Book Review: Finding Ultra, by Rich Roll
Posted: Tue Nov 06, 2012 10:52 am
http://www.amazon.com/Finding-Ultra-Rej ... in_title_0
Rich Roll has a pretty neat story to tell. He held a promising career as a swimmer, earning a scholarship to Stanford during its swimming heyday in the late 1980s.
But he threw it all away when he found the bottle. He partied a bit too hard, and spent many years coming to grips with his alcoholism.
Eventually, he got sober and got his life back together with a nice family and a nice job as an entertainment lawyer in Los Angeles. One day, though, he realized that although he had apparently won his battle with alcohol, he had adopted some other habits that were detrimental to his health: he ate a lot of crap and didn't exercise.
So after getting winded climbing the stairs in his house, he decided to do something about it: he went full-retard. He adopted a vegan lifestyle and started endurance racing. Extreme endurance racing. His first big event was not just an Ironman race - it was Ultraman, a three-day race around the big island of Hawaii that is twice the distance of a regular Ironman (2.4 mile swim, 112 mile bike, 26.2 mile run).
I found his story to be poignant and I related to it pretty easily. Although I'm not an alcoholic, I too was a pretty serious swimmer, and I'm approaching middle age with a gut bigger than I ever could have imagined when I was 20. I've often thought of doing some serious endurance races like Ironman, but really haven't taken any steps to train for them - sure, I've done a few sprint and Olympic-distance triathlons, but it's been several years since my last.
So yeah, I found his book to be pretty inspirational and motivating. I can relate to at least part of what he went through.
But there's a part of the book that I scoff at, too. While I'm glad veganism worked for him, a large part of the book is spent selling the reader on Roll's "PlantPower" diet. The book is filled with platitudes about the benefits of a vegan diet and although he documents some studies showing that meat isn't the healthiest of foods, he doesn't really turn a critical eye to some of the claimed benefits of his foods. For example, he often cites foods that are rich in antioxidants as being beneficial - even though the scientific evidence for the health benefits of antioxidants is weak at best. He also repeats the mantra that some foods are bad because they're "processed" or have "dyes and chemicals" in them - while a lot of people do hold this view, such a generalization can't logically be accurate for all foods. And he's clearly selling a diet and some products - at the back of the book is an appendix of things you can buy to assist you in adopting his lifestyle.
In short, I thought Roll's book was a good story and he's a capable writer. But I don't really appreciate the hard-sell on veganism, although I can appreciate that going vegan is how he got healthy again. I think Roll is one of those guys who goes to extremes: you can see it in his alcoholism, his junk-food habits and the way he jumped right into extreme endurance racing. I think going full-retard-vegan fits into his psyche.
Anyone else read it?
Rich Roll has a pretty neat story to tell. He held a promising career as a swimmer, earning a scholarship to Stanford during its swimming heyday in the late 1980s.
But he threw it all away when he found the bottle. He partied a bit too hard, and spent many years coming to grips with his alcoholism.
Eventually, he got sober and got his life back together with a nice family and a nice job as an entertainment lawyer in Los Angeles. One day, though, he realized that although he had apparently won his battle with alcohol, he had adopted some other habits that were detrimental to his health: he ate a lot of crap and didn't exercise.
So after getting winded climbing the stairs in his house, he decided to do something about it: he went full-retard. He adopted a vegan lifestyle and started endurance racing. Extreme endurance racing. His first big event was not just an Ironman race - it was Ultraman, a three-day race around the big island of Hawaii that is twice the distance of a regular Ironman (2.4 mile swim, 112 mile bike, 26.2 mile run).
I found his story to be poignant and I related to it pretty easily. Although I'm not an alcoholic, I too was a pretty serious swimmer, and I'm approaching middle age with a gut bigger than I ever could have imagined when I was 20. I've often thought of doing some serious endurance races like Ironman, but really haven't taken any steps to train for them - sure, I've done a few sprint and Olympic-distance triathlons, but it's been several years since my last.
So yeah, I found his book to be pretty inspirational and motivating. I can relate to at least part of what he went through.
But there's a part of the book that I scoff at, too. While I'm glad veganism worked for him, a large part of the book is spent selling the reader on Roll's "PlantPower" diet. The book is filled with platitudes about the benefits of a vegan diet and although he documents some studies showing that meat isn't the healthiest of foods, he doesn't really turn a critical eye to some of the claimed benefits of his foods. For example, he often cites foods that are rich in antioxidants as being beneficial - even though the scientific evidence for the health benefits of antioxidants is weak at best. He also repeats the mantra that some foods are bad because they're "processed" or have "dyes and chemicals" in them - while a lot of people do hold this view, such a generalization can't logically be accurate for all foods. And he's clearly selling a diet and some products - at the back of the book is an appendix of things you can buy to assist you in adopting his lifestyle.
In short, I thought Roll's book was a good story and he's a capable writer. But I don't really appreciate the hard-sell on veganism, although I can appreciate that going vegan is how he got healthy again. I think Roll is one of those guys who goes to extremes: you can see it in his alcoholism, his junk-food habits and the way he jumped right into extreme endurance racing. I think going full-retard-vegan fits into his psyche.
Anyone else read it?