- Lance Armstrong has been making a comeback recently.
Holy smokes, this isn't a publicity stunt anymore.
This guy's really talented.
Was complete jackassery.
What's up, Trainiacs.
I think today we're going to do
a very special Triathlon Taren episode
to talk about something that is sort of ground swelling
out there in the endurance community
that we haven't talked about at all here,
and not a lot of triathletes are talking about.
It's like the red-headed stepchild of triathlon
that we don't wanna talk about.
You can be over there in the cycling community,
don't come over here into the triathlon community again,
Lance Armstrong.
If you've been following podcasts,
and you like podcasts, you like the Tour de France,
you will know that Lance Armstrong
has been making a comeback recently.
You might not know that Lance Armstrong
actually started off his endurance career
as a triathlete, not a cyclist.
And he's kinda dipped his toe back in the water
in the triathlon community by covering
the Ironman World Championship,
getting on Dave Scott and Mark Allen.
But he hasn't made a full board leap into it,
and it's like the triathletes of the world
aren't even acknowledging that it's happening.
That said, I've been following the guy
with the recent developments that he's come out with,
with his new podcast, and his new appearances,
and basically his new take on life recently.
And I think it's worth talking about.
Okay, so Lance Armstrong,
he started off his endurance career not as a cyclist,
which you might think, he started off running in junior high
at the age of around 11, 12, 13,
because he wanted to beat the next fastest kid in school.
Competitive much?
Yes, Lance is.
He became that fastest runner in school.
And then because people recognized
that he had a big engine for endurance sports,
they put him into swimming, and he hadn't swam at all.
They put him into a competitive swimming program
at age 12, which in competitive swimming is ancient,
but within about three months, he was keeping up
with the fastest youth swimmers in the state.
Yeah, he was winning meets.
Again, cycling didn't really come around.
He was tooling around town on his bike
just like all kids do,
but it's not like he was this cycling phenomenon as a youth.
Shortly after at the age of about late 13,
14 years old, he got into triathlon.
And Lance, himself, still to this day,
he talks about his first heroes in sport
not being cyclists, or runners, or swimmers,
but the triathletes, Dave Scott, Mark Allen,
Mike Pigg, Scott Molina, Scott Tinley.
And shortly, after getting into triathlon
at the age of 13, 14, he turned pro at the age of 15,
went out and started racing against his heroes
on the same course, and beating a lot of them.
He was winning local triathlons
within a year of starting to enter them.
And you can see from old footage that even at the age of 15,
he was out there with a cock of the walk look on his face
like he was there to tear these people down,
and knock these people who were his heroes
off their high horse.
You hear some of the interviews from those guys
and they'll say that they would look
at this 15-year-old on the course, and say,
"He might be the most talented triathlete out here."
- Lance Armstrong's really incredible.
He's had some great races this year.
Lance is somebody certainly to watch for in the future.
- "But he's also the cockiest kid that we have ever seen."
You'll see a trend here with Lance's life.
So Lance was actually making the podium as a pro triathlete
going against some of history's best athletes,
like literally some of the best athletes
to have ever swam, biked, and run.
He was making the podium.
And then he realized that he wanted to get to the Olympics,
but he wasn't going to be able to do it in triathlon
because triathlon wasn't in the Olympics.
What was in the Olympics,
that he thought he had a chance on, was cycling,
which was strange, because looking at that old footage,
he wasn't going and crushing the field on the bike.
He was often biking with the main pack,
maybe just towards the front of it a little bit,
pushing the pace a little bit,
but he would have to catch up and run people down.
So he made the switch to cycling in the early '90s,
and then we'll just skip ahead about 20 years,
a cancer diagnosis, and seven Tour de France wins.
(high-pitched voice speaking rapidly)
Eventually, Lance Armstrong obviously retired
from cycling as we all know,
and in 2012, he entered into an agreement
with the World Triathlon Corporation, WTC,
that holds the Ironman events,
to start competing in pro Half Ironman events.
And at the time, people who didn't know Lance's background
as a super-talented youth triathlete
thought that it was just this publicity stunt.
Granted, it probably was a publicity stunt
by World Triathlon Corporation.
This was right in their heyday
of growing the sport worldwide in half
and full Ironman distance races.
But fact of the matter was that Lance Armstrong
is probably one of the most talented endurance athletes
to have ever walked the face of this Earth.
He's so well-rounded that he got knocked around
a fair bit in the first few events that he did.
He says that he couldn't figure out the nutrition.
He would be taking on so much nutrition,
and then he'd get onto the run,
and all of a sudden everything would come up,
and he'd start throwing up,
and he'd fade towards the end of the run.
But after 25 years of not entering a triathlon,
and not ever going through
the build process of amateur triathlete again,
and then back into Half Ironman racing,
he ended up winning the SuperFrog triathlon
and the Half Ironman in Hawaii.
He was racing against some of the sport's best,
beating guys like Chris Lieto out there,
and Tyler Butterfield.
Now for example, here's how he raced.
He came out of the water in the 2012 Hawaii Half Ironman
in fourth place, fourth place.
He's going up against pro triathletes
who'd been swimming consistently for decades,
comes out in fourth place,
just seconds down from the leader.
