Well, seems everyone has put in their 2 cents on the whole Lance fiasco over the past few weeks. One LA thread on Slowtwitch was over 40 pages long!
So here's my comments:
I started running in 1984 as a teenager, after spending the summer at my grandparent's house in Lanikai, HI. Everyone it seemed was training for this thing called Ironman. On TV I watched a young woman from Maine run away from the field during the first ever women's Olympic marathon. I wanted to do that too! So I did. I entered a 10k. I knew of no books, magazines, or resources on the matter, so I made up my own training schedule on a calendar. I finished the race in 1:02, age 14!
Fast forward to high school, I did a few sprint tris and joined the XC team. I liked XC better than tri, simply because everything was about leveling the playing field. You could not win a race just because you had better equipment, like in a tri. My mom loved biking however, and was probably Greg LeMond's biggest fan.
I did well in high school running, was even offered a scholarship but did not take it because I wanted to get into the medical field. The college progam indicated to me that health/science studies were not a good fit for a college athlete's travel schedule.
So I ran non competitively in college, and restarted racing after I got out. By that time, there was a new American cyclist on the scene: LA. And coincidentally, my first job out of school was in oncology. Wow, Lance's first tour victory was really an inspiration for my cancer patients. I can remember being in their rooms as they were suffering at the hands of their diseases, and some commercial Lance was in would play on TV. See, I would say, don't give up.
On a personal note, it got me back into cycling too, in 2001 I spent my income tax return on a Trek Alpha 1000 in Postal colors of course! At one point I even had a yellow bracelet, although I lost it- it was too big for my small wrists and slipped off.
Dreams. I think cross country running gave me the courage to pursue my dreams despite a pretty rough childhood. Eventually, the dream of Ironman---which I was introduced to at the beginning of this whole journey during that 1984 Hawaii stay with my grandparents, came true for me as well.
But with all of life's ups, there are always some downs. For me, it's been beyond hard to realize that I can't save everyone and disease claims young lives. And it's been hard to deal with some of the changes in our healthcare system that at times makes work downright impossible. Of course, it's been tough accepting that heroes we look up to for inspiration were not all they were cracked up to be.
That said, I think we all need to have dreams and hope. Looking back on all of this, I appreciate the the dreams that for me have materialized. In retrospect, I am glad I did not choose the scholarship and the competitive athlete's life. I cannot explain the actions of others, and while I'm disappointed about cycling, Lance, all of the top pros basically---I still want to believe in dreams and hope. At one time LA provided this for me, but not in the last years. I've moved on, looking for sources of hope and inspiration in all I see around me and the people I meet every day.
Life is good. Long live LeMond!
