Yellow Hero

"It's ironic, I used to ride my bike to make a living. Now I just want to live so that I can ride." - Lance Armstrong

Did a "Lance Armstrong" search yesterday night, after much sights for the WearYellow LiveStrong bands currently being sought for like a fashion fad. Not mentioning the many imitations and look-a-like bands out on the streets these day. Guess some of these bands do carry some meanings, i am just hopeful that people who wear them know what they are for.

My prior knowledge to yellow livestrong bands and Lance Armstrong came from togoparts a forum i once frequent. I just know that these bands were for some cancer support and Lance was some champion in Tour de France, a biker that many worshipped (at least thats what i felt from the forum). I had totally no idea the two were related only until recently.

Last night's search was fruitful and interesting, at least it got me reading the rest of the night away after CSI. Long but nice read article from the New Yorker, The Long Ride. It was like reading a story of a Super Hero from the comic world, Superman? Just like how Clark Kent realised his supernatural power, how he learn to use it to help people, his life story? Lance was somewhat like him, born with some special physical advantage to his sport, founded the LAF to help cancer patients. At least he is more of a fact than fiction, more down to earth and much more closer to the heart by seeing how a real life human being could really do with his own ability and effort in reaching out to many people. I felt the most significant "super power" he had was his spirit and preservance. I kinda respected them and felt inspired.

Extracts from the New Yorker.
Lance Armstrong's heart is almost a third larger than that of an average man. During those rare moments when he is at rest, it beats about thirty-two times a minute—slowly enough so that a doctor who knew nothing about him would call a hospital as soon as he heard it. (When Armstrong is exerting himself, his heart rate can edge up above two hundred beats a minute.) Physically, he was a prodigy.

Chris Carmichael (Lance teenage coach): Not only has his cardiovascular strength always been exceptional; his body seems specially constructed for cycling. His thigh bones are unusually long, for example, which permits him to apply just the right amount of torque to the pedals.

While performing well in his cycling career, Lance was diagnosed with testicular cancer in October 1996

...the disease had spread to his lungs, abdomen, and brain. He needed brain surgery and the most aggressive type of chemotherapy. "At that point, he had a minority chance of living another year," Craig Nichols, who was Armstrong's principal oncologist, told me. "We cure at most a third of the people in situations like that."...Nichols described Armstrong as the "most willful person I have ever met." And, he said, "he wasn't willing to die." Armstrong underwent four rounds of chemotherapy so powerful that the chemicals destroyed his musculature and caused permanent kidney damage; in the final treatments, the chemicals left burns on his skin from the inside out.

Carmichael and Bill Stapleton, Armstrong's close friend and agent, helped persuade him that this wasn't the way to end his career. "We said, 'You will look back on this and be disappointed—you are going out as a quitter,' " Carmichael told me. Armstrong agreed to prepare for one last race, in the United States. He, Carmichael, and a friend went to Boone, a small town in North Carolina where Armstrong liked to train. "Early April," Carmichael recalled. "The first day was nice. Then the weather turned ugly. I would follow behind in the car as they trained. One day, we were to finish at the top of Beech Mountain. It was a long ride, a hundred-plus miles, then the ride to the top. Something happened on that mountain. He just dropped his partner and he went for it. He was racing. It was weird. I was following behind him in the car. This cold rain was now a wet snow. And I rolled down the window and I was honking the horn and yelling, 'Go, Lance, go!' He was attacking and cranking away as though we were in the Tour. Nobody was around. No human being. Not even a cow. He got up to the top of that mountain and I said, 'O.K., I'll load the bike on the car and we can go home.' He said, 'Give me my rain jacket—I'm riding back.' Another thirty miles. That was all he said. It was like throwing on a light switch."

Lance took fame after making history for winning 6 consecutive times in Tour de France.

The Tour de France has been described as the equivalent of running twenty marathons in twenty days. During the nineteen-eighties and nineties, Wim H. M. Saris, a professor of nutrition at the University of Maastricht, conducted a study of human endurance by following participants in the Tour. "It is without any doubt the most demanding athletic event," he told me. "For one day, two days—sure, you may find something that expends more energy. But for three weeks? Never."

Lance trains 35 hours a week on his bicycle and when asked on what he thinks about his training schedule:

"Depends whether you want to win," he replied. "I do. The Tour is a two-thousand-mile race, and people sometimes win by one minute. Or less. One minute in nearly a month of suffering isn't that much. So the people who win are the ones willing to suffer the most." Suffering is to cyclists what poll data are to politicians; they rely on it to tell them how well they are doing their job. Like many of his competitors in the peloton, Armstrong seems to love pain, and even to crave it.

"Cycling is so hard, the suffering is so intense, that it's absolutely cleansing," he wrote in his autobiography. "The pain is so deep and strong that a curtain descends over your brain. . . . Once, someone asked me what pleasure I took in riding for so long. 'Pleasure?' I said. 'I don't understand the question.' I didn't do it for pleasure. I did it for pain."

Armstrong describes his bike as his office. "It's my job," he told me. "I love it, and I wouldn't ride if I didn't. But it's incredibly hard work, full of sacrifices.

Some other interesting quotes from Lance:

"pain is temporary. it may last a minute, or an hour, or a day, or even a year - but eventually it will subside and something else will take its place. if i quit, however, it lasts forever"

"i thought about giving up once when i got diagnosed with brain, lung, and testicular cancer all at the same time. but you know what? i got back on that bike and won the tour de france 5 times in a row. i guess if a guy never give up he'll never have anything to regret. but i'm sure you have a great reason for quitting though"

The achievements of Lance were not only due to his talents but also due to the amount of hard work and perservance he puts in. The spirit of not wanting to give up, the belief to conquer any obstacles in life and the idea of achieving by working hard for it will eventually turn everyone of us to be heros in our own lives.