It's Not About the Bike: My Journey Back to Life by Lance Armstrong

stages.
    I still struggled with impatience at times. I would ride smart for a while, and then backslide. I just couldn’t seem to get it through my head that in order to win I had to ride more slowly at
    first. It took some time to reconcile myself to the notion that being patient was different from being weak, and that racing strategically didn’t mean giving less than all I had.
    With only a week to go before the World Championships, I made a typical blunder in the championship of Zurich and used myself up before the critical part of the race. Again, I didn’t
    even finish in the Top 20. Och could have lost his temper with me; instead he stayed over in Zurich for the next two days and went riding with me. He was certain I could win at the Worlds
    in Oslo–but only if I rode intelligently. As we trained together he chatted to me about self-control.
    “The only thing you have to do is wait,” he said. “Just wait. Two or three laps is soon enough. Anything earlier and you’ll waste your chance to win. But after that, you can attack as many
    times as you want.”
    There were no ordinary cyclists in the World Championships. I would be facing big riders, at their peak, and the favorite was Miguel Indurain, who had just come off of his third victory in
    the Tour de France. If I wanted to win I’d have to overcome some long historical odds; no
    21-year-old had ever won a world title in cycling.
    In the last few days leading up to the race, I called my mother again, and asked her to come over and stay with me. I didn’t want to go through it alone, and she had always been a source of
    confidence for me. Also, I wanted her to see me race in that company. She took some vacation time from Ericsson and flew over to join me, and stayed with me in my hotel room.
    She took care of me, the way she used to. She did my laundry in the sink, saw that I had what I wanted to eat, answered the phone, and made sure I got my rest. I didn’t have to talk cycling
    with her, or explain how I felt–she just understood. The closer we got to that day, the quieter I grew. I shut down, planning the race in my mind. She just read by a small lamp while I stared at
    the ceiling or napped.
    Finally race day arrived–but when I awoke, it was raining. I opened my eyes and saw drops on the windowpanes. The hated, dreaded rain, the source of so much anguish and embarrassment in
    San Sebastian.
    It rained torrentially, all day long. But there was one person who suffered in the rain more than I did that day: my mother. She sat in a grandstand in the rain for seven hours, and never once got
    up. There was a big screen mounted in front of the grandstand so the crowd could watch us out on the 18.4-kilometer course, and she sat there, drenched, watching riders crash all over the
    course.
    When it rains in Europe the roads become covered with a slick sort of residue, made of dust and petrol. Guys were thrown off their bikes right and lef1″, their wheels sliding out from under
    them. I crashed, too, twice. But each time I recovered quickly, got back on the bike, and rejoined the race, still in contention.
    Through it all, I waited, and waited. I held back, just as Och had told me to. With 14 laps to go, I was in the lead group–and right there was Indurain, the bravura rider from Spain. Finally, on
    the second-to-last climb, I attacked. I charged up the hill and reached the peak with my wheel in front of the pack. I hurtled down the descent, and then soared right into another climb, a steep
    ascent called the Ekeberg, with the other riders right on my back. I said to myself, “I’ve got to go right now, with everything I’ve ever gone with,” and I rose from the seat and attacked again,
    and this time I opened up a gap.
    On the other side of the Ekeberg was another long, dangerous descent, this one of four kilometers, and in the rain anything could happen; the wheels could disappear out from under
    you as the entire road became a slick. But I took the