made him a better man. Sounds good on paper but really, Lance was a man who wanted to win and he would go all out to do it. He would use every tool in the arsenal. He trained like a demon, he wouldn't let it go, he was going to show the world what he could do. Everyone seems to hate Lance Armstrong now, but listen, drugs or no, the man worked really, really hard for those wins. Too bad he cheated, and now there are suspicions of his using motorized cheating as well. The sport was never "fair" and the Tour de France has a long history of cheating.

https://www.theguardian.com/sport/sho...

Honestly, read about the history of this race. Put Lance into perspective.

In some ways his history with women bothers me more than his cheating in the sport. Years ago, in Plano, Lance's first sponsor Jim Hoyt, became angry at Lance's behavior. Jim Hoyt wasn't wrong.
Anger and a bullying personality, a need to win at all costs, greed for the wins, the accolades, the women, and lying about whatever he needed to lie about. I felt bad for his wife who stuck by him, loved him, never expected to be divorced.

This book is reserved for the Non-Fic VBB

I am going to release this into a LFL

Wedgwood neighborhood of Seattle