That's one of the two questions I get asked the most. What was it like to work with Lance Armstrong, cancer survivor, hero, seven-time Tour-de-France champion, greatest athlete on earth? The answer, as with most of the answers I've found in life - and in the Tour de France - sounds deceptively simple. Imagine, I tell people, you're standing in line to board a groaning city bus one day when someone plucks you up and plops you into the cockpit of a rumbling, roaring fighter jet. Or imagine you're invited to play a game of chess but when you sit down you realize that your king is some sort of unprecedented, one-of-a-kind phenomenon that, rather than needing to be protected and sheltered to win, will instead be able to launch blistering offensive attacks by leaping squares faster and farther and in different ways than any chess piece ever has. People understand what I'm trying to tell them: Power. Adrenaline. Force. But most people also miss the second half of those analogies - which is the important half, if you're interested in anything more substantial than simple thrills. Put a civilian in charge of a fighter jet and you're more likely to end up with a smoking wreck than a decorated and glorious hero. Give chess novices a super-king - give them two, or three -- and the board will still be ruled by a grandmaster opponent who has studied hundreds of thousands of games and memorized every opening and end-game and plays ten moves ahead of ordinary comprehension. Muscle power without mental power means nothing... - Read the entire chaper HERE (PDF file - 123K) |
A Simple Guide to Succeeding at Anything
