I recently started using an Amazon Kindle and decided to re-read some stuff I’ve read in the past. There are a number of excellent features including bookmarking etc. but I particularly like the feature which allows you to highlight passages which are of interest. Here are some from a recent read, I was particularly interested in the way he dealt with the doping issue, this guy really did seem to believe his own untruths. I have left in the Kindle book location data so that anyone who wishes to can review these passages in context.

It's Not About The Bike:
My Journey Back to Life by Lance Armstrong
You have 21 highlighted passages
You have 4 notes
Last annotated on June 22, 2015

But I’m not here to make polite conversation. I want to tell the truth. Read more at location 53. Note: Blimey, even right at the beginning of the first book he was telling a pack of lies.

Austin has a lot of ragweed and pollen, and no matter how tortured I am, I can’t take medication because of the strict doping regulations in cycling. I have to suffer through it. Read more at location 147 Note: You know, in the early days I actually think he may have believed some of the stuff he was spouting!

"Make every obstacle an opportunity." Read more at location 267 •

My early impression of organized religion was that it was for hypocrites. Read more at location 329 •

They might not have known it, but that’s what they were: uniforms. Same pants, same boots, same belts, same wallets, same caps. It was total conformity, and everything I was against. Read more at location 536 •

Professional cycling was going to be a lot harder than I’d thought; the pace was faster, the terrain tougher, the competition more fit than I ever imagined. Read more at location 790 •

The Tour is not just a bike race, not at all. It is a test. It tests you physically, it tests you mentally, and it even tests you morally. Read more at location 1081 Note: I guess if that was how Lance was thinking we have to conclude that he failed the test.

There was an odd commonality in the language of cancer and the language of cycling. They were both about blood. In cycling, one way of cheating is to take a drug that boosts your red bloodcell count. Read more at location 1378 •

Quite simply, I believed I had a responsibility to be a good person, and that meant fair, honest, hardworking, and honorable. If I did that, if I was good to my family, true to my friends, if I gave back to my community or to some cause, if I wasn’t a liar, a cheat, or a thief, then I believed that should be enough. Read more at location 1749 •

Ironically, I was given a red blood cell booster called Epogen (EPO). In any other situation, taking EPO would get me in trouble with the International Cycling Union and the International Olympic Committee, because it’s considered performance-enhancing. But in my case, the EPO was hardly that. It was the only thing that kept me alive. Read more at location 1986 •

But before Paul got home, Stacy went into a nursing home for a few days. A group of us went to visit her there, Bill, me, and my mom, and we found her in an awful, crowded facility with barely enough nurses to go around. Stacy said, "I’m in pain. I ring the bell in the night and they don’t bring me my pain medicine." I was horrified. I said, "Stacy, this is the deal. We’re going to pack up your shit, and we’re going to check you out of here. You’re going to go home, and I’m going to hire you a full-time nurse." A nursing-home official said, "You can’t check her out." "She’s fucking leaving," I said. "Now." I told Bill, "Back the car up. Open the door." And we were gone. Stacy spent her last few weeks at home. Read more at location 2556 •

Kik just said, "You know, I would rather have one year of wonderful than seventy years of mediocre. That’s how I feel about it. Life’s an unknown. You don’t know. Nobody knows." Read more at location 2821 •

Doping is an unfortunate fact of life in cycling, or any other endurance sport for that matter. Inevitably, some teams and riders feel it’s like nuclear weapons—that they have to do it to stay competitive within the peloton. I never felt that way, and certainly after chemo the idea of putting anything foreign in my body was especially repulsive. Overall, I had extremely mixed feelings about the 1998 Tour: I sympathized with the riders caught in the firestorm, some of whom I knew well, but I also felt the Tour would be a more fair event from then on. Read more at location 3139 Note: It really did take a special kind of liar to write this stuff and to think he would get away with it.

Something different fueled me now—psychologically, physically, and emotionally—and that something was the Tour de France. Read more at location 3382 •

I geeked out. I tackled the problem of the Tour as if I were in math class, science class, chemistry class, and nutrition class, all rolled into one. Read more at location 3419 •

In one kilometer I made up 21 seconds. I was now just 11 seconds back of the leaders. It was strange, but I still didn’t feel a thing. It was . . . effortless. Read more at location 3694 •

But the drugs tests became my best friend, because they proved I was clean. I had been tested and checked, and retested. Read more at location 3797 •

"I have been on my deathbed, and I am not stupid," I said. Everyone knew that use of EPO and steroids by healthy people can cause blood disorders and strokes. Read more at location 3847 •

There’s nothing to find . . . and once everyone has done their due diligence and realizes they need to be professional and can’t print a lot of crap, they’ll realize they’re dealing with a clean guy." Read more at location 3851 •

If you ever get a second chance in life for something, you’ve got to go all the way." Read more at location 4028 •

The day began the same for all 180 riders: with a blood test. In the start area, I heard that three riders had been disqualified because their blood hematocrit levels were too high, so already there was a new doping story. I was getting tired of the subject. Read more at location 4248 •