Book
Excerpts
27 Hours
TV, magazine, and newspaper stories attempting to explain Lance’s success invariably mention how his heart is 33 percent larger than the average man's and pumps so many extra liters of blood per minute. So what? The same is true for the other few hundred pro cyclists on the circuit who pedal six hundred miles each week. Daniel Coyle's Lance Armstrong's War details a simple performance test Lance did frequently throughout his career to gauge his fitness level. Conducted by Lance's trainer and noted cycling physician Dr. Michele Ferrari, the test measures the amount of lactic acid accumulated in the bloodstream in conjunction with watts of energy produced while cycling at high intensity. Dividing a rider's body weight by the number of watts he can sustain without "blowing up" (succumbing to lactic acid accumulation in the muscles) produces a value that Dr. Ferrari believe is a critical performance indicator . According to Dr. Ferrari, 6.7 watts per kilogram of body weight is the magic number that a rider must attain as a prerequisite for winning the Tour de France.
In Coyle's book Ferrari comments that Lance has a "natural" (as in predominantly genetic) advantage over his competition in the neighborhood of two percent because his muscles simply produce less acid waste product when hammering up a mountain than the next guy. However, Ferrari reminds us, this edge is not enough to account for seven dominant Tour de France victories.
Another recurring theme, "Lance trains harder than any other cyclist in the world," in and of itself means little. The guy who studied harder and longer than anyone in my freshman dorm nevertheless struggled with his grades. Once I glanced at one of his textbooks and noticed highlighter pen blanketing nearly every word on the pages!
What's more significant than Lance's "genetically gifted," "most competitive," and "hardest worker" yearbook nominations is how Lance was able to get the most out of his mind and body, avoid the burnout and overtraining that afflicts many top athletes, and peak at the exact right time for so many consecutive years. Being Lance's longtime friend, training partner, and business manager, Knaggs provides perhaps the most astute insights of anyone into Lance's peak performance attributes. Knaggs explains that the speed of Lance's brain is right up there with his pedaling speed as a key component of his winning formula.
"Like the flickering images that make up the display on a computer screen, our brains have a cognitive refresh rate," said Knaggs. "We take stock of our environment, recognize patterns, and make instantaneous assessments that govern our actions. This happens on a subconscious level. Lance's refresh rate is three times as fast as the average person's. He never zones out at any time; he's always hypervigilant, during the Tour and during his busy, multifaceted life. He's a good full step ahead of everybody, always thinking toward something, moving at a faster speed and never resting. He gets three hours out of the day that no one else does. At the end of the day, that mentality and that attitude do not allow him to accept anything less than absolute top effort from everyone around him."
Knaggs continues, "In this way, success is compounded by the little things that he does and how they rub off on people around him. Lance is always networking, finding the best people, being a shrewd assessor of talent, getting the best out of people, getting rid of people who don't work, finding better ones to replace them. On the other hand, people who come up short in one area or another, who zone out instead of remain focused, find that they compound failure. We have seen this with many of Lance's competitors. If you zone out for one second in a bike race, due to fatigue or whatever, you are at risk of a devastating crash.
"The reason Lance was so great at cycling is the complexity of the sport and the depth of the preparation required. Sure he has the boxer's mentality, which is important. But that alone will just get you overtrained or defeated in competition by a superior strategist. There are lots of athletes in that category. You also have to be smart. You have to be willing and motivated to do the right work, confident so you don't do too much or too little, and strategically prepare for a peak performance. You must never lack motivation, and you must have a strong desire to just eat people up--physically and mentally," Knaggs concludes.
Entering the Zone...With a Detour To The Bagel Shop
When I was a professional triathlete, I discovered that the mechanics of being an athlete were the simple part--turning the pedals, swimming the laps, and running the trails were fun, beat a real job, and got me in great shape. But the complex part that separated the winners from the rest of the pack went beyond cultural and genetic background and even work ethic.
