What matters is ultimately what collectively those people on the street - whether that's the cycling community, the cancer community - it matters what they think.

If we don't somehow stem the tide of childhood obesity, we're going to have a huge problem.

Nobody wants to hear how I think I've been mistreated, or how I think my punishment should be lifted, or tweaked, or reduced. Nobody wants to hear me say that, nobody cares what I think about this. I get it.

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.

Nothing goes to waste, you put it all to use, the old wounds and long-ago slights become the stuff of competitive energy.

Your past forms you, whether you like it or not. Each encounter and experience has its own effect, and you're shaped the way the wind shapes a mesquite tree on a plain.

Cancer doesn’t care if you’re Republican or Democrat.