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The last test was a final individual time trial in Mâcon. Sun blazed over a course that undulated
through vineyards, alleys of spectators lining the way. I wanted to win it badly–to show that I
was still the strongest rider, to make up for the one I had lost early in the Tour. This time I felt
good and everything went right, and I did tear up the road.
The rest of the way toParis, we concentrated on riding safely and luxuriated in our
accomplishment. The team was infallible, every man as strong as the next. Pavel rode good
tempo in the flats. Roberto and Chechu were awesome on the climbs. Floyd suffered like a dog,
but he came through it and added depth. George and Eki were like linebackers, escorting me
around like a couple of personal bodyguards, riding in the wind and in crowds.

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“Random drug control,” the woman said.
Kik couldn't believe it. “It's seven in the morning,” she snapped.
The woman just stuck out the paperwork.
I came to the door.
“What are you doing?” I demanded.
“Random drug control,” she repeated.
“Random? What's random about this? Are you kidding?”
Kik was so angry she was trembling. She'd always faintly resented the drug testers because of
their lack of cordiality, the way they barged into the house and gave orders. “If only they'd say,
'Howare you?' ” she'd say. But this felt like an outright violation, for them to show up on the
doorstep while we were in our bathrobes, with newborns in the house. They had seen Kik in
labor, only a week earlier, and it had been all over theAustinpaper when we brought the children
home from the hospital, and they knew exactly how invasive a test must have been at this time
in our lives. I was all for random testing, but this went too far. It felt like needless harassment in
the game of “Gotcha.”

Every Second Counts-Lance Armstrong(4)

We wound through northeasternFrance, racing parallel to theEnglish Channel, and Jan Ullrich
and I marked each other. Once again, he was the rider to beat, the most talented and credible
challenger in the peloton. He came into the race superbly fit, in much better form than in the
previous year, with jutting cheekbones and muscles bulging under his racing skins. “It's now or
never,” Ullrich declared.
We went to Verdun, the garrison town about 160 miles from Paris where 600,000 soldiers from
France and Germany and America lost their lives in World War I, and where I'd won my first
Tour stage in 1993. This time, we raced in a team time trial. The 41.5-mile course was buffeted
by wind and rain, and about halfway through, two of our Postal riders, Christian Vande Velde
and Roberto Heras, hit a newly painted road line. Vande Velde's bike skidded out from under
him, and their wheels touched. They went down in a clattering heap. Christian broke his arm
and had to abandon the Tour. Roberto would ride sorely for a week.

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The real reward for pain is this: self-knowledge. If I quit, however, it would have lasted forever,
that surrender, even the smallest act of giving up, would have stayed with me for the duration.
When you felt like quitting, you had to ask yourself which you would rather live with.
After it was all over, someone gave Bart a picture. It was of me, pale and delirious as I suffered
on the climb up Joux-Plane. In the background, Bart is running alongside me, urging me on.
Behind Bart is a guy dressed up as the Devil, one of those costumed characters who haunt the
roadsides of the Tour and give it a circuslike atmosphere. It was as if they represented the two
choices, either to keep on or to quit.
To me, it was a classic photograph of Bart, because that's the kind of friend he is, the kind who
is there on your worst day ever.Your very worst, not the glory day. That day, my worst, one of
my best friends was right behind me, on foot, screaming at me to keep going. Maybe it was the
real victory to have the same people around me, whether it was a day spent in a hospital bed, or
a day when I almost lost a race.

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I've never wanted to look over my shoulder. Occasionally, friends asked me why I wasn't more
curious about the past. “I don't like going backwards,” I said. “It just creates a headache.”
Looking backwards went against my nature; I did my self-seeking on a bike, facing front, at
high speed. What I knew how to do best was move forward.
When I was young, I rode to amount to something. Then, later, I rode to prove I could survive,
and to astonish all the skeptics who'd left me for dead. But what would be the motive now?
What would keep me in the saddle in the fifth and sixth hour, when the snow turned black?
That was the question I'd confront in the 2000 Tour de France. I had every intention of winning
the Tour again. It never occurred to me to rest on my past victory. An athlete doesn't particularly
want a past; that means he's done. He only wants a present and a future.

Every Second Counts-Lance Armstrong(1)

CHAPTER 1
Pitched Back
So, it looks as though I'm going to live–at least for another 50 years or more. But whenever I
need to reassure myself of this, as I sometimes do, I go out to a place called Dead Man's Hole,
and I stare down into it, and then, with firm intent, I strip off my shirt and I leap straight out
into what you might call the great sublime.
Let's say it's my own personal way of checking for vital signs. Dead Man's Hole is a large green
mineral pool gouged out of a circular limestone cliff, so deep into the hill country ofTexasthat
it's hardly got an address. According to conflicting legends, it's either where Confederates tossed
Union sympathizers to drown, or where Apaches lured unsuspecting cowboys who didn't see
the fall coming. In any event, I'm drawn to it, so much so that I bought 200 acres of brush and
pasture surrounding it, and I've worn a road into the dirt by driving out there. It seems only right
that a place called Dead Man's Hole should belong to a guy who nearly died–and who, by the
way, has no intention of just barely living.