On the tour and inside the mind of Johan
Bruyneel, the winningest team leader in cycling
history and the mastermind behind the success of
the world's most celebrated champion, Lance
Armstrong
Johan Bruyneel knows what it takes to win. In
1998, this calculating Belgian and former
professional cyclist looked a struggling rider
and cancer survivor in the eye and said, "Look,
if we're going to ride the Tour, we might as
well win." In that powerful phrase a dynasty was
born. With Bruyneel as his team director, Lance
Armstrong seized a record seven straight Tour de
France victories. In the meantime, Bruyneel
innovated the sport of cycling and went on to
prove he could win without his superstar -- in
2007 he took the Tour de France title with a
young new team and a lot of nerve, sealing his
place in sports history forever.
We Might as Well Win takes readers behind the
scenes of this amazing nine-year journey through
the Alps and the Pyrenees, revealing a radical
recipe for winning that readers can adapt from
the bike to the boardroom to life. We witness
Bruyneel's near-death crash and comeback as a
rider. We are privy to the many ways he and
Armstrong outsmarted their opponents. We listen
in on the team's race radios to hear the secret
strategies that inspire greatness from a
disparate team. We learn how to make sure "not
winning" isn't the same as "losing" as Bruyneel
struggles to prove himself -- post-Armstrong --
with new riders, new strategies, and skeptics
around every corner.
Whether mounting a difficult climb, or managing
a team of thirty riders and forty support staff
from a miniature car hurtling along narrow
European roads, or looking a future legend in
the eye and willing him to believe, Bruyneel is,
and has always been, the consummate winner.
Readers will relish this inside tour.
Paris: it's just one of those places that
will never let you down. The Paris Encounter
guide gives you the best of the must-sees and a
whole host of insider tips for finding the Paris
you never dreamed existed. Discover twice the
city in half the time.
This pared-down number is ideal for quick trips - it's less
accommodation, more neighbourhood highlights and the best of local
knowledge.
'Sounds as if a friend is giving you a list of their favourite
things to do.'
Roz, road-tested Paris Encounter.
Full-colour pull-out map and detailed neighbourhood maps
Interviews with locals reveal Paris' secrets
Events Diary
Best shopping, entertainment, restaurants, cafes and views
If you have to choose one book to take to
Paris, this fully updated Lonely Planet guide
will cover all your bases. Whether you're
camping, planning to splurge on a chic hotel,
picnicking, or set on haute cuisine, this book
gives you thousands of options. Also included is
a useful 12-page overview of Parisian
architecture, detailed entertainment
information, notes on day trips to nearby
ch?eaux and villages, plus 20 pages of detailed
city maps, including the Metro.
Just as Armstrong managed to repeat his
incredible 1999 tour victory, Every Second
Counts repeats--and, in some ways
exceeds—the success of his bestselling first
memoir,
It's Not About the Bike.
Every Second Counts confronts the
challenge of moving beyond his cancer
experience, his first Tour victory, and his
celebrity status. Few of Armstrong's readers
will ever compete in the Tour de France (though
cyclists will relish Armstrong's detailed
recounting of his 2000-2003 tour victories), but
all will relate to his discussions of loss and
disappointment in his personal and professional
life since 1999. They will relate to his battles
with petty bureaucracies, like the French court
system during the doping scandal that almost
halted his career. And they will especially
relate to constant struggles with work/life
balance.
In the face of September 11--which arrives
halfway through the narrative (just before the
fifth anniversary of his diagnosis)--Armstrong
draws from his experiences to show that
suffering, fear, and death are the essential
human condition. In so openly using his own life
to illustrate how to face this reality, he
proves that he truly is a hero--and not just
because of the bike. In Every Second Counts
he is to be admired as a human being, a man who
sees every day as a challenge to live richly and
well, no matter what hardships may come.
