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It's Not About the Bike: My Journey Back to Life ペーパーバック – 2001/9/4
This is the story of one man's journey through triumph, tragedy, transformation, and transcendance. It is the story of Lance Armstrong, the six-time winner of the Tour de France, and his fight against cancer.
People magazine called it "inspiring." The New York Times called it "fascinating." But perhaps the Cincinnati Enquirer said it best: "It's not about the bike, or about the sport. It's about the soul."
- 本の長さ304ページ
- 言語英語
- 出版社Berkley Trade
- 発売日2001/9/4
- 対象読者年齢18 歳以上
- 寸法15.49 x 2.21 x 23.01 cm
- ISBN-100425179613
- ISBN-13978-0425179611
商品の説明
レビュー
“Lance Armstrong does things in a big way. Other people write books about the long road back from cancer, or the physical and emotional trauma of infertility, or the experience of growing up without a father, or the determination it takes to win the most important bicycle race in the world. Armstrong lays claim to all of it, and the result is a pretty terrific book…Armstrong’s book is both inspiring and entertaining. He doesn’t whine, doesn’t sugar-coat the tough parts and doesn’t forget to thank the good people who helped him most along the way.”—Denver Rocky Mountain News
“A disarming and spotless prose style, one far above par for sports memoirs.”—Publishers Weekly
“Fascinating.”—The New York Times
“Lots of drama…an inspirational story.”—People
“Absolutely absorbing…compelling.”—Denver Post
“It’s about far more than just the bike.”—San Antonio Express-News
“Stirring.” —Buffalo News
“A good, emotional, genuine story, eloquently woven by two master storytellers: Mr. Armstrong, with his honesty and detail, and Ms. Jenkins, for the artists’ polish she paints on his narrative… The description of the brutal ride into the French town Sestriere (a major Tour hurdle) is as good a piece of sportswriting as you’ll find, and the perfect climax for a fast story…captivating.” —Cincinnati Enquirer
“[This] is a book with an engaging frankness that reaches readers who’d never be interested in the gear-combination mathematics that engage zealous cyclists…a book that anyone who’s been confronted by cancer, personally or through a friend or relative, should read.” —Denver Post
“The descriptions of his sport, especially of his Tour victory, are gripping.” —St. Petersburg Times
“An all-American story…inspirational.” —Booklist
“The best biography of a cyclist I’ve ever read. Lance’s voice comes through in a way I’ve not seen in print before.” —Bill Strickland, Bicycling Magazine
抜粋
Before and After
I want to die at a hundred years old with an American flag on my back and the star of Texas on my helmet, after screaming down an Alpine descent on a bicycle at 75 miles per hour. I want to cross one last finish line as my stud wife and my ten children applaud, and then I want to lie down in a field of those famous French sunflowers and gracefully expire, the perfect contradiction to my once-anticipated poignant early demise.
A slow death is not for me. I don’t do anything slow, not even breathe. I do everything at a fast cadence: eat fast, sleep fast. It makes me crazy when my wife, Kristin, drives our car, because she brakes at all the yellow caution lights, while I squirm impatiently in the passenger seat.
“Come on, don’t be a skirt,” I tell her.
“Lance,” she says, “marry a man.”
I’ve spent my life racing my bike, from the back roads of Austin, Texas to the Champs-Elysées, and I always figured if I died an untimely death, it would be because some rancher in his Dodge 4x4 ran me headfirst into a ditch. Believe me, it could happen. Cyclists fight an ongoing war with guys in big trucks, and so many vehicles have hit me, so many times, in so many countries, I’ve lost count. I’ve learned how to take out my own stitches: all you need is a pair of fingernail clippers and a strong stomach.
If you saw my body underneath my racing jersey, you’d know what I’m talking about. I’ve got marbled scars on both arms and discolored marks up and down my legs, which I keep clean-shaven. Maybe that’s why trucks are always trying to run me over; they see my sissy-boy calves and decide not to brake. But cyclists have to shave, because when the gravel gets into your skin, it’s easier to clean and bandage if you have no hair.
One minute you’re pedaling along a highway, and the next minute, boom, you’re facedown in the dirt. A blast of hot air hits you, you taste the acrid, oily exhaust in the roof of your mouth, and all you can do is wave a fist at the disappearing taillights.
Cancer was like that. It was like being run off the road by a truck, and I’ve got the scars to prove it. There’s a puckered wound in my upper chest just above my heart, which is where the catheter was implanted. A surgical line runs from the right side of my groin into my upper thigh, where they cut out my testicle. But the real prizes are two deep half-moons in my scalp, as if I was kicked twice in the head by a horse. Those are the leftovers from brain surgery.
