What makes a great endurance athlete is the ability to absorb potenial embarrassment, and to suffer without complaint. I was discovering that if it was a matter of gritting my teeth, not caring how it looked, and outlasting everybody else, I won. It didn't seem to matter what sport it was-in a straight-ahead, long-distant race, I could beat anybody. If it was a suffer-fest, I was good at it.
Lance ArmstrongMy mother told me...if you're going to get anywhere, you're going to have to do it yourself, because no one is going to do it for you.
Lance ArmstrongMy mom was such a strong character. I don't want to say she was like a man, but she was tough.
Lance ArmstrongThere were something like 50 good, arduous climbs around Nice, solid inclines of ten miles or more. The trick was not to climb every once in awhile, but to climb repeatedly. I would do three different climbs in one day, over the course of a six- or seven-hour ride. A 12 mile climb took about an hour, so that tells you what my days were like.
Lance Armstrong