Featuring eight-pages of full-colour photos from
recent Tour de France races, this
easy-to-follow, entertaining guide demystifies
the history, strategy, rules, techniques,
equipment, and competitors in what is arguably
the most gruelling and intriguing multiday,
multistage sporting event in the world. Co
written by the most popular English-speaking
cycling commentator on the planet, this book is
great reading for both experienced and the new
bicycle racing fans alike.
People around the world have found inspiration
in the story of Lance Armstrong--a world-class
athlete nearly struck down by cancer, only to
recover and win the Tour de France, the multiday
bicycle race famous for its gruelling intensity.
Armstrong is a thoroughgoing Texan jock, and the
changes brought to his life by his illness are
startling and powerful, but he's just not
interested in wearing a hero suit. While his
vocabulary is a bit on the he-man side (highest
compliment to his wife: "she's a stud"), his
actions will melt the most hard-bitten souls: a
cancer foundation and benefit bike ride, his
astonishing commitment to training that got him
past countless hurdles, loyalty to the people
and corporations that never gave up on him.
There's serious medical detail here, which may
not be for the faint of heart; from chemo to
surgical procedures to his wife's in vitro
fertilization, you won't be spared a single
x-ray, IV drip, or unfortunate side effect.
Athletes and coaches everywhere will benefit
from the same extraordinary detail provided
about his training sessions--every aching
tendon, every rainy afternoon, and every small
triumph during his long recovery is here in
living color. It's Not About the Bike is
the perfect title for this book about life,
death, illness, family, setbacks, and triumphs,
but not especially about the bike
Gaze at the gargoyles and ponder Quasimodo's
fate as you laze in the park behind Notre Dame.
Fly off-piste down glaciers near Chamonix on the
notorious Vallée Blanche descent.
Get lost in secret passageways beneath Lyon and
discover why silk weavers toiled to build them.
Spit a mouthful of Burgundy without causing
offence at Beaune's École des Vins de Bourgogne.
In This Guide:
Six authors, 23 combined years living in France,
196 days of in-country research, 184 maps.
You asked for it, we researched it
more value accommodation in this edition
Belle Île Romance, Marseille short-break,
Tour de France trail
take inspiration from our itineraries
and explore France your own way.
The
first book to cover in
detail every major climb
ever used in the Tour de
France, including detail
on the actual route
(with maps and profile),
length, height, list of
winners and route
descriptions of how to
emulate the King of the
Mountains and get from
the bottom to the top.
Every year the Tour de
France is said to only
really start when it
reaches the first
mountain stages: the
drama of the race only
really begins as the
climbers take over in
the Pyrenees, Vosges or
Alps. The Tour is also
the most famous classic
in cycling and draws
huge audiences to the TV
and internet coverage
(the official web site
holds the world record
for number of hits
excluding search
engines). But the route
of the Tour is not just
for professionals. A
growing number of people
now take their bikes and
actually do a stage of
the Tour (the Etap - for
amateurs, which this
year attracted 8,000
people to climb one of
the hardest mountain
stages in the Tour) or
spend a week doing some
of the more notorious
climbs (Ventoux - where
Tommy Simpson died in
the 50s). This book is
for everyone who watches
the Tour and has even
the slightest of an
inkling that they'd like
to do at least one of
the climbs. Packed with
information on each
climb, this is the
ultimate guide to the
Tour climbs, which will
remain important for
many years to come (the
Tour only uses a set
number of climbs, which
they return to every
couple of years).
Contents - Eastern
Pyrenees, Central
Pyrenees, Western
Pyrenees, Vosges & Jura,
Massif & Cevennes,
Northern Alps, Central
Alps and Southern Alps
With every book, this British writer inches ever
closer to mastering Bill Bryson's unique mixture
of travelogue and comedy. His latest offering
finds the author on the roads and highways of
France, Switzerland, and Germany, a 36-year-old
novice cyclist trying to complete the Tour de
France. Not the actual Tour de France, that is.
Moore set off on the course several weeks before
the actual race began, just to see if he could
finish all 2,256 miles of it. Like his previous
books, Frost on My Moustache (2000) and
The Grand Tour (2001), this is not so
much a travelogue as a travel situation comedy.
