Iron War by Matt Fitzgerald: Book Review

I just finished reading Iron War by Matt Fitzgerald. I enjoyed the book.
It did not focus only on Mark Allen and Dave Scott’s great attributes. It showed their weaknesses as well as their strengths. For instance I had always heard about Dave Scott’s amazing discipline with his workouts and with his diet (like rinsing his cottage cheese). I was surprised to hear that he would go through depressive low points when he would stop working out and sit in his bean bag chair for days at a time and gorge himself on food. He once called Scott Molina to tell him that he skipped a workout sat down in his bean bag chair and ate 12 power bars.

Mark Allen is CRAZY, literally crazy. He sees visions, hears voices and he once had a nice chit chat with a deer while he was meditating by himself in the wilderness.

Dave Scott is CRAZY, literally crazy. He has an intense physical mental and emotional addiction to large amounts of intense exercise.

I will never even sniff the level of success of the two greatest Ironman athletes of all time, but I did see some of their less desirable attributes in me. I’ve never had a conversation with a deer but I can see a bit of Mark Allens weirdness in me. I also have Dave Scott’s addiction problem, the difference being that my addiction has taken different forms throughout my life. (I have been addicted to football, missionary service, my job and now triathlon.) The biggest difference between myself and these two amazing athletes is they got paid a lot to do what they did. I on the other hand pay a lot to do what I do. I guess that makes me the crazier (less intelligent) one.

I recommend Iron War, it’s a very good book.

Swimming: I do not love it

I need to improve a lot on my swim. Since Kona I have been steadily increasing my weekly yardage. This week I did 32,000 yards. I peaked out on Friday with a 10,000 yard day. For good swimmers that really isn’t that much but for me 10,000 is the farthest I have ever swam at one time. I started by doing 4,000 steady in 1:07:45, I was pretty slow for the first 1,000 but then I stayed just under 1:40 per hundred for the rest. I then did the main part of my workout, a 4,000 yard time trial as fast as I could go. I did it in 1:02:50. I ended up averaging about a 1:34 per hundred for the whole time. I was pretty tired at this point. I then did 5 200’s on a 4 minute send off. I averaged 3:00 per 200. Then I did an easy 1,000 to finish it off. I hope that doing a lot of yardage at a fast pace (fast pace relative to my ability) will help me find that elusive “feel” for the water. I’m also trying a psychological trick. I have never really loved swimming. For a long time I felt that I needed to develop a love or a passion for swimming in order to get better, so I have tried to mentally force myself to fall in love with swimming but it just is not going to happen. I don’t love to swim but I think I have figured out a way to capture the next best thing to loving swimming. I do love to go down to my corner room of my basement and get on my bike. I love the feeling of pushing the limits of what I can do and I love to see the quantification of my improvement. When I think of doing a really challenging bike workout I can get that feeling like I will bash my head into a brick wall trying to break through. So before key swim workouts I imagine getting on my bike and I focus on that feeling and I try to apply that feeling to my swim workout. I hope that this will help me to have a swim breakthrough this winter. I am sick and tired of being so far behind after the swim. I am doing IronMan St George again in 2012 and if I don’t come out of the water before 59:59 I will be disappointed.