Cycling is so hard, the suffering is so intense, that it’s absolutely cleansing. The pain is so deep and strong that a curtain descends over your brain….Once; someone asked me what pleasure I took in riding for so long. ‘PLEASURE???? I said.’ ‘I don’t understand the question.’ I didn’t do it for the pleasure; I did it for the pain.

I still don't get golf.

I become a happier man each time I suffer

But the fact is that I wouldn't have won even a single Tour de France without the lesson of illness. What it teaches is this: pain is temporary. Quitting lasts forever.

Forever is a big word. I'm not going anywhere.

I'm cycling to take cancer message worldwide.

At the end of the day, if there was indeed some Body or presence standing there to judge me, I hoped I would be judged on whether I had lived a true life, not on whether I believed in a certain book, or whether I'd been baptized. If there was indeed a God at the end of my days, I hoped he didn't say, But you were never a Christian, so you're going the other way from heaven. If so, I was going to reply, You know what? You're right. Fine.