It's Not About the Bike: My Journey Back to Life (24 page)

Europe.

Just as Kik was taking the dog out for a walk, the phone rang. I picked it up and I said,

“Uh-huh,” and listened, and my eyes filled with tears. I hung up the phone, and I grabbed her in a huge hug, and I said, “Babe, you’re pregnant.” Kik threw her arms around me and said, “Are

you sure?” I laughed, and then we both cried.

Now that we knew she was pregnant, the question became, how many babies was she carrying? I cheerfully announced that I hoped she was carrying triplet boys. “The more the better,” I

said.

Kik rolled her eyes. “My husband has a rich fantasy life,” she said. “Either that or he finds humor in tormenting me.”

“I picture you on an eleven-hour international flight with the triplets,” I said. “See also: insanity, fatigue, catatonic state, insomnia.”

Kik was sure to do everything carefully. She ate from all the major food groups, she walked four miles a day, she took her prenatal vitamins, and she napped. She bought a stack of pregnancy

books, and we looked at cribs. Friends kept asking if she had been sick yet, which she hadn’t. In fact, she felt so good that she began to wonder if maybe the hospital mixed up her blood test

and she wasn’t pregnant after all.

She did a home pregnancy test just to ease her fears. Two lines popped right up.

“Okay, just checking,” she said.

Finally, I had to return to Europe and the U.S. Postal team. Kik stayed behind for a couple more tests, but she would join me overseas as soon as possible. On March 5, she had a sonogram to

judge the number of babies she was carrying. I had almost convinced her that she was going to bear triplet boys–but the sonogram showed that we had one healthy baby. Not twins, not

triplets. She was relieved, but a tiny part of her was oddly disappointed, not because she wanted us to be the parents of multiples, but because she couldn’t ignore the vague loss she felt,

wondering what happened to the other two. Kik asked Dr. Vaughn if there was any possible thing we could have done wrong that might have kept the other two from living. He said

absolutely not, and that there are still some things that are natural and inexplicable, even in a seemingly sterile, scientific procedure.

Then Dr. Vaughn said, “That’s quite a strong heartbeat we have here.”

He pointed to a tiny blinking bean on the screen. The entire thing was flashing. Kik laughed and said, “It definitely isn’t my genes that made a heart beat like that. That’s Lance.” Dr. Vaughn

printed out an obscure photo of the bean for Kik to take to Europe for me.

A couple of days later, Kik arrived in Nice. She handed me the picture. I studied it, awestruck, absolutely mesmerized. That bean with a flashing heartbeat made me feel more alive than

anything I had experienced yet. It made me feel as clean and reverent as Boone. It made me feel

as if I had survived, at last.

“Ride like the wind,” Kik told me. “Big Daddy Armstrong has a family to support.”

THE TOUR

LIFE IS LONG—HOPEFULLY. BUT “LONG” IS A

relative term: a minute can seem like a month when you’re pedaling uphill, which is why there are few things that seem longer than the Tour de France. How long is it? Long as a freeway

guardrail stretching into shimmering, flat-topped oblivion. Long as fields of parched summer hay with no fences in sight. Long as the view of three nations from atop an icy, jagged peak in the

Pyrenees.

It would be easy to see the Tour de France as a monumentally inconsequential undertaking: 200 riders cycling the entire circumference of France, mountains included, over three weeks in the

heat of the summer. There is no reason to attempt such a feat of idiocy, other than the fact that some people, which is to say some people like me, have a need to search the depths of their

stamina for self-definition. (I’m the guy who can take it.) It’s a contest in purposeless suffering.

But for reasons of my own, I think it may be the most gallant athletic endeavor in the world. To me, of course, it’s about living.

A little history: the bicycle was an invention of the industrial revolution, along with the steam engine and the telegraph, and the first Tour was held in 1903, the result of a challenge in the

French sporting press issued by the newspaper L’Auto. Of the sixty racers who started, only 21 finished, and the event immediately captivated the nation. An estimated 100,000 spectators

lined the roads into Paris, and there was cheating right from the start: drinks were spiked, and tacks and broken bottles were thrown onto the road by the leaders to sabotage the riders chasing

them. The early riders had to carry their own food and equipment, their bikes had just two gears, and they used their feet as brakes. The first mountain stages were introduced in 1910 (along

with brakes), when the peloton rode through the Alps, despite the threat of attacks from wild animals. In 1914, the race began on the same day that the Archduke Ferdinand was shot. Five

days after the finish of the race, war swept into the same Alps the riders had climbed. Today, the race is a marvel of technology. The bikes are so light you can lift them overhead with one hand,

and the riders are equipped with computers, heart monitors, and even two-way radios. But the essential test of the race has not changed: who can best survive the hardships and find the

strength to keep going? After my personal ordeal, I couldn’t help feeling it was a race I was suited for.