When I was 25, I got testicular cancer and nearly died. I was given less than a 40 percent chance of surviving, and frankly, some of my doctors were just being kind when they gave me those odds. Death is not exactly cocktail-party conversation, I know, and neither is cancer, or brain surgery, or matters below the waist. But I’m not here to make polite conversation. I want to tell the truth. I’m sure you’d like to hear about how Lance Armstrong became a Great American and an Inspiration To Us All, how he won the Tour de France, the 2,290-mile road race that’s considered the single most grueling sporting event on the face of the earth. You want to hear about faith and mystery, and my miraculous comeback, and how I joined towering figures like Greg LeMond and Miguel Indurain in the record book. You want to hear about my lyrical climb through the Alps and my heroic conquering of the Pyrenees, and how it felt. But the Tour was the least of the story.
Some of it is not easy to tell or comfortable to hear. I’m asking you now, at the outset, to put aside your ideas about heroes and miracles, because I’m not storybook material. This is not Disneyland, or Hollywood. I’ll give you an example: I’ve read that I flew up the hills and mountains of France. But you don’t fly up a hill. You struggle slowly and painfully up a hill, and maybe, if you work very hard, you get to the top ahead of everybody else.
Cancer is like that, too. Good, strong people get cancer, and they do all the right things to beat it, and they still die. That is the essential truth that you learn. People die. And after you learn it, all other matters seem irrelevant. They just seem small.
I don’t know why I’m still alive. I can only guess. I have a tough constitution, and my profession taught me how to compete against long odds and big obstacles. I like to train hard and I like to race hard. That helped, it was a good start, but it certainly wasn’t the determining factor. I can’t help feeling that my survival was more a matter of blind luck.
When I was 16, I was invited to undergo testing at a place in Dallas called the Cooper Clinic, a prestigious research lab and birthplace of the aerobic exercise revolution. A doctor there measured my VO2 max, which is a gauge of how much oxygen you can take in and use, and he says that my numbers are still the highest they’ve ever come across. Also, I produced less lactic acid than most people. Lactic acid is the chemical your body generates when it’s winded and fatigued—it’s what makes your lungs burn and your legs ache.
Basically, I can endure more physical stress than most people can, and I don’t get as tired while I’m doing it. So I figure maybe that helped me live. I was lucky—I was born with an above-average capacity for breathing. But even so, I was in a desperate, sick fog much of the time.
My illness was humbling and starkly revealing, and it forced me to survey my life with an unforgiving eye. There are some shameful episodes in it: instances of meanness, unfinished tasks, weakness, and regrets. I had to ask myself, “If I live, who is it that I intend to be?” I found that I had a lot of growing to do as a man.
I won’t kid you. There are two Lance Armstrongs, pre-cancer, and post. Everybody’s favorite question is “How did cancer change you?” The real question is how didn’t it change me? I left my house on October 2, 1996, as one person and came home another. I was a world-class athlete with a mansion on a riverbank, keys to a Porsche, and a self-made fortune in the bank. I was one of the top riders in the world and my career was moving along a perfect arc of success. I returned a different person, literally. In a way, the old me did die, and I was given a second life. Even my body is different, because during the chemotherapy I lost all the muscle I had ever built up, and when I recovered, it didn’t come back in the same way.
The truth is that cancer was the best thing that ever happened to me. I don’t know why I got the illness, but it did wonders for me, and I wouldn’t want to walk away from it. Why would I want to change, even for a day, the most important and shaping event in my life?
People die. That truth is so disheartening that at times I can’t bear to articulate it. Why should we go on, you might ask? Why don’t we all just stop and lie down where we are? But there is another truth, too. People live. It’s an equal and opposing truth. People live, and in the most remarkable ways. When I was sick, I saw more beauty and triumph and truth in a single day than I ever did in a bike race—but they were human moments, not miraculous ones. I met a guy in a fraying sweatsuit who turned out to be a brilliant surgeon. I became friends with a harassed and overscheduled nurse named LaTrice, who gave me such care that it could only be the result of the deepest sympathetic affinity. I saw children with no eyelashes or eyebrows, their hair burned away by chemo, who fought with the hearts of Indurains.
I still don’t completely understand it.
All I can do is tell you what happened.
Of course I should have known that something was wrong with me. But athletes, especially cyclists, are in the business of denial. You deny all the aches and pains because you have to in order to finish the race. It’s a sport of self-abuse. You’re on your bike for the whole day, six and seven hours, in all kinds of weather and conditions, over cobblestones and gravel, in mud and wind and rain, and even hail, and you do not give in to pain.
Everything hurts. Your back hurts, your feet hurt, your hands hurt, your neck hurts, your legs h...
