It's Not About The Bike: My Journey Back to Life

This book is outstanding, and while I retain very little respect for Lance Armstrong on a personal level, after watching his interview with Opera, I still highly recommend this book, as it is outstanding.

2015 update: Didn't you hear and read Betsy Andreau's eye-witness account of Lance in hospital with testicular cancer? He got his testicular cancer from using performance enhancing drugs and steroids... and yet after his recovery, he persisted with performance enhancing drugs and EPO.... hero cancer survivor? NOT! Still untruthful after all these years..... even more pathetic is that he can't even manage an honest confession.... truth does matter in our world, now and always.
2014 update: I read this book back in 2004 and was convinced that Lance Armstrong was a liar. I gave a review (then unpopular of course) of another of his books that also appeared to be full of lies. I was an athlete in the marathon - I knew what it took to be dedicated, train hard, and perform honestly... and most importantly to live every day with honorable athletic values that our children should be raised to expect from adults. The biggest discredit this book has paid is not even to the lives of real athletes (like Greg LeMond, who honestly won the Tour de France 3 times and who spoke out about Lance's illicit drugs and blood doping, and in return Lance destroyed Greg LeMond's biking business and attacked his family) -- that was a blight on the history of cycling that is inexcusable. But the bigger discredit is to the youth of our country and the world - the young people that deserve to know that a real athlete is true to their values and their families. Lance Armstrong brutally dumped his lovely former wife Kristin -- and their 3 children - he sold his soul long before we all had the recent evidence. It is for the youth of our world that I believe this book should be retitled or at least have some sort of correct "truth fact sheet" attached to it. No child who is interested in sports and athletics should ever be subjected to these lies by Lance Armstrong -- without a corrected "truth fact sheet" attached to this book.
The worst part of it all -- it is now documented (as I had suspected) that Lance Armstrong took performance enhancing drugs before his testicular cancer - that is probably the reason that he came down with testicular cancer in the first place! Betsy Andreu heard Lance telling the doctor this while he was getting treatment for his now famous testicular cancer. WOW what a super fraud he is and this book also truly is! Our children desperately deserve to know that Lance Armstrong not only most likely induced cancer cell growth from his cheating with performance enhancing drugs (steroids kill T-cells, our critical immune cells that in turn delete cancer cells and virally infected cells), but that he made an entire cheating, lying, profit-oriented empire from this "oh poor me I have overcome my cancer to win the Tour de France" story! PLEASE put some sort of "corrected truth fact sheet" on the cover of this book so that nobody who is vulnerable will be misled again - what a fraud to our children and to the many cancer survivors that are drawing false inspiration from this fallen person's book! Lastly, I hope that Armstrong genuinely does go on to not only further redeem himself, but that he can ever make up somehow to the people whose lives he destroyed -- Greg LeMond and his family (he obliterated their Trek biking business), Frankie and Betsy Andreu, Emma O'Reilly, his many fallen and not so fallen team members, and the poor children and aspiring athletes that read this book of deceipt. Yes it's not about the bike -- it's about the truth for all our youth and impressionable athletes to read. And it's also about Lance's former wife poor Kristin Armstrong... what a super hero she still is and always has been and always will be.

For most people, giving them some paper and a typewriter is like giving them rope to hang themselves with. And this book is an excellent example. Lance Armstrong wastes no time in demonstrating his staggering vulgarity and total self-absorption.
Apparently, rather than tax himself with the task of being a good person - something that seems not even to have penetrated the outer edges of the universe of his ideas - Armstrong considers himself to have made a compelling case for greatness simply by being a good cyclist. And apparently many, many readers cannot see anything wrong with Armstrong's narcissistic totalitarianism and in fact drink it down like water. You want the book boiled down for you? Lance Armstrong is a piece of ... who happens to ride a bike.

The events described in this book are mostly fiction. A true account would describe a mediocre cyclist who couldn't win a race without cheating. So he made it his life's work to be a cheater, liar and fraud. More like a gangster than a competitor, he bullied, attacked and sued anyone who dared speak the truth. He organized a drug ring within the U.S. team, so that his teammates would be as fraudulent as himself, and he would be able to keep them in constant fear of being exposed. There is no winning behavior in this story. It is a sad and vile tale of pathological liar corrupted by greed and evil. This is not about surviving cancer, it is about being a cancer.

If you want to know why Lance Armstrong is better than you, read this book. I recently heard it described as, "He's right. It's not about the bike. It's about him." A few people, however, do like this book for some reason.

Now that the truth about Lance Armstrong has been revealed this book may not be of much interest to new readers. At the time that I read it, I thoroughly enjoyed it. I have noticed that a new documentary about Lance is about to be released (2014). All I can say, is that Lance is a great storyteller. And perhaps he could have been a great cyclist even without the drugs.

My Dr. Recommended I read Lance ' s book because I am battling cancer. "It's Not About the Bike" is truly an inspirational true story of Lance taking on cancer. Lance does not hold anything back of ...story begins when he was young boy. Highly recommend.

The book purchase was advertised as new. When it arrived the glue had separated from the spine. I contacted the seller, and they refunded my purchase and suggested I might donate the book. Good customer service, but not new condition.

Despite the bravado of the now known biking career issues, the book provides good insight into his battle with cancer. That, in turn, provided motivation for my son who is now fighting the same battle. Oddly, the paradox of Armstrong's victory over cancer set against his "win at all costs" serves as a reminder that the gift of health trumps the need for greed.

I would recommend this book to anyone who is going through a cancer battle. This book helped my husband get through his treatment for Lymphoma. Lance is an inspiration and his story is so amazing and scary. I read the book as well and have given it to 2 other people who are beginning their battle with cancer. It's a must read!

Most inspirational book I have read in a long time. It made all of my problems dissapear along with all of my aches and pains. The pain Lance went through in winning 7 Tour de France paled into insignificant compared to the pain of his treatment for testicular cancer.