Armstrong, Lance by Its Not About the Bike

Author:Its Not About the Bike [Bike, Its Not About the]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2012-02-19T22:13:17+00:00

KIK

LOVE AND CANCER WERE STRANGE COMPAN-

ions, but in my case they came along at the same time. It was hardly the ideal situation in which to meet my future wife–but that's exactly what happened. Why do two people get married? For a future together, naturally. The question was whether or not I had o n e .

I didn't have cancer anymore, but I didn't not have it, either. I was in a state of anxiety called remission, and I was obsessed with the idea of a relapse. I would wake up in the night with phantom pains in my chest, and I'd lie in bed in the darkness, covered in sweat and listening to the sound of my own breathing, convinced the tumors had come back. The next morning I'd go directly to the doctor and ask for a chest X ray to calm myself d o w n .

"The chemo works or it doesn't," Dr. Einhorn once said. "If it works, the patient lives a normal, cancer-free life. If it doesn't and the cancer comes back, he will usually be dead in three or four months." It was that simple.

Getting on with my life, on the other hand, was much more complicated. I finished chemotherapy on December 13, 1996, and I met Kristin Richard a month later, at a press conference to announce the launching of my cancer foundation and the Ride for the Roses. We spoke just briefly. She was a slim blond woman who everyone called Kik (pronounced Keek), an account executive for an advertising and public-relations firm in town, assigned to help promote the event. I know I'm supposed to say the light changed when I saw her, but actually, it didn't. I just thought she was smart and pretty. She told me later her first impression of me was equally inconsequential. I was "a cute bald guy with a great smile." It would be spring before we had deeper feelings, and summer before we acted on them. For one thing, we were seeing other people, and for another, the first time we ever talked at length we had a fight.

It started on the phone. She represented a corporate client, a major title sponsor of the Ride for the Roses, and she felt I wasn't doing enough to please them. One afternoon she got testy with a foundation staffer. Who is this chick? I thought, and dialed her number, and as soon as she answered I said, "This is Lance Armstrong, and what do you mean by talking to my staff that way?" I went off, barking at her. On the other end of the receiver, Kik rolled her eyes, thinking, Tliis guy acts like he is so big-time.

For the next ten minutes we argued back and forth. "Obviously, this conversation is going nowhere," she snapped. "Damn right it's going nowhere!" I snapped back. "You know what?"

she said. "We need to talk about this over a beer. That's all I have to say to you."

I was nonplussed.

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