著者について
Sally Jenkins authored Men Will Be Boys, and co-authored Reach for the Summit and Raise the Roof (both with Pat Summit), A Coach's Life (with Dean Smith), Funny Cide (with the Funny Cide team), and No Finish Line (with Marla Runyan). She's also written for Sports Illustrated, Women's Sports & Fitness, and Washington Post.
登録情報
- 出版社 : Berkley Trade; Reissue, Reprint版 (2001/9/4)
- 発売日 : 2001/9/4
- 言語 : 英語
- ペーパーバック : 304ページ
- ISBN-10 : 0425179613
- ISBN-13 : 978-0425179611
- 対象読者年齢 : 18 歳以上
- 寸法 : 15.49 x 2.21 x 23.01 cm
- カスタマーレビュー:
著者について
著者の本をもっと発見したり、よく似た著者を見つけたり、著者のブログを読んだりしましょう
著者の本をもっと発見したり、よく似た著者を見つけたり、著者のブログを読んだりしましょう
-
トップレビュー
上位レビュー、対象国: 日本
レビューのフィルタリング中に問題が発生しました。後でもう一度試してください。
彼の、ガンから立ち直り、ツールドフランスでの2度目の優勝までの人生が、幼少期からかかれています。
彼の凄いところは、他の方が仰るように、ガンからの立ち直りやツールドフランスでの優勝記録でなく、彼の人生観にあると思います。
この本は本当にネタバレしたくないので、詳しいことは書けませんが、人生に一度は読むべきです。
勇気をもらう人、啓発される人、もしかしたら、何も感じない人もいるかもしれませんが、
私は、この本を読んで、ランスアームストロングを尊敬するようになりましたし、もう3回以上読み返しています。
人生のバイブルのような本になりました。
さらに、 Every Second Counts は、その後の、父親となってからの人生観も示されており、こちらも良い本です。
本文をそのまま、かなりの速度でひたすら読み下して行くというのが基本的なスタイルなのですが、所々割愛している部分もあるので注意が必要です。
又、元々原著に対応する音声教材としての使用を前提としては作られていない為か、ChapterとかIndex等、検索の為のいわゆる「Track情報」は一切入っていないので、教材として使用する場合は、本文の要所要所にCDの表示時間を書き込む等の工夫をして、ある程度検索性を持たせてから使用すると良いと思います。
最近出た続編「Every Second Counts」も早速購入、また感動しています。こちらはツール5連覇のフルカバーです。「今日という日は再び来ない」。だから出来る限りのことを「今日」やらないといけない。知っています。わかっています。でも出来ていない。100%燃焼せず70-80%で十分へとへとになっているサラリーマンでした、わたし自身も。
「Control your destiny, or someone else will.」ぼくの好きなGEのウェルチの言葉です。必ず出来る。自分の人生は自分で決める。ぼくは弱気モードになったとき、ランスの「It's Not About the Bike.」を手に取ります。そして一瞬を生きることの意味をかみしめ、また日々の生活に戻る勇気がわいてきます。04年、ランスは6連覇に挑むのでしょう。でも記録や順位よりランスの「生きること」の素晴らしさを確かめる、その走りに注目したい。でも本音は・・・パリ市内シャンパンを期待してますが。
私の通ったインディアナ大学が唯一「バイクレーサーとしての
肺の機能を失わずに化学療法が施せたことを知って、少し誇ら
しく思いました。
最近ツールドフランスのコースが変わり、アームストロング氏
には不利になりそうとの報道がありましたが、心から勝って
欲しいと思っています。
英語は比較的平易なのですが、やはり病名や薬の医学用語には
専門家でない限りかなり辞書のお世話になるでしょう。しかし、
英語うんぬんではなく、物語を読まされる一冊です。
ガンとの闘病記を軸にランスの半生をせきららに綴っています。
この本が広くベストセラーになり、皆から共感を得たのは、スーパーアスリートであるランスではなく、粗野で無鉄砲で田舎者な若者がガンという大きな障害を越えながら、一人の人間として成長していく過程を映し出しているからだと思います。
自転車に興味があり、英語の勉強をしたい方にお勧めです。
自転車用語や医学用語など、少し聞きなれない単語も多いですが一度読破してください。
ちなみに邦題『ただマイヨジョーヌのため…』は完全日本語訳です。
もし、原書が厳しいと感じた方はこちらもお勧めです!
他の国からのトップレビュー
Did he cheat on the Tour? Of course he did. They all did. So if everyone is doing it, is it really cheating?
But did he cheat when it came to beating cancer?
Heck no!
Like everything Lance does in his life, "losing" just isn't even conceived as an option.
And that's how he attacked and beat cancer.
I recommend this book to everyone I know who is battling an illness of any sort.
And whenever my back is against the wall on anything, I ask myself "what would Lance do?"
Highly recommend this book.
2015年12月10日にインドでレビュー済み