A few years into my career, I realized that there was not much more physical effort I could apply to training and get better. In fact, my body was starting to rebel at the amount of physical stress placed on it, and I was frequently getting tired, burned out and beaten by superior athletes on the race course. I realized that I needed to look in other directions for improvement, such as my lifestyle, beliefs, attitude, and behavior that affected performance.
I discovered that I needed to sacrifice personal diversions in favor of sleep, so I slept virtually half my life (ten hours per night with a one- to two-hour afternoon nap several days per week) to absorb the difficult training regimen that I followed for nine years. When I experienced disappointment on the race course, I had to learn to avoid the traps of negativity, defensiveness, and blame that we use as protective mechanisms when we don't get what we want.
Falling prey to emotional and mental frailties just dug me into a deeper hole. Instead, I had to develop the ability to get out of bed the next morning with a positive attitude and high motivation levels intact. When faced with the intense pressure of a major competition, I had to develop the ability to remain calm, relaxed, and focused on personal peak performance.
My favorite line to describe this optimal approach is "Results happen naturally when motivation is pure." With a pure motivation, I would experience a higher level of performance without having to struggle or force anything. At those times, I was experiencing what James Loehr calls the "Ideal Performance State" (IPS), affectionately known as the zone. Loehr describes IPS in his book Stress for Success as "physically relaxed, mentally calm, fearless, energized, positive, happy, effortless, automatic, confident," and so on.
We can all relate to times when we were in the zone and enjoyed breakthrough competitive performances--in athletic or other arenas. The hard part is staying in the zone for a sustained period of time and avoiding the distractions and pitfalls that come as a consequence of both failure and success. In contrast, being in the zone and embodying the clinical characteristics of the IPS seem to be second nature to Lance.
At the 1988 Vancouver International Triathlon, local families housed the many professional athletes who flew in for this high-profile event. Lance (in the midst of his teenage foray onto the pro triathlon circuit) and I were staying in the same neighborhood near the race start and made plans to bicycle to the starting line on race morning. I appeared at his homestay at the appointed time; he was running well behind schedule. I waited impatiently, growing nervous that the already stressful prerace minutes were ticking off with an unplanned delay.
Pedaling toward the waterfront race venue, we approached a bustling coffee and bagel shop, causing Lance to proclaim, "Man, I'm hungry. Let's stop for a bagel, BK." While eating a bagel was the last thing on my mind (most athletes set their alarms for two or three hours before an event, consume some high-tech nutritional supplement like a liquid meal replacement or energy bar, and then go back to sleep), I indulged him in another detour. Circular snack in hand, Lance and I pedaled on toward the race venue, now dangerously close to the start time. While my nervousness and anxiety were building inside, I could not help but laugh at the sight of my riding partner rolling into the transition area with a bagel stuffed in his mouth.
As I completed my hurried prerace preparations and hustled off anxiously toward the start of the swim, I heard Lance yell, "Hey, BK!" As I turned to face him, he flashed the thumbs-up sign and said, "Let's kick some ass today!" Instantly, my nervousness and tension melted away into a big smile, thanks to a fellow competitor no less. On the short walk to the swim start, I could feel my anxious state of being transformed into the Ideal Performance State. I realized that the great pains athletes take to be prepared, follow their obsessive but comforting precompetition rituals, account for all variables, and show up on time pale in comparison to having a kick-ass mind-set. After all, we were there to race our brains out for two hours, not for a job interview.
Don't get me wrong. Being serious and professional in your approach is critical. The teenage, bagel-scarfing Lance arriving at the race at the last minute is a far cry from the Tour de France champion noted for his tremendous attention to detail and devoted preparation. However, I'll always bet on someone who shows up late ready to win over someone with all their ducks lined up neatly but feeling insecure and fearful about the competition.
Athletes and other performers express their precompetition jitters in different ways. Some turn inward and suffer anxiety solemnly, some play the macho intimidator role to artificially boost confidence, and others engage in serial self-deprecating comments or become insincerely friendly and chatty. These "game face" acts can create negative energy because they all suggest a doomed attempt to fight against and somehow overcome: the butterflies that are a natural and healthy component of the body's stress response.
