What I find amazing is that Mark and Dave overcame the handicap of sanity to become the superb performers they were. Allen says: “For the first time, Dave and I are talking about events in our lives that in many ways almost derailed our races, even before we got to the start line. First, Matt implies - based on 4 (count them, 4) great male athletes - that if one has a lousy father, he'll be a great athlete because he has something to prove. Donsky's narration was grating in voice quality, but worse, he used the wrong intonations with the words he was reading.

Matt is the author of Race Weight, one of my all time favorite nutrition books (Main principle: Eat real, whole food.Fantastic description of the 1989 Kona Ironman, which featured an ultra-intense rivalry between two of the sport's greatest ever: Dave Scott and Mark Allen, who were shoulder-to-shoulder for virtually the entire race. Iron War commences with that moment, then immediately pans out to provide the landscape that brought the Ironman, Mark Allen, and Dave Scott, to that place, under that hot sun, on that afternoon.

In our overview of Iron War, we’re going to not only look at the facts surrounding the race, but also the context before, during, and after—as well as hear the stories directly from Allen and Scott themselves, via audio interviews. Iron War is about a decade of racing when the wins were divided between Dave Scott and Mark Allen—an old veteran and a newbie, with whacky approaches to the sport. I didn't know anything about these guys, or the Iron man, but after reading this book, I want to some day compete in one. Their will to win is undeniable, their feats are commendable, and yet, I just couldn't identify with either of them or get emotionally invested in what they were trying to accomplish.Let's face it, regardless of what his father did, he would have been demonized to support the author's hypothesis that people really good at triathlon had bad fathers. com "Fitzgerald eases readers into the nuances of the sport, capturing imaginations with a satisfying study of two exceptional athletes and what makes them tick. I've read the letter, and my impressions were that a) they do have a legitimate complaint, however b) they were cut out of the financial picture and c) they were being a little thin-skinned (unless there's something going on between the two of them and Matt that no one knows about.