Consequently, the unwrapping, and the public presentation, of the lives of these two is unprecedented in each of their experiences, and unprecedented in our sport. I had heard that Dave Scott was going to be racing Ironman Japan exactly one week before Avignon [ITU Olympic Distance World Championship].

Unlike most race stories, this one has a pattern of a few chapters about the athletes followed by a chapter on the science of racing and suffering. Matt Fitzgerald has tried to capture the solution to the question of why human beings are willing to suffer. Thrilling and inspiring, though at times repetitive, annoying and heavy with mundane trivia and details that take away from the story. Weaving an examination of mental resolve into a gripping tale of athletic adventure, Iron War is a soaring narrative of two champions and the paths that led to their stunning final showdown. When I trained, I was maniacal and when I took breaks there wasn’t a compromise of shortened or easier days—I just stopped.com (October, 2011) "Iron War is the very first time our sport has engaged in Krakauer-style journalism, where full-featured personalities are presented to readers without excuse, or pause, or an author's self-censorship.

Implying that one has to be born with a work ethic and a gene for suffering to be a good triathlete is not only a disservice to Dave's environment and lifetime influences, and various factors in Mark's life, but also to many other triathletes who have learned to work for what they want, and teach themselves mental toughness. The storytelling gets into extreme omniscient detail, so it reads more like 'historical fiction' than reporting.We don’t share your credit card details with third-party sellers, and we don’t sell your information to others. Unfortunately, the author's writing style includes so many awkward, cliched phrases and wacky sports metaphors that the story of this epic race is reduced to a confusing tale of two flawed characters.

I agree with the author's conclusion: you cannot read a book, study the the training methods of the experts and replicate them and one day expect to find yourself winning or even being professionally competitive in something like the Ironman.

Counseling through the first 10 years of my racing career had not resolved this psychological weakness. Iron War by Matt Fitzgerald recounts the fabled Ironman world championship battle between triathlete legends Dave Scott and Mark Allen. From the author of the bestseller Eat and Run , a thrilling memoir about his grueling, exhilarating, and immensely inspiring 46-day run to break the speed record for the Appalachian Trail. Often dubbed the “greatest race ever run,” Iron War is the name given to the epic duel that took place between Dave Scott and Mark Allen at the 1989 Ironman World Championship in Kona, Hawaii.

Triathlete magazine "Dave Scott and Mark Allen had one of the greatest battles in sport history during their epic 1989 Ironman Hawaii matchup. Imagine, in the heat of battle, after struggling for hours, if you heard a prissy toad say in perfectly eloquent speech, "I'*m* goin*g* To Bury *Y*ou. Plenty of other swimmers would do one or the other—either increase the tempo of the intervals or reduce the rest periods between them. Don't look up the result before hand as it will ruin it (also avoid reading the photo captions as this gives the result away too! 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.To calculate the overall star rating and percentage breakdown by star, we don’t use a simple average. After reading this exhilarating account, I have committed to participating in the Nice Ironman 2020. In a spectacular duel that became known as the Iron War, the world's two strongest athletes raced side by side at world-record pace for a grueling 139 miles. Iron War is perhaps, the most simple map in the game, as it only features three islands, two medium sized islands, Wayward Isle at the north-west, Sentinel Isle at the south, one small, unnamed island, and a few asteroids scattered around the map.