Nineteen hundred meters up there is completely different from1,900 any place else. There's no air, there's no oxygen. There's no vegetation, there's no life. There's no life. Rocks. Any other climb there's vegetation, grass and trees. Not there on the Ventoux. It's more like the moon than a mountain.

For whatever reason, maybe it's because of my story, but people associate Livestrong with exercise and physical fitness, health and lifestyle choices like that.

The way you live your life, the perspective you select, is a choice you make every single day when you wake up. It's yours to decide.

Life to me is a series of false limits and my challenge as an athlete is to explore those limits

It was great to fight in training, great to fight in the race, but you don't need to fight in a press conference, or an interview, or a personal interaction.

There were no shortcuts, I realized. It took years of racing to build up the mind and body and character until a rider had logged hundreds of races and thousands of miles of road. I wouldn't be able to win a Tour de France until I had enough iron in my legs, and lungs, and brain and Heart.

I have never doped … I have competed as an endurance athlete for 25 years with no spike in performance, passed more than 500 drug tests and never failed one.