Live strong

(Loosely based on his autobiographical books)

Two different human challenges and a common human stain running through both of them.

The first challenge, with fifteen million people along a journey spanning three weeks, covering mountains and riding into the rain. A simple objective, to cover a distance three thousand miles distance as quickly as possible – and still be alive at the end. It is an event that has endured for about a hundred years now that was started by a crazy Frenchman trying to outsell his competitor’s newspaper circulation. A place where your current standing is measured by the color of your jersey. Yes, I am referring to the Tour de France and the name Lance Armstrong. The latter has also come to become very familiar in the renaissance villas of the French countryside.

The second challenge also has a human element but in a more tragic sort of a way. It is also about a competition, to outlive and to out manouevuer a very real human condition. It is the dreaded C word – CANCER and it now affects a few million lives every year. There is almost an uncanny similarly between the tour and the disease – you go through stages in both of these thinking that it might be your last. You see your fellow competitors and fellow patients that drop out of the race or the fight. Lance Armstrong features in this challenge too – and is also a very familiar name in the corridors of the cancer wards in hospitals across the country.

Growing up in a faraway land, one of the first Americans I had heard about was another Armstrong,the man from Ohio who conquered the moon. Cycling has never been my thing, so it was not until recently that I came across this other Armstrong,and started learning about the man. The more I learned, the more I marveled at his story.

One day in 1996, in the prime of his youth,he coughed up blood and was diagnosed with cancer. It was already in an advanced stage and had spread into other parts of his body including the lungs and the brains – the doctors gave him a 50-50 chance of survival. In a matter of days he was in a hospital bed getting brain surgery and starting with an aggressive chemotherapy regimen. He was to take four months of chemo causing him to lose weight, hair, eyelashes and eyebrows besides his strength. Within a matter of weeks, one of his biggest sponsors decided to terminate his contract as their brand would not have anything to do with sporting icon who could merely walk. His career appeared to have had ended. He was not a superstar anymore, he was merely one of many that fighting for life. Cycling would come later.

His memoirs say that he learned a few things about himself during the time. The importance of love, friends and family. The joy of having a good day where a good day is where you don’t want to vomit. Of learning about children and kids with no eyelashes and shaven heads, yet happy and oblivious to their dreaded affliction. Of learning that you could lose your ability to be parents by getting a single vial of drug in your bloodstream. Of having to deal with a body that appears to be giving up and fighting at the same time. The days you are feeling sick – you are actually getting better. Of the need to treasure every moment, every day that you are alive.

He completed treatment went home with a hope that his cancer would not return. Cycling was his life and he wanted to get back to it - however being able to cycle again in his condition was unheard of. He was still going through the pangs of surviving cancer – of deciding whether his priority was to spend the rest of his life on the wheels. So he set about rebuilding from scratch. He trained for a while and showed up in some races here and there in 1998. His race results were not initially promising and it was unclear whether he had in him. So he dropped out of the tour in 1998 and went back to train in the mountains, alone. The same mountains that he had led his peloton in his pre- cancer days, only that it was to very different this time. He had matured as a person in his sense of harmony with himself and his aggression was less overt. Sometimes it helps to be an underdog instead of the star. And one day, during one of those 7-hour training days, he felt his rhythm coming back.

There has been no looking back since. He then went on to win the Tour de France in 1999 as a part of the USPS team and went on to continue his winning spree without precedent. If scripted in Hollywood, the story would be dismissed as melodrama: a deadly disease affecting a promising athlete. Despite desperately thin odds, he manages not only to beat the illness but also to emerge more powerful and return to the sport to win the top prize. Unbelievable, except that in this case it was true. He says that cancer is the most important thing that happened to him.

It is in rising from the ashes that defines character. It is in being afraid and then conquering the fear that you get a footing. I have lost loved ones to cancer and look forward to the day when they will find a cure for this defining challenge of our times. Unfortunately, until that time – no matter how hard we try – we will have to deal with the C word in friends, family and people we love and care about. It will never be easy to deal with such scenarios, but if you ever need something to hold on to – remind yourself of the amazing story of this Texan who battled it out in the piercing cold rain of the grey French mountains. And how he defied the odds.

Take Courage and Take Care.

Related link:
http://www.livestrong.org