Before the ‘99 season began, I went to Indianapolis for a cancer-awareness dinner, and I stopped by the hospital to see my old cancer friends. Scott Shapiro said, “So, you’re returning to stage

racing?”

I said yes, and then I asked a question. “Do you think I can win the Tour de France?”

“I not only think you can,” he said. “I expect you to.”

BUT I KEPT CRASHING.

At first, the 1999 cycling season was a total failure. In the second race of the year, the Tour of Valencia, I crashed off the bike and almost broke my shoulder. I took two weeks off, but no

sooner did I get back on than I crashed again: I was on a training ride in the south of France when an elderly woman ran her car off the side of the road and sideswiped me. I suffered like

the proverbial dog through Paris–Nice and Milan-San Remo in lousy weather, struggling to mid-pack finishes. I wrote it off to early-season bad form, and went on to the next race–where I

crashed again. On the last corner of the first stage, I spun out in the rain. My tires went out from under me in a dusky oil slick and I tumbled off the bike.

I went home. The problem was simply that I was rusty, so for two solid weeks I worked on my technique, until I felt secure in the saddle. When I came back, I stayed upright. I finally won

something, a time-trial stage in the Circuit de la Sarthe. My results picked up.

But it was funny, I wasn’t as good in the one-day races anymore. I was no longer the angry and unsettled young rider I had been. My racing was still intense, but it had become subtler in style

and technique, not as visibly aggressive. Something different fueled me now–psychologically, physically, and emotionally–and that something was the Tour de France.

I was willing to sacrifice the entire season to prepare for the Tour. I staked everything on it. I skipped all the spring classics, the prestigious races that comprised the backbone of the

international cycling tour, and instead picked and chose only a handful of events that would help me peak in July. Nobody could understand what I was doing. In the past, I’d made my living in

the classics. Why wasn’t I riding in the races I’d won before? Finally a journalist came up to me and asked if I was entered in any of the spring classics.

“No,” I said.

“Well, why not?”

“I’m focusing on the Tour.”

He kind of smirked at me and said, “Oh, so you’re a Tour rider now.” Like I was joking.

I just looked at him, and thought, Whatever, dude. We’ll see.

Not long afterward, I ran into Miguel Indurain in a hotel elevator. He, too, asked me what I was doing.

“I’m spending a lot of time training in the Pyrenees,” I said.

“Porque?” he asked “Why?”

“For the Tour,” I said.

He lifted an eyebrow in surprise, and reserved comment.

Every member of our Postal team was as committed to the Tour as I was. The Postal roster was as follows: Frankie Andreu was a big, powerful sprinter and our captain, an accomplished

veteran who had known me since I was a teenager. Kevin Livingston and Tyler Hamilton were our talented young climbing specialists; George Hincapie was the U.S. Pro champion and

another rangy sprinter like Frankie; Christian Vandevelde was one of the most talented rookies around; Pascal Derame, Jonathan Vaughters, and Peter Meinert-Neilsen were loyal domestiques

who would ride at high speed for hours without complaint.

The man who shaped us into a team was our director, Johan Bruyneel, a poker-faced Belgian and former Tour rider. Johan knew what was required to win the Tour; he had won stages twice

during his own career. In 1993, he won what at the time was the fastest stage in Tour history, and in 1995, he won another when he outdueled Indurain in a spectacular finish into Liege. It

was just Johan and Indurain alone at the front, and he sat on Indurain’s wheel the whole way, until he pulled around and beat him in the sprint across the line. He was a smart, resourceful

rider who knew how to beat more powerful competitors, and he brought the same sure sense of strategy to our team.

It was Johan’s idea to hold training camps. We bought into his plan, refusing to complain, and spent a week apiece in the Alps and the Pyrenees. We scouted the mountain terrain of the Tour,

and practiced the climbs we’d be facing, riding back-to-back seven-hour days in all weather. As we went over the mountainous sections, I worked especially closely with Kevin and Tyler

because they were our climbers, the guys who would have to do most of the work pulling me up those gradients. While most other riders were resting in the off-season or competing in the

classics, we rode uphill in foul conditions.

Johan and I had a running joke. It was January in the Pyrenees, and every day it pissed down rain. I was getting beat up, hammered by those climbs, while Johan followed in the warmth of a

car, talking me through it via a two-way radio.

One day I got on the air and said, “Johan.”

“Yes, Lance, what do you want?”

“I’m doing the classics next year.”

From then on, I said it every day. Pretty soon Johan knew what was coming.

“Johan.”

“Let me guess, Lance,” he’d say, tonelessly. “You’re doing the classics next year.”

“Right.”

When we weren’t in the Alps or Pyrenees, I trained on my own. There was a purpose to everything I did. Kik and I lived day in and day out with only two things in mind: the Tour de

France and having a healthy baby. Anything else was secondary, an unnecessary distraction. But there was a sort of peace in the simplicity of our dedication.

