Something to read during the off-season
Winter is coming. So here is a list of triathlon books to be read by an open fire during the cold nights and inspire you to make 2017 your best season yet.
Got To Tri asked triathletes across social media to share their favourite #TriBooks. We received a huge number of recommendations, including texts for compete novices getting in to the sport as well as books from more experienced athletes. Some are funny, some are serious. We are confident that from our chosen top 5 you will find a good read (or five!).
1. Can’t Swim, Can’t Ride, Can’t Run
My Triathlon Journey from Common Man to Ironman — Andy Holgate
A 2.4-mile swim, a 112-mile bike ride and a 26.2-mile run make up the Ironman triathlon. It’s not for the faint-hearted. What possesses an overweight, thirty-something librarian who can’t swim, doesn’t own a bike and has two dodgy knees to take on the hardest one-day endurance race in the world? Can’t Swim, Can’t Ride, Can’t Run is the story of Andy Holgate’s inspirational, epic and life-changing journey to become an Ironman.
2. Run, Ride, Sink or Swim
A year in the exhilarating and addictive world of women’s triathlon — Lucy Fry
Three sports in one event? Triathletes must be crazy, right?
At the age of thirty-one, Lucy Fry was pretty certain she knew her limits: triathlon was not for her.
But as increasing numbers of her female friends signed up to tri, Lucy couldn’t help wondering: what was it about this sport that women found so transformative? The time had come to find out.
3. Ironwar
Two Incredible Athletes, One Epic Rivalry and the Greatest Race of All Time — Matt Fitzgerald
Longlisted for the William Hill Sports Book of the Year 2012. For over a decade, Dave Scott and Mark Allen were locked in one of the fiercest rivalries sport has ever known. The men, who seemed able to force their bodies into achieving the impossible, dominated the nascent sport of triathlon, continually pushing each other to ever-greater feats of athleticism and endurance. On October 14 1989 the battle between Scott and Allen reached its peak at the 13th Hawaii Ironman, when the pair raced the 140.6-mile event side by side, for eight straight hours at breakneck speed. The eventual winner’s margin of victory was a scant 58 seconds. In a profound psychological portrait of these two men, and a gripping exploration of the aching gap between triumph and defeat, Iron War tells triathlon’s greatest ever story.
4. A Life Without Limits
Chrissie Wellington
Chrissie Wellington is the world’s No 1 female Ironman triathlete, a four times World Champion, having recently won the her fourth title in October 2011 and the World Record holder. In 2009 she was voted ‘Sunday Times Sportswoman of the Year’ and in 2010 was awarded the MBE. She is the undefeated champion of Triathlon, having won thirteen Ironman titles from thirteen races. This is the remarkable story of how a Norfolk girl — a ‘sporty kid, swimming, playing hockey, running, but never excelling and always more interested in the social side of the sports scene’ — became a world champion.
5. Accidental Ironman
Martyn Brunt
Having spent 10 years scaling the lower echelons of the sport, the time has come for one of Britain’s least successful athletes to reveal all about how he got involved in all this nonsense in the first place. Marvel as he reveals:
His sporting history; how he took up triathlons in the first place; how he overcame a crippling lack of talent and a chorus of complete indifference from his family to complete 10 Ironmans, all outside the top 500 finishers; and how triathlons ultimately caused him to sell his Mercedes, give away his expensive suit, chuck in his job in the City and become, as his father put it, a “god-damned hippy” (A cycle path designer who owns a camper van).
