My Hero.

Everyone has a hero. My hero is him :





It's all about the pain.

His mother was 17 when he was born, and his biological father left two years later. A step-father whipped him. Too small for football and too poor for the in-group in Plano, Texas, he discovered early that he could smother psychic pain with the real pain of long-distance swimming, running, cycling. That pain was self-inflicted yet comforting because he controlled it. Of them all, cycling was the best because "a bike is freedom to roam, without rules and without adults."

	How can you not be impressed?

Lance Armstrong created his own monster out of his humilation, his fears, and his pain, as well as a heart almost a third larger than average, a resting pulse of 32 beats a minute that can accelerate beyond 200, and lungs that can consume record amounts of oxygen. From such materials he created, in my mind and in a majority of yours, the greatest athlete of our time.

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