Book Review...

This review was written by our very own local runner, Monique Koll. 

Thanks again Monique for putting this together for us!

I'm Here To Win: A World Champion's Advice for Peak Performance, by Chris McCormack with Tim Vandehey. 4/5 stars

With 6.5 pages of acknowledgments, honest details about his personal and professional life, and the enormous effort put into sizing up his competitor's strengths and weaknesses to gain a mental advantage over them (that has served him very well) this book gives a very profound insight into the egotistical outspoken champion triathlete. I went into it thinking Macca was just another ego-driven jock, but now I have the utmost respect for his honesty with himself, his cleverness, and the love of his sport. 

Macca gives advice not only on how to be a great triathlete, but how to juggle personal and professional life, how important it is to listen to yourself and your body and not always necessarily the "canned" programs for training and nutrition around you, and how important your whole life is, not just your profession. He emphasizes the sport belongs to the amateurs that fit in time to train whenever they can, not the professionals that are paid to train. There is an entire chapter dedicated to how disappointment in athletes that dope.

 Once a year he sits down with his few trusted people and let them make very honest criticisms about his performance and how to help correct that, and he makes a strong case on listening to athletes from other sports on how to become a better triathlete. He also very honestly portrays what it's like to adapt as your body ages, and shows how you can still be a winner (he won Kona 2010 the second time at age 37,) but take the time to let your body recover. Macca made a real believer out of me, he's my favorite athlete in the sport now. A great book to read!!!