Obviously, hops on the bike,
but doesn't go and decimate the field,
because he knew that he'd have to get off and run,
so he puts out the fastest bikes in these events
that he's winning by about three to four minutes.
Basically, just a comfortable lead that he knew
that he could give up a little bit
of time in the run, and still do okay.
He would put in a good run.
Still he did a 1:22 half marathon,
fourth fastest of the day in Hawaii.
And in the SuperFrog 70.3 triathlon,
it was basically the same sort of thing.
Frontish pack in the swim, fastest bike, not by a lot,
but enough to build a comfortable lead,
and then put in a solid frontish pack run.
And then amongst all this, while people were talking about,
is Lance Armstrong good enough to win Kona?
And he was talking about a build-up to Kona.
And everyone was starting to go like,
holy smokes, this isn't a publicity stunt anymore.
This guy's really talented.
And Kona's such a bike-heavy course.
Oh, my God.
What's gonna happen?
Oprah happened.
And then five years ago,
Lance Armstrong was obviously ostracized
from basically all of sport,
all of his own business, all of his own charities,
and his life has completely changed ever since then.
Knowing full well that I am opening myself up
to absolute carnage in the comments here,
here's my take on Lance Armstrong and what he did
over the course of his seven wins in the Tour de France.
Was he doping?
Yes, absolutely.
Was everyone else doping?
Yes, absolutely.
Do I believe that he was the best cyclist out there?
Yes, the doping itself, I believe,
was so prevalent in the entire community
that it's not like he had the best doping program
that turned him super-human,
everyone was on a doping program.
And fact of the matter is that you still had to be talented,
you still had to put in the work,
and Lance Armstrong was that talented,
and he put in the work.
However, I think that how he dealt
with his teammates, with the public,
with his business partners was complete jackassery,
and that, yes, he probably deserved to pay for that.
The severity of what he's had to pay,
I would say probably edges on a little bit firm
when they're basically trying to ruin the guy,
not for now, but for all of eternity,
and everyone else gets off scot-free.
Now here's where I had a problem with Lance Armstrong,
particularly with the Oprah interview.
He was very defensive.
He basically didn't acknowledge that he was an asshole.
However, Lance Armstrong now is a different dude
than he was during that Oprah interview,
and he fully admits it.
Over the last couple of years,
Lance started appearing on podcasts.
And it's been five years since he did that Oprah interview.
That Oprah interview was basically rushed
and pushed through because he had to push his hand
before the government did it to him.
So he wanted to be in an interview
with somebody that he knew that was kind of controlled
instead of in a deposition doing it for the first time.
What he's now admitting is that he wasn't ready for it.
And even then, he hadn't had the time
to be introspective and realize, you know what,
I have treated people like trash,
and they deserve to be angry at me,
and I deserve a lot of this.
So he was, at that point, still defensive.
Starting about a year and a half ago,
he's had little bits of starting to be introspective
by being on other people's podcast.
He was first on Joe Rogan.
And when I listened to that, I was like,
you know what, he sounds a little bit different.
Still kinda guarded, still not quite open to it,
but he at least seems a little bit remorseful.
Fast forward to the beginning of this year,
appears on Howard Stern.
Even a little bit more remorseful
of how he acted towards his teammates.
Starts The Forward Podcast, and I start listening to him,
like you know, I might as well just listen
to what this jerk has to say, but he grew on me.
And as the podcast went on,
and as I think Lance started realizing
that the more he opened up,
that the more he saw inside himself
and realized that he doesn't need to be defensive anymore,
that he doesn't need to fight the world,
that he just needs to be a little bit more open
and honest with the people around him,
it seems like he's been more open and honest
with the public and himself.
And recently over the last couple of months,
I'll link these in the description below,
he's appeared on The Rich Roll Podcast,
and the Aubrey Marcus Podcast.
I tried to get him on the Triathlon Taren Podcast,
and by the way, if you go and hit him up
on Twitter or Instagram, and say,
hey, go on the Triathlon Taren Podcast,
we might be able to make that happen.
You can listen to those, and you can see
that it's a different man than back in the Oprah days.
So am I on team Lance?
Am I giving him a free pass and being like,
you know what, Lance, great guy?
No.
He's gotta live with how he interacted with the public
and all the people around him for the rest of his life.
However, he knows that now, seems apologetic for it,
and I'm at least not running around with pitchforks
and blindly saying, Lance Armstrong, he's a devil.
No, I think that we as people have to be more open-minded
because things aren't as black and white,
as left or right politically, or right and wrong.
There are always shades of gray.
And I think if we open up our minds
to people, to ideas, to just good thought,
we're gonna be better humans for it.
Honestly, what joy would you get
in spending the rest of your life hating Lance Armstrong?
Hate is not an enjoyable feeling.
However, if you had the ability over the rest of your life
to at least be open to listening to the guy
without pure venom in you,
hey, you can listen to some pretty good podcast.
Doesn't mean that you have to show up to a parade
if one ever happens for him.
But critical thought, Trainiacs,
critical thoughts about Lance Armstrong.
Alright.
That's today.
Lance, I'm here, buddy.
We have a great podcast.
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