Finished reading Finding Ultra: Rejecting Middle Age, Becoming One of the World’s Fittest Men, and Discovering Myself by Rich Roll (2012).

I’ll start by mentioning a line from page 195: “It’s not at all like me to engage in self-congratulatory hyperbole.” Oh yeah? Start with the title, “becoming one of the world’s fittest men and discovering myself.” The book became quite a slog as Rich paints a lengthy picture of himself as being “the worst” at everything — uncoordinated, weak kid who hated school and got picked on on the one hand, but excelling at swimming by age 8, reaching the national level by high school, maintaining perfect grades, and being accepted to both Princeton and Harvard but instead opting for Stanford. He is even better at being a drunk that anybody else, chugging his first taste of beer rather than sipping it, and living the life of a party animal for a decade starting in college, supposedly managing to drive a car and remain fully functional with a blood alcohol level that would be fatal to most people. Despite showing up drunk to present an important paper in law school, his writing and his presentation were so effective and insightful that the Russian embassy asked to share his paper with a group of Russian legal experts. Despite being, according to himself, possibly the worst employee ever during his law clerk days, he was invited to join a high-profile law firm; from there, despite being a hardcore alcoholic prone to binge-drinking and blackouts, he moved up to an even more successful firm. Ultimately, obviously, Roll quit drinking, and suddenly became the healthiest man in the world by turning to a vegan diet. And despite his claims to have never been a runner or being particularly athletic (huh? Nationally-ranked competitive swimming isn’t athletic?), within mere months he somehow went from “overweight” and gasping for breath while climbing a set of eight stairs to competing in Ironman-distance triathlon events, and within a couple of years to completing the first EPIC5 event, five Ironman-distance triathlons on five separate Hawaiian islands over the course of five (extended to seven due largely to technical and scheduling issues) days.

What almost had me throwing the book across the room, which I couldn’t in good conscience actually do since I borrowed the book from the library, was when he referred to a ten-minute mile running pace as “slovenly.” Well, screw you, Mister Fittest Man in the World; for me, a sustained ten-minute mile pace is really pushing hard. And despite being overweight and tending toward lazy, I’m in a lot better shape than most people I know.

Roll is an elitist, coming from money, working as an entertainment lawyer in Hollywood, and utterly failing to pass himself off as either a “regular guy” or as someone disinclined to “self-congratulatory hyperbole.”

A disappointing read, and definitely DE-motivational. All this book did was emphasize how pathetic and UN-exceptional I actually am, and I already knew that.