Its not about the bike - Lance Armstrong

In this semi autobiographical book, Lance Armstrong writes about his career as a racing cyclist, his fight against cancer & his beating the disease winning the tour de France. It is really amazing to read about such people who in spite of all the odds just DO IT.

The book starts with some background about his childhood & how eventually he took up sports, won triathlon & then started with cycling as a professional. His mother had always been supportive. It just took him few years and loads of training & practice to earn name n fame in it. He was at the peak of his success when cancer hit him & he realized for the first time that he is human and vincible.


He has explained his cancer treatment in quite detail. How initially he read loads of stuff to understand his disease n chances of survival, & consulted various doctors to finalize on treatment. Fortunately he got a doctor who told him alternative therapy so that his lungs don't get damaged cuz of toxicity. The brain surgery & chemo therapy progressed & weakened him physically. But all this while with support of family n frens he fought it mentally. He wanted to conquer the disease because he wanted to live. At places he also compares cancer treatment with biking training & that was really interesting, the comparison i mean.

Then he explains the post cancer phase, which according to him was even more difficult because he didn't know what he could do now. He had always been cycling and winning & now with this therapy he no longer was all that strong etc. So it took him quite a while & will power & support & rigorous training , but eventually he did get back to cycling & won the tour de France, which is supposed to be the toughest cycling race in the world. And oh wikipedia tells me that this person has won this tour de France since then consecutively 7 times ..my god.

Lance has written this book quite well. He has explained how cancer has changed him as a person & he has given words to emotions quite nicely. Its so amazing to see what human will power can do, the extend to which it can take a person. It may sound as cliche but there is no limit to the wonders, faith & will power can do. And so reading this book just made me so happy n positive :)