If, instead, you were able to go with the flow, be honest with yourself, and be completely positive in the face of an important competition, you would then be able to enter the zone effortlessly. Consider this passage from Martin Dugard (author of Chasing Lance: The 2005 Tour de France and Lance Armstrong's Ride of a Lifetime), which appeared in a September 2001 article in Competitor magazine. Dugard comments about Lance's disposition in the final days of the 2001 Tour, as he witnessed this scene unfold in a small French restaurant:
A lean young man descended the staircase above my head, displaying the charisma and presence of a Kennedy, then rushed into the arms of a child screaming, "Daddy-yo-yo." The restaurant staff looked as if they were barely restraining themselves to do the same.
For the next half-hour, Lance (does anyone refer to him as "Armstrong" anymore?) played with his son, made nice with the folks from Nike and U.S. Postal Service, and lamented to his wife that they were sleeping in separate rooms again. The parenthetical is from original story, written by Dugard. He sounded like any other husband during a dry spell, which made him come across as human. Which was refreshing, because Lance's relaxation was almost inhuman.
At that moment, he was leading the Tour de France, just three days from winning his third consecutive title. The next morning, Lance would face a make-or-break individual time trial, 61 kilometers against the clock with no one to blame but himself for a bad day. The Tour was far from done. Losing the lead in the last week would make "Lance" a household name for failure instead of heroism.
Not that Lance seemed to care. Where he should have been nervous, he was joking. Where he should have been distant and forgivingly brusque, he worked the table like a pro before disappearing back upstairs, son in tow, so his wife could eat dinner in peace.
Lance was not only destroying the Tour field, he was giving weekend warrior husbands a bad name. The "I've got a race tomorrow" excuse just became very, very lame.
At the risk of sounding abrasive, athletes or those otherwise consumed with a peak performance endeavor deserve to read this passage over a few times. Or, if you play the role of “supportive partner”, re-read this section aloud to your partner! It seems paradoxical that Lance, facing the most extreme pressure imaginable in world-level competition, can be more loose and relaxed than the average tightly strung amateur competitor in a local triathlon. Like many paradoxes, therein lies an important secret for you to achieve peak performance breakthroughs. Get over yourself and the negative nervous energy generated by your obsession with results. Instead, just go out there and kick some ass today!
For Love or Money?
Lance believed deeply that the highest expression of his talent as a human being and greatest impact on he could have on society was to be a champion in his sport of destiny. This was his all-consuming life purpose, pursued with intensity unimaginable to the average person or even most of his competition. Over the course of his career, he created a lifestyle ideally suited to achieving his goals, understanding the importance of balance, sacrifice, patience and decision-making uncluttered by distraction or superficial motivators.
Without this clarity of purpose, he would have not have made it or stayed at the top for any length of time - the sacrifice was too intense to pursue and maintain dominance. Despite the incredible amount of suffering and difficult physical work involved, Lance stated repeatedly that he loved all aspects of his cycling career. Just as the street sweeper can take inspiration from Michaelangelo, athletes and non-athletes alike can all relate the passion Lance showed for riding his bicycle and implement the success factor of Clarity of Purpose to enrich their own lives.
“Early in my career, my purpose for competing was - like most young people – money,” Lance reveals. “When I enjoyed some good luck with financial success, I can honestly say that money was no longer the main motivation. I don’t think it should be for an athlete, or anyone else for that matter. The motivation I had early in my career was effective, but it wasn’t very healthy or long lasting. If I remained motivated primarily by money, I would have burned out long before winning the Tour de France seven times. My motivation evolved to something deeper and longer lasting – my love for the sport: the training, the competition and the pursuit of excellence as a professional cyclist.”
Because love of the sport was Lance’s primary motivator, he was able to maintain a healthy perspective about his athletic career. He didn’t equate results with self-esteem. He possessed a higher purpose than just winning – motivating and inspiring millions and serving as a role model for sportsmanship, dedication and commitment – particularly to the cancer community. Feeling this clear and higher purpose became a source of power when he faced challenging circumstances. Rather than choke or withdraw under pressure, he felt the freedom to give his best effort.
