It's Not About the Bike: My Journey Back to Life (16 page)

toxic part of the treatments. I was almost well.

But I sure didn’t feel like it. That was chemo for you.

BACK HOME IN TEXAS BETWEEN CHEMO CYCLES I WOULD gradually recover some

strength, until I could begin to move again. I craved air and exercise.

Friends didn’t let on how weak I had become. My out-of-town visitors must have been shocked at my pale, wasted, bald appearance, but they hid it well. Frankie Andreu came to stay with me

for a week, and Chris Carmichael, and Eric Heiden, the great Olympic speedskater-turned-physician, and Eddy Merckx. They cooked for me, and took me on short

walks and bicycle rides.

We’d leave my front door and go up a curving asphalt road that led to Mount Bonnell, a craggy peak above the Austin riverbank. Normally my friends had to sprint to keep up with my

gear-mashing and hammering pedal strokes, but now we moved at a crawl. I would get winded

on a completely flat road.

I don’t think I had fully admitted the effect chemotherapy had on my body. I came into the cancer fight very brash and fit and confident, and I could see with each cycle that I was being

drained somewhat, but I had no idea how incapacitating it truly was until I almost collapsed in a stranger’s front yard.

Bike riding wasn’t part of Dr. Nichols’ recommendation. He didn’t outright forbid it, but he said, “This is not the time to try to maintain or improve your fitness. Don’t stress your body.” I didn’t

listen–I was panicked at the idea that I would be so deconditioned by the chemo that I might never recover. My body was atrophying.

When I felt up to it, I would say to Kevin or Bart, “Let’s go out and ride the bike.” At first we would ride for anywhere from 30 to 50 miles, and I pictured myself as defiant, indefatigable,

head down into the wind, racing along a road. But in reality the rides weren’t like that at all; they were fairly desperate and feeble acts.

By the end of my treatments we would ride for half an hour, a simple loop around the neighborhood, and I told myself that as long as I could do that, I was staying in tolerable shape.

But then two incidents showed me exactly how weakened I was. One afternoon I went out with Kevin, Bart, and Bart’s fiancee, Barbara, and about halfway through the ride we reached a short,

steep hill. I thought I was keeping up, but the truth was, my friends were being kind. In fact, they were moving so slowly they almost fell over sideways on their bikes. Sometimes they

would pull ahead accidentally, and I would churn behind them, lamenting, “You’re killing me.” They were careful not to overwork me, so I had little concept of how fast or how slow we were

going. I actually thought I was staying with them as we worked up the hill.

All of a sudden, a figure moved up on my left. It was a woman in her 50s on a heavy mountain bike, and she went right by me.

She cruised, without even breathing hard, while I puffed and chugged on my high-performance bike. I couldn’t keep up with her. In cycling terms it’s called getting dropped. I was giving it

everything, and I couldn’t stay with her.

You fool yourself. You fool yourself into thinking you might be riding faster and feeling better than you really are. Then a middle-aged woman on a mountain bike passes you, and you know

exactly where you stand. I had to admit I was in bad shape.

It became an increasing struggle to ride my bike between the chemotherapy sessions, and I had to accept that it was no longer about fitness. Now I rode purely for the sake of riding–and that

was new for me. To ride for only half an hour. I had never gone out for such a trivial amount of time on a bike.

I didn’t love the bike before I got sick. It was simple for me: it was my job and I was successful

at it. It was a means to an end, a way to

My mother looked even younger than seventeen when she had me.

In a way, we grew up together.

(Courtesy of Linda Armstrong)

At twelve, I was a swimming prodigy, and a well-fed one. In the kitchen with my best friend and biggest supporter.

(Courtesy of Linda Armstrong)

My ninth birthday, September 18, 1980. You can tell by my pressed shirt and the size of the cake that my mom made sure I didn’t go without. (Courtesy of Linda Armstrong)

Walking into the sunset in Santa Barbara. (Baron Spafford)

get out of Piano, a potential source of wealth and recognition. But it was not something I did for pleasure, or poetry; it was my profession and my livelihood, and my reason for being, but I

would not have said that I loved it.

