So yeah I have been pretty busy as of late, and not had much time to write stuff here! Been turning to the dark side (road) more and more, it just fits in really conveniently and means I can keep fit while riding to and from work etc. I did just over 100 miles on the road bike 2 weekends ago, went over to Gullane, and down to Biggar & Broughton which was just lovely!
Last weekend I took the Friday off work and went to Glen Feshie (about 5 miles south of Aviemore) to do some mountain biking. Went up big hills, and the weather (as im sure you will know) was absolutely scorching. Yet another cracking weekend why can’t Scotland be like this a little more often? I got quite a lot of sun but it was evenly distributed over a few days and didn’t have bad sunburn or anything.
My brother gave me Lance Armstrong’s second book for my birthday. I had read It’s not about the bike: My journey back to life (his first autobiography) last summer, and was quite interested to see if his attitude about life in general was changing due to the obvious fame and fortune gained from winning 7 tours (4 at the time the book was written I think).
While his first book focused predominantly on his cancer diagnosis and treatment, this new book is mostly about how he relates his experiences with cancer to his current life, something he calls survivorship.
A lot of the book asks deep philosophical questions, some of them regarding why he lived (as opposed to dying), religion, terrorism and how his life fits in to the grand scheme of things. He relates suffering with cancer to suffering on the bike, and describes some of his charity work. There is more cycling content including training ethos and some brief stories from subsequent tours which are surprisingly quite gripping to read.
Most reviews will state that It’s not about the bike was the better book, but I somewhat disagree. While I would say they are both quite good and worth a read, the “what happened next” element of this book was really interesting, I couldn’t put it down and ended up having some very late nights reading!
