Succeeding the Armstrong Way

Published on September 2, 2001

Congratulations to Lance Armstrong, a cancer-survivor who came back and just won his third straight Tour de France. The Tour de France is a grueling 20-stage bicycle race regarded as the premier cycling event in the world. The interesting thing about Lance Armstrong’s latest victory was his come-from-behind strategy.

In Stages 1-12, he stayed behind the leaders, with his largest deficit of 35+ Minutes occurring in Stages 8 and 9. In Stage 10, he started reducing the deficit and took the lead in Stage 13. He continued to pull away from the rest of the field over the final stages, culminating in a winning margin of 6:44 minutes by the time he crossed the finish line on the streets of Paris.

Lance’s race symbolized the attitude and strategy successful people operate from. The attitude is having the belief that you will win. The strategy is using a single-minded focus on the end result and running one’s life not as a sprint, but as a marathon. At some point you will be up, at other points you may be down. The bottom line is not to let your down times cloud your focus, and not to let your high points take your mind off of your end result.

As Lance Armstrong has proven over and over, if you keep doing the right things day in and day out, you are most likely to come out on top at the end of the race.

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