I think I bit off more than I could chew. I thought the marathon would be easier. For the level of condition that I have now... that was without a doubt the hardest physical thing I have ever done.

So if there is a purpose to the suffering that is cancer, I think it must be this: it's meant to improve us.

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.

It's frustrating in the sense that I still think I could be competing at some sport at a fairly high level, which nobody cares about. Nobody wants to hear me say that.

I thought I knew what fear was, until I heard the words 'You have cancer'.

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.

But, listen, Eddie Merkyx would have won six Tours if he hadn't been punched.