Every Second Counts

by Alpen

Product Details

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• ASIN: B000YU7FIG
• Average Customer Review: 3.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (108 customer reviews)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

32 of 34 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Moving and insightful follow up to the first book, October 7, 2003

By 

Diana M. Rodriguez (Alexandria, VA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Every Second Counts (Hardcover)

I loved the first book he wrote and this one is just as good! Lance Armstrong's books are honest and direct. He really tells it as he sees it with no nonsense. The first book chroncicles his humble childhood as the child of a teenage mother and the relationship he describes with his mother is moving and inspiring.

The new book, Every Second Counts, is written mostly about his own children and his struggles to balance family life with his arduous training schedule and his Foundation, in addition to charity work and public appearances.

I admire Lance Armstrong for being a seeker. He is not a person sitting on the sidelines. He is truly living his life with gusto and passion. He has his rough-edges, but all in all he is a seemingly warm, honest, real person with all of the complexities and complications that real people face.

I wish him all the best and I hope he continues to write books in the future. I feel he has much to say and I like the way he says it!

19 of 22 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Life is an Endurance Race, October 11, 2003

By A Customer

This review is from: Every Second Counts (Hardcover)

I've never had cancer and I haven't been on a bike in 25 years, but I found many lessons in this book. I first watched the Tour in 2000 and was immediately fascinated by the tactics and teamwork involved. I thought it was a bike race with every individual out for himself and I couldn't understand the concept that you could win the Tour without winning the most stages. As the leader of a business team, this opened up an entirely new way of thinking about teamwork and winning. If there is one thing he and his team proved in the 2003 Tour, it's that all kinds of things can go wrong and you can have pretty spectacular failures on any given day, but a true warrior will use those things to get fired up and go on to win.

I also related to the struggles Lance has had with trying to balance his life. That warrior side vrs the loving, caring side - the intense focus and long hours of training vrs the commitments he has to family, friends, cancer survivors and sponsors - the need to feel alive vrs the daily grind. That's the real endurance test and the hard part is that there never is a finish line.

The surprise is that Lance seems like an ordinary guy, living an extraordinary life and that makes it seem possible for me to do the same.

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A little scattered, but still a good look into Lance..., July 27, 2004

By 

Thomas Duff "Duffbert" (Portland, OR United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Every Second Counts (Hardcover)

I recently got Every Second Counts by Lance Armstrong with Sally Jenkins at the library. Seemed a timely read with Lance winning the Tour de France. I'm not sure this is a great book, but it was interesting in a number of ways...

The book picks up after the end of his first one It's Not About The Bike. There is less of the cancer struggle in this one, but more of the drive and fight to win the Tour race. The underlying theme here is that you aren't guaranteed anything in life, and life is precious. So you should live life to the fullest and make each second count (and hence the title).

There's a certain "rambling" element to the book. You'll start a chapter with one story that illustrates some point he wants to make. Before you get to the end, you're someplace else entirely. Not that it's a good or bad thing, it's just seemingly a little scattered at times. There are some excellent points to make you think, such as what it's like to be "thrown back" into life after being at death's door.

While I can admire what he's done and his drive and accomplishments, I don't know that I'd like Lance as an individual. I think the book gives you a good sense of who he is and what drives him, but I'm not sure I could exist long around a person who is that intense and driven.

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