I geeked out. I tackled the problem of the Tour as if I were in math class, science class, chemistry class, and nutrition class, all rolled into one. I did computer calculations that balanced

my body weight and my equipment weight with the potential velocity of the bike in various stages, trying to find the equation that would get me to the finish line faster than anybody else. I

kept careful computer graphs of my training rides, calibrating the distances, wattages, and thresholds.

Even eating became mathematical. I measured my food intake. I kept a small scale in the kitchen and weighed the portions of pasta and bread. Then I calculated my wattages versus my caloric

intake, so I knew precisely how much to eat each day, how many calories to burn, so that the amount coming in would be less than my output, and I would lose weight.

There was one unforeseen benefit of cancer: it had completely reshaped my body. I now had a much sparer build. In old pictures, I looked like a football player with my thick neck and big

upper body, which had contributed to my bullishness on the bike. But paradoxically, my strength had held me back in the mountains, because it took so much work to haul that weight

uphill. Now I was almost gaunt, and the result was a lightness I’d never felt on the bike before. I was leaner in body and more balanced in spirit.

The doubt about me as a Tour rider was my climbing ability. I could always sprint, but the mountains were my downfall. Eddy Merckx had been telling me to slim down for years, and

now I understood why. A five-pound drop was a large weight loss for the mountains–and I had lost 15 pounds. It was all I needed. I became very good in the mountains.

Each morning I rose and ate the same thing for breakfast, some muesli with bread and fruit, unless it was going to be a particularly long training ride, in which case I had a plate of

scrambled egg whites. While I ate, Kik filled my water bottles, and I bolted out the door by 8 A.M. to join Kevin and Tyler for a training ride. Most days I would ride straight through lunch,

until about 3 P.M. When I came home I’d shower and lie down for a nap until dinnertime. I’d get up again in the evening, weigh my pasta, and have dinner with Kik.

We didn’t do anything. We didn’t go anywhere. We just ate, and then went back to bed, so I could get up in the morning and train again. That was our life for several months. Sometimes

Kik’s friends would say, “Oh, you live in the South of France, how glamorous.” They had no idea.

While I trained, Kik would do errands or rest on our veranda. She thought Nice was the perfect place to be pregnant, because she could wander the outdoor markets buying fresh fruit and

vegetables. In the evenings we would thumb through pregnancy books and follow the growth of the baby. First it was the size of a pin, then a lemon. The big day came when Kik had trouble

buttoning her jeans for the first time.

The extent of the commitment from Kik as well as from me was very serious. Cycling was a hard, hard job, and Kik respected it as such. “Have a good day at work,” she said each morning

as I left. If we both hadn’t been equally dedicated to the lifestyle, it wouldn’t have worked. If she had felt bored, cheated, or discontented, we could not have gotten through the months

peacefully. She might as well have been a team domestique, that’s how integral she was to my training process.

Kevin could see it, because he was our best friend and also had an apartment in Nice. Unlike me, he had no one to come home to in Europe. When he returned from a race or training camp

he came back to an empty apartment, and sometimes to spoiled milk. I had fresh laundry, a clean house, a cat, a dog, and everything I needed to eat. But it took a lot of work from Kik to keep it

up. I had always been uncomfortable and lonesome living in Europe, until I did it as a happily married man. Now I was learning to love it.

There were days when I had a flat and was out in the middle of nowhere, and I’d call home and Kik would come look for me. Some afternoons she would drive up into the mountains just to

bring me Gatorade and food. She learned everything about cycling, so she could be helpful. She knew what I needed and when, which days were the tough ones, when it was good to talk, and

when to leave me alone.

On the really hard training days, she would be on pins and needles waiting to see how it had gone, because she knew how I measured my preparation and how important it was for me to be

on target. If it didn’t go well, she understood my disappointment and my grumpiness.

At the end of April, I returned to racing in a prestigious one-day classic called the Amstel Gold Race, to gauge my form. From the start, I felt like a different, stronger rider. For much of the

day I dueled with Michael Boogerd of Holland, considered one of the top riders in the world.

With ten miles to go, I rode at the front. Boogerd sat on my wheel, trailing me. By now I knew, or at least I thought I knew, that I was going to beat him in the final sprint to the finish. I would

have bet my health on it. I was that certain.

I started the last sprint–and Boogerd came out of the box. He cut around and drew even with me, and we dashed the last few hundred yards–and I lost. I lost by a centimeter. Less than a tire

width.

I was devastated. I had been absolutely certain I would win, but what cut me the most was that Boogerd was widely considered a big favorite to win the Tour de France. As we stood side by

side on the podium, all I could think about was what it meant for my Tour plans. Suddenly, I leaned over and I said to Michael, “You’re going to pay me back in July.”

He looked at me strangely. “What are you talking about?” he said. “It’s April.”

I went back to training. I rode, and I rode, and I rode. I rode like I had never ridden, punishing my body up and down every hill I could find. There were something like 50 good, arduous