Furthermore, having a clear and holistic purpose for pursuing goals is the key to maintaining extremely high motivation levels, even after tremendous success makes superficial motivators like wealth and glory an afterthought. “When Lance came back after cancer, he had a higher purpose for the first time,” Bart Knaggs remembers. “People crave purpose, a sense of belonging to a community or bigger cause. Before cancer, Lance never had this. He had minimal family ties and lived a transient lifestyle – traveling all over for races, spending part of the year in Texas and part in Italy, then moving to France and so on. Then, all of the sudden, he gets a sense of nobility and embarks on a heroes journey. He wanted to show the world that he could recover from being a white, pasty, bald cancer victim to become the best cyclist in the world.”
Lance continues, “When I needed to be motivated, I never lacked it. During the off season, I was certainly not motivated to go out and do six weeks of heavy, intense training, but I didn’t need to either. Having the balance of an off-season and regularly programmed down time enabled me to never struggle for motivation when I needed it. You have to know when to step on the gas and when to brake. Now if I couldn’t find motivation in May (a crucial training period for the July Tour de France) that would have been a real problem. But it never happened.
“When you work hard for something and achieve it, you get the prize of time off, of being able to create your own schedule, to re-write the rules [of cycling],” Lance explains. Pro cyclists typically are required by their teams to race 150+ days per year over an eight to nine month season. Lance raced maybe 50 days a year over a competitive season happening over roughly a four month period (April-July). During that competitive season, his sole focus was the Tour de France. He allowed all of the other races to serve as tune-up events, with his finishing results of minor concern. Nevertheless, in 2001 he earned the world’s #1 ranking in a point system that encompasses all races.
Lance reaching number one with his mini season is a great example of the power of focusing on peak performance. (I had moderate success using this argument with bosses who discovered that I might be working a shortened day when I telecommuted from my home office; Hey, I was so focused and free of distraction that I could accomplish in 6 hours at home what would take me 10 at headquarters!).
For Instance, A Balanced Life
It’s certainly easier to be high minded and put love ahead of money when you are making eighteen million bucks a year, but Lance explains that it was his cancer ordeal that altered his perspective more than a swelling bank account. “After my illness, money and the acquiring of material goods just didn’t seem as important. It helped me realize there is more to life than earning money and the things that come with that – your neighborhood, the car you drive, that kind of thing. I work hard and of course like to get paid for what I do, but money isn’t the primary motivator.”
In contrast, many of us struggle with motivation levels, perhaps because the clarity of purpose and pure love for the activity is clouded by superficial goals and ego demands. Many in the rat race sell out their families, leaving corporate legends like longtime GE boss Jack Welch to lament in his autobiography Jack: Straight From the Gut, that he regrets not leading a balanced life. “Not coincidentally, my direct reports showed up [to work on Saturdays] too,” says Welch. “It’s clear that the balance I chose had consequences for the people around me at home and at the office. For instance, my kids were raised, largely alone, by their mother...If there was ever a case of ‘Do as I say, not as I did’, this is it,” laments Welch. Hint: if you are living a lifestyle that seems out of balance, that you think you might regret someday; if you refer to your relationship with your kids as a “for instance”, you may be struggling with Clarity of Purpose.
Reception On The Green
Many fail to recognize that no one can or should even try to be “on” all the time, like the guy who has his cell phone on the golf course. Being a traditionalist who grew up in a family of competitive golfers, my perspective about the sport may be a little different from the cigar smoking, beer guzzling, hot dog scarfing crowd who seem to have christened golf the official pastime of affluent macho yuppies. Nevertheless, when you are jabbering on your cell phone during a round of golf you are cheating yourself of a proper and focused round of golf. You are also cheating your business affairs by conversing while distracted by a round of golf. The inherent guilt over having conflicted purposes is evidenced by common verbiage like, “sneak out of the office for a round of golf.”.