Like the protagonist of a sitcom, things just
keep happening to Moore: he finds himself in the
unlikeliest of places, meeting the unlikeliest
of people. He charts his tour progress with an
impish wit, never taking anything too seriously,
and is engagingly honest about his own
shortcomings as a Tour de France cyclist. (He
cheats, in other words.) Moore, and the reader,
develop a greater understanding of what it takes
to be a true tour cyclist: equal parts
determination, stamina, and lunacy. His
descriptions of the places he visits make these
small towns and villages seem instantly
familiar; the people he encounters become as
real as our closest friends. About halfway
through the book, we realize that it doesn't
really matter whether he finishes the course;
getting there is all the fun. A must for fans of
offbeat travel books by the likes of Bryson,
Calvin Trillin, and Tony Hawks.
National Geographic Traveler, September
2006
'Lonely Planet Phrasebooks. Portable,
pocket-size, cheap, and available for almost any
country you might want to visit...'
Atlanta Journal-Constitution, May 2004
"...Lonely Planet phrase books have long taken a
hip, streetwise approach."
Product Description
Phrasebook in hand, bus ticket secured, you
discover the bus driver shares your passion for
Monet and fromage. He invites you to meet his
family over a long lunch - another
language-inspired success.
Our phrasebooks give you a comprehensive mix of
practical and social words and phrases in more
than 120 languages. Chat with the locals and
discover their culture - a guaranteed way to
enrich your travel experience.
It's hard to argue with success;
it's even tougher to emulate it. But
if you want to train like a Tour de
France winner, you couldn't do much
better than learning the tricks of
the trade from two-time champion
(1999 and 2000) Lance Armstrong.
In The Lance Armstrong
Performance Program: Seven Weeks to
the Perfect Ride, Armstrong
teams up with his coach, Chris
Carmichael (whom the U.S. Olympic
Committee named 1999's Coach of the
Year), to offer the ultimate
insider's guide to becoming a better
rider, based on the regimen
Carmichael has been fine-tuning for
Armstrong since the early 1990s.
Noting that athletes of all levels
focus best when aiming for specific
goals at the end of short windows,
the authors describe the performance
program as consisting of "three
specialized weekly training programs
that build on your current fitness
level" followed by a week of
"recovery riding between each
program." They provide an
easy-to-administer fitness-level
self-test in the form of a
three-mile time trial (beginner,
intermediate, or advanced), and they
then define the key operative terms
that make up the bulk of the actual
training, including Tempo,
HighSpin, PowerIntervals,
Sprints, and Training Zone.
A brief section of workbook-style
pages provides readers with a
user-friendly outline for the entire
seven weeks.
Here is week 3 for an
intermediate rider:
Monday: day off.
Tuesday: 1 hour in zone 2 with
20 minutes Tempo on flat
terrain.
Wednesday: 30 minutes in zone 1;
recovery ride.
Thursday: 1 hour in zone 2 with
15 minutes Tempo on flat
terrain.
Friday: 45 minutes in zone 2
with 10 minutes HighSpin on flat
terrain.
Saturday: 1 hour in zone 2 with
15 minutes Tempo on flat
terrain.
Sunday: 1.5 hours in zone 2 with
30 minutes on hilly terrain.
Though clearly the focus, the
performance program itself makes up
less than a third of the book. Other
subjects covered include cycling
equipment, essential maintenance and
repair, riding in bad weather, road
hazards, mental toughness, and the
pros' eating habits both on and off
the bike, to name just a few. What
the book is not is the story of
Lance Armstrong's remarkable
recovery from testicular cancer (see
his autobiography,
It's Not About the Bike, for
that). Rather, Armstrong and
Carmichael have produced a
detail-packed training manual,
sprinkled with photographs and tales
of the racing life, for those who
spend a large percentage of their
time on two wheels--or dream of it.
Keeping
up to speed with