I’d never ridden just to ride in the past–there had to be a purpose behind it, a race or a training regimen. Before, I wouldn’t even consider riding for just thirty minutes or an hour. Real cyclists

don’t even take the bike out of the garage if it’s only going to be an hour-long ride.

Bart would call up and say, “Let’s go hang out and ride bikes.”

“What for?” I’d say.

But now I not only loved the bike, I needed it. I needed to get away from my problems for a little while, and to make a point to myself and to my friends. I had a reason for those rides: I

wanted everyone to see that I was okay, and still able to ride–and maybe I was trying to prove it to myself, too.

“How’s Lance doing?” people would say.

I wanted my friends to say, “Well, he seems pretty good. He’s riding his bike.”

Maybe I needed to tell myself that I was still a rider, not just a cancer patient, no matter how weak I had become. If nothing else, it was my way of countering the disease and regaining the

control it had stripped from me. I can still do this, I told myself. I might not be able to do it like I used to, but I can still do it.

Then one day Kevin and another friend and local cyclist, Jim Woodman, came over to take me for our usual little ride. I still had the scars from my surgery, so I wore a helmet, and we moved

at a very slow pace, just idling along. Again, it wasn’t anything I would have previously classified as a ride.

We came to a small rise in the road, nothing difficult at all, just an incline that required you to rise from your seat and stroke down on the pedals once or twice. I’d done it a million times. Up,

down, and then sit and coast into a left-hand turn, and you’re out of the neighborhood.

I couldn’t do it. I got halfway up the incline, and I lost my breath. My bike wobbled beneath me, and I stopped, and put my feet down on the pavement. I felt faint.

I tried to breathe, but I couldn’t seem to draw in enough air to revive myself. Black and silver specks fluttered behind my eyes. I dismounted. Kevin and Jim wheeled around and stopped

short, concerned.

I sat down on the curb in front of a stranger’s house and dropped

my head between my knees.

Kevin was at my side in an instant. “Are you okay?” he said. “Just let me catch my breath,” I wheezed. “Go ahead without me, I’ll get a ride home.”

Jim said, “Maybe we should get an ambulance.” “No,” I said. “Just let me sit here for a second.” I could hear myself trying to breathe. It sounded like Whoo. Whoo. Suddenly, even sitting up felt

like too much effort. I felt a rushing light-headedness, similar to the sensation you get when you stand up too quickly–only I wasn’t standing.

I lay back on the lawn, staring at the sky, and closed my eyes.

Is this dying?

Kevin hovered over me, distraught. “Lance!” he said, loudly.

“Lance!”

I opened my eyes.

“I’m calling the ambulance,” he said, desperately.

“No,” I said, angrily. “No, no, I just need to rest.”

“Okay, okay,” he said, calming us both down.

After a few minutes, I gradually recovered my breath. I sat up, and tried to pull myself together. I stood. I tentatively straddled my bike.

My legs felt shaky, but I was able to ride downhill. We coasted very slowly back the way we

came, and made our way back to my house. Kevin and Jim rode right next to me, never taking their eyes off me.

Between deep breaths, I explained to them what had happened. The chemo had robbed me of healthy blood cells and wiped out my hemoglobin count. Hemoglobin transports oxygen to your

vital areas, and a normal value of hemoglobin for a fit person is about 13 to 15.

I was at seven. My blood was totally depleted. The chemo had attacked my blood relentlessly every two weeks, Monday through Friday, and I had finally overdone the bike riding.

I paid for it that day.

But I didn’t stop riding.

THERE ARE ANGELS ON THIS EARTH AND THEY COME IN subtle forms, and I decided LaTrice Haney was one of them. Outwardly, she looked like just another efficient,

clipboard-and-syringe-wielding nurse in a starched outfit. She worked extremely long days and nights, and on her off hours she went home to her husband, Randy, a truck driver, and their two

children, Taylor, aged seven, and Morgan, four. But if she was tired, she never seemed it. She struck me as a woman utterly lacking in ordinary resentments, sure of her responsibilities and

blessings and unwavering in her administering of care, and if that wasn’t angelic behavior, I didn’t know what was.