This lack of clarity leads to a scattered approach to life. When you try to be two places at once – making the golf course or playground swings your mobile office – you are not able to be truly present for either. Attempting to bite off more than you can chew, trying to achieve goals by the brute force of will or ignoring emotional factors like flagging motivation levels can deplete your most important natural resources like a positive attitude and love for the activity.
Actually, we might re-phrase this success factor to clarity of a good purpose. Many people are pretty clear about a purpose of making money and boosting their self-esteem through achievement and the accumulation of more and more stuff. What they are unclear about is who they are and what lies beyond the carrot they are obsessed with chasing. Does it interest you to lead a healthy, balanced, happy life? Or is it enough to just win without enjoying the process or respecting your health? Lance’s commentary from the eyes of a cancer survivor is only an opinion, but certainly one worth reflecting upon. You don’t necessarily need dramatic elements like a life threatening illness to evolve your perspective. By reflecting on your past life experience, and the words and lessons others, you can gain the inspiration you need to change your life at any time.
Finding Your Own Clarity...Ullrich's Fat and Foibles
An amusing and oft repeated quote from Lance to convey the depth of his commitment was that he began to prepare for his next Tour de France the day after his previous victory. Rip Esselstyn is a healthy eating enthusiast who has been lauded by national media for converting firefighters at his Austin station from traditional Texas fried flesh fare to a vegetarian diet. He remembers a telling email he received in August of 2003. “It’s only a few days after I watched Lance win – but struggle – at the Tour. ‘Rip – L.A. here. I’m ready to get serious about my diet. Put me on a program.’”
On the other hand is the disposition of Lance’s perennial main rival, Jan Ullrich. “Discipline and ambition are important, but not for the whole year”, Ullrich explained in a 2004 interview published on Cyclingnews.com. Ullrich has had a well-publicized and criticized penchant adding too many extra pounds in the off season, hampering his progression to peak condition when the critical spring training period came around. Other off season highlights on Ullrich’s resume include a doping suspension for ingesting the recreational drug Ecstasy and crashing his Porsche (into a bike rack believe it or not) while driving intoxicated. Martin Dugard theorizes, quite perceptively, that Ullrich’s off season habits may be a rebellion from his East Germany sports machine roots, where his childhood and personal freedom were swapped for a chance to glorify the state with an Olympic cycling medal. “Cycle racing stole my youth,” said Jens Voight, another top professional who developed in the same East German sporting academy as Ullrich.
Motivational guru Tony Robbins says that everything we do is motivated by either the pursuit of pleasure or to avoid pain. Everyone needs to seek pleasure, happiness, stress release and peace of mind. For Ullrich, the rigors of a phenomenally difficult physical job have been balanced by a less restricted diet and lifestyle in the off season. Ullrich claims that it’s important to stay true to one’s basic nature, to be happy and balanced in life while pursuing an awesome competitive goal. As he told Cyclingnews.com: “The people that are important to me trust me and don’t try to change me, which would be impossible anyway. I have to go my own way. I can’t be everything, that’s just how I am. Some say that we Rostockers (Region of the former East Germany that Ullrich hails from) have an elephant skin. That helps sometimes.”
At first glance, we might scoff at his story as a rationalization for being beaten by an opponent who was more focused and better prepared. However, these insights come from a Tour de France champion, (and five-time runner-up, once third, once fourth) Olympic gold medalist and one of the greatest cyclists in history. Were it not for Lance having a proximate birth date and career span, we would be talking about the greatest cyclist in history.
What would have happened had Ullrich watched his diet, kept the winter pounds off, been more disciplined in training - been more like Lance? The knee-jerk response is to say that he might have beaten Lance or certainly been closer to him. However, upon further reflection, someone departing from their intuition and basic nature is going to struggle. It’s likely that Ullrich would have come up injured or burnt out in attempt to mirror Lance’s approach and temperament. Ullrich has Clarity of Purpose and trusts deeply in his own approach. Even in the face of “evidence” in the form of repeated beatings by Lance, Ullrich resisted the temptation to mirror Lance’s approach in attempting to beat him.
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