An Immortal on the Bike, a Mere Mortal Off It

"I'm tarred!" he growls, meaning he's tired. Or, "I need to get me a bar!" Meaning beer. So that's who we're dealing with.

Time is Armstrong's obsession; he reflexively, desperately clutches at it.

It's a quality that has served him well both in cancer and in racing. The Tour de France to him is a matter of meticulously tabulating time vs. pain vs. self-denial, a kind of physical algebra. "It's a mathematical equation," he says. He rehearses each crucial climb in the Tour until he understands exactly how many seconds he can gain, what his heart rate will be, how many calories he will burn, how much he needs to weigh, how many watts he can generate and how long his body can stand it at that rate.

And yet clutching at time doesn't always serve him well in everyday matters. Last spring we met at his home in Girona to do some work. His marriage was failing, and he was frantic with worry over his children. "Cancer never kept me awake at night," he said. "This keeps me awake." He was clearly not training with the same ascetic devotion. (He ate every biscotti in the house.) One afternoon we wandered up the winding cobbled streets of Girona to an old Roman wall that circled the city, offering views of the Pyrenees. It was just a few blocks from his house -- but he had never seen it before. He was almost distraught at the discovery that something so beautiful was so close to him, and he hadn't had time to notice it.

"I can't believe this has been here," he said then. "I'm an idiot."

If there's one thing Armstrong could wish for, it's more time. Time with his kids, whom he's been away from for the better part of three months in pursuit of his sixth Tour win. "I'm not doing this again," he says. "I don't want to and I won't. Luke swam across the pool, the girls started ballet. I miss too much. I love two things, my kids and cycling. I'll find a way to make it work."

Time to compete in other prestigious races that could complete his career, such as the Giro d'Italia. Time to take some of the intense boil out of his life.

Time to think about what to do next. His plans include broadcasting, and his long-term ambition is to maintain a cycling team that can win the Tour de France without him on the bike.

But it may well be that Armstrong is constitutionally incapable of a casual, easygoing life of leisure. "I had this idea that if I could bang this one out, I'd say, 'It's been nice knowing you,' " he says. Now he's not too sure, after the young-at-heart way he's felt these last three weeks.

"The guys were joking with me, saying, 'So you want to go for the field sprint on the Champs-Elysees?' Every day we laced it up, we were like, 'We're gonna get it today.' You can't walk away when you got a boyish feeling like that."

But for the moment, it's time to rest. On the last night of the Tour, his sixth title a virtual formality, Armstrong was no longer a slave to it. He abandoned his famous self-denial and enjoyed a luxurious French meal with red wine and "several desserts." He planned to fly home and scoop up his children, and take them to an isolated beach for a summer vacation with his girlfriend, singer Sheryl Crow, whom he is patently crazy about. For now, he has a sense of completeness.

"I feel like something is finished," he said.