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Iron War: Dave Scott, Mark Allen, & the Greatest Race Ever Run by Bob Babbitt, Matt Fitzgerald
assistant_sensei's review against another edition
4.0
A great, entertaining, and motivational read. Really gave me a respect and appreciation for where the sport came from. The book tailed off at the end going into other random topics, which I didn't pay attention to and didn't finish, but the core of the book was a thrill.
mj_mj's review against another edition
5.0
Thrillingly inspirational! You can almost hear their breaths and feel their pain. Matt Fitzgerald has tried to capture the solution to the question of why human beings are willing to suffer. Does enduring inhuman pain create a sense of achievement? What makes triathletes tick? What makes the best of them hang on when their bodies are on the verge of collapse? To anyone interested in endurance sports, this is an excellent motivational read.
boyblue's review
It seems like ultramarathon runners are a dime a dozen these days. But before there was ultramarathon, and daily sufferance classes in the form of Crossfit, there was Iron Man. A competition in Hawaii where people who had forged their iron bodies, minds, and souls out of ridiculous training regimes, did battle over a full day. The winner was almost always the person who could suffer the most for the longest. Trying to escape the malaise of the comfortable modern life, Iron Man has drawn hundreds of thousands of participants from around the globe. People looking to break through the numbness of a normal life are attracted like moths to the flame, many are completely consumed by the fire and love it for that very reason. It's in pain that they finally feel alive.
The book itself is a good read, the description of the race is excellent even though I started feeling the same fatigue the Iron Man athletes feel late in the book. They'd been slogging it out for 8 hours under the hot Hawaiian sun, and I'd been ploughing through the book for 8 hours under an array of artificial lights on various buses and trains. Was my fatigue commensurate to theirs. No. Did my hyperactive imagination and Fitzgerald's evocative writing allow me to feel it was. Yes.
Obviously much of the debate about this book centres on Dave Scott's and Mark Allen's letter saying it's all bullshit. I've read that letter and didn't think much of it. They were annoyed that Fitzgerald attributed things to them they didn't believe were true but then they had refused him access to the very inner thoughts he had to instead invent. I'm stunned by the level of detail Fitzgerald managed to acquire about the two Iron Men's routines and lives considering he didn't have any of this access. If anything this is a lesson that it's not always the victor that writes history, sometimes history is instead written by the best storyteller.
The biggest criticism I would level at the book is not so much any inaccuracies but rather its structure and length. I agree that starting in medias res, AKA the searing Hawaiian sun, as these two titans of the sport duel it out one last time was the right place to start. What I didn't like was the haphazard use of dilation and the way the race ends about 2/3's in and then we've got to meander through their by contrast more faded lives before we finally hit the finish where the writer basically addresses his own inadequacies.
I also would have loved more on the science of it all but perhaps like Dave Scott I just need to snarl that desire off because it seems the big lesson from his and Mark Allen's accomplishments is mind over matter. You can do all the research and study in the world but all of that can be beaten by an unbreakable Iron will.
The book itself is a good read, the description of the race is excellent even though I started feeling the same fatigue the Iron Man athletes feel late in the book. They'd been slogging it out for 8 hours under the hot Hawaiian sun, and I'd been ploughing through the book for 8 hours under an array of artificial lights on various buses and trains. Was my fatigue commensurate to theirs. No. Did my hyperactive imagination and Fitzgerald's evocative writing allow me to feel it was. Yes.
Obviously much of the debate about this book centres on Dave Scott's and Mark Allen's letter saying it's all bullshit. I've read that letter and didn't think much of it. They were annoyed that Fitzgerald attributed things to them they didn't believe were true but then they had refused him access to the very inner thoughts he had to instead invent. I'm stunned by the level of detail Fitzgerald managed to acquire about the two Iron Men's routines and lives considering he didn't have any of this access. If anything this is a lesson that it's not always the victor that writes history, sometimes history is instead written by the best storyteller.
The biggest criticism I would level at the book is not so much any inaccuracies but rather its structure and length. I agree that starting in medias res, AKA the searing Hawaiian sun, as these two titans of the sport duel it out one last time was the right place to start. What I didn't like was the haphazard use of dilation and the way the race ends about 2/3's in and then we've got to meander through their by contrast more faded lives before we finally hit the finish where the writer basically addresses his own inadequacies.
I also would have loved more on the science of it all but perhaps like Dave Scott I just need to snarl that desire off because it seems the big lesson from his and Mark Allen's accomplishments is mind over matter. You can do all the research and study in the world but all of that can be beaten by an unbreakable Iron will.
julis's review
adventurous
inspiring
medium-paced
5.0
Oh my god. I am not a sports book fan, but oh my god. Fitzgerald wrote a very readable, detailed account of two incredible athletes and the lengths they went to face each other in Kona. Which were…extensive. And awful. Oh my god. I really don’t have words for this book, except that Ironman is a ridiculous race and I love it.
leethepea's review against another edition
4.0
Great book. Some of the writing was a bit cheesy, and the author made a few too many assumptions about what the athletes were feeling, but defo worth a read if you like triathlon/ironman
plexippa's review against another edition
4.0
Fascinating account of the 1989 Ironman in Kona. Fitzgerald profiles Scott and Allen in depth, filling out the picture with the history of the race itself and delving into sports psychology and physiology research that explains some of what was happening.
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