Often I’d be alone in the late afternoons and evenings except for LaTrice, and if I had the strength, we’d talk seriously. With most people I was shy and terse, but I found myself talking to

LaTrice, maybe because she was so gentle-spoken and expressive herself. LaTrice was only in her late 20s, a pretty young woman with a coffee-and-cream complexion, but she had

self-possession and perception beyond her years. While other people our age were out nightclubbing, she was already the head nurse for the oncology research unit. I wondered why

she did it. “My satisfaction is to make it a little easier for people,” she said.

She asked me about cycling, and I found myself telling her about the bike with a sense of pleasure I hadn’t realized I possessed. “How did you start riding?” she asked me. I told her about

my first bikes, and the early sense of liberation, and that cycling was all I had done since I was 16. I talked about my various teammates over the years, about their humor and selflessness, and

I talked about my mother, and what she had meant to me.

I told her what cycling had given me, the tours of Europe and the extraordinary education, and the wealth. I showed her a picture of my house, with pride, and invited her to come visit, and I

showed her snapshots of my cycling career. She leafed through images of me racing across the backdrops of France, Italy, and Spain, and she’d point to a picture and ask, “Where are you

here?”

I confided that I was worried about my sponsor, Cofidis, and explained the difficulty I was having with them. I told her I felt pressured. “I need to stay in shape, I need to stay in shape,” I

said over and over again.

“Lance, listen to your body,” she said gently. “I know your mind wants to run away. I know it’s saying to you, ‘Hey, let’s go ride.’ But listen to your body. Let it rest.”

I described my bike, the elegant high performance of the ultralight tubing and aerodynamic wheels. I told her how much each piece cost, and weighed, and what its purpose was. I

explained how a bike could be broken down so I could practically carry it in my pocket, and that I knew every part and bit of it so intimately that I could adjust it in a matter of moments.

I explained that a bike has to fit your body, and that at times I felt melded to it. The lighter the frame, the more responsive it is, and my racing bike weighed just 18 pounds. Wheels exert

centrifugal force on the bike itself, I told her. The more centrifugal force, the more momentum. It was the essential building block of speed. “There are 32 spokes in a wheel,” I said.

Quick-release levers allow you to pop the wheel out and change it quickly, and my crew could fix a flat tire in less than 10 seconds.

“Don’t you get tired of leaning over like that?” she asked. Yes, I said, until my back ached like it was broken, but that was the price of speed. The handlebars are only as wide as the rider’s

shoulders, I explained, and they curve downward in half-moons so you can assume an aerodynamic stance on the bike.

“Why do you ride on those little seats?” she asked. The seat is narrow, contoured to the anatomy, and the reason is that when you are on it for six hours at a time, you don’t want

anything to chafe your legs. Better a hard seat than the torture of saddle sores. Even the clothes have a purpose. They are flimsy for a reason: to mold to the body because you have to wear

them in weather that ranges from hot to hail. Basically, they’re a second skin. The shorts have a chamois padded seat, and the stitches are recessed to avoid rash.

When I had nothing left to tell LaTrice about the bike, I told her about the wind. I described how it felt in my face and in my hair. I told her about being in the open air, with the views of

soaring Alps, and the glimmer of valley lakes in the distance. Sometimes the wind blew as if it were my personal friend, sometimes as if it were my bitter enemy, sometimes as if it were the

hand of God pushing me along. I described the full sail of a mountain descent, gliding on two wheels only an inch wide.

“You’re just out there, free,” I said.

“You love it,” she said.

“Yeah?” I said.

“Oh, I see it in your eyes,” she said.

I understood that LaTrice was an angel one evening late in my last cycle of chemo. I lay on my side, dozing on and off, watching the steady, clear drip-drip of the chemo as it slid into my

veins. LaTrice sat with me, keeping me company, even though I was barely able to talk.

“What do you think, LaTrice?” I asked, whispering. “Am I going to pull through this?”

“Yeah,” she said. “Yeah, you are.”

“I hope you’re right,” I said, and closed my eyes again.

LaTrice leaned over to me.

“Lance,” she said, softly, “I hope someday to be just a figment of your imagination. I’m not here to be in your life for the rest of your life. After you leave here, I hope I never see you ever again.