Rich Roll - Finding Ultra: Rejecting Middle Age, Becoming One of the Worlds Fittest Men, and Discovering Myself

If you liked Born to Run, youll love Finding Ultraone of the best books about health and fitness that Ive ever read.

NEAL D. BARNARD, M.D., President of the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine

Finding Ultrais the ultimate story of hope, perseverance, and endurance against lifes biggest challenges.

WILLIAM COPE MOYERS, New York Times bestselling author of Broken: My Story of Addiction and Redemption

I loved this. A rare book, unusual for its honesty and willingness to bare all, that really does deserve such superlatives as riveting and compelling. I was moved by watching Roll conquer his demons, and felt privileged to share in his eventual enlightenment. By laying it on the line, Roll absolutely wins us over.

RIP ESSELSTYN, New York Times bestselling author of The Engine 2 Diet

An incredibly inspirational book about achieving greatness at any age through self-belief and a positive attitude. Rich Roll is a true champion of life and sport.

LEVI LEIPHEIMER, two-time stage winner of the Tour de France and Olympic time-trial bronze medalist

Finding Ultrais an inspired first-person account of fast living and even faster swimming, biking, and running that will leave you convinced of the power of your own will.

BRENDAN BRAZIER, bestselling author of Thrive

An inspiring story of a man whose life took a tragic turn but then rebounded spectacularly. Down but not out, Rich Roll rose like a phoenix, taking the commitment to his own health to a new level and achieving a remarkable transformation. I believe everyone will be able to relate to this plant-powered athletes riveting story and perhaps garner some inspiration for their own journey. A top read!

LUKE McKENZIE, five-time Ironman champion

Copyright 2012 by Richard David Roll

All rights reserved.
Published in the United States by Crown Archetype,
an imprint of the Crown Publishing Group,
a division of Random House, Inc., New York.
www.crownpublishing.com

CROWN ARCHETYPE with colophon is a trademark of Random House, Inc.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Roll, Rich.
Finding Ultra : rejecting middle age, becoming one of the worlds fittest men, and discovering myself / by Rich Roll.1st ed.
1. Roll, Rich. 2. TriathletesUnited StatesBiography. 3. Older athletesUnited StatesBiography. 4. Ironman triathlons. 5. Ultraman World Championships. I. Title.
GV1060.72.R65A3 2011
796.4257092dc53
[B] 2012003094

eISBN: 978-0-307-95221-9

Jacket design by Nupoor Gordon
Jacket photograph John Segesta

v3.1

TO JULIE

APPENDIX I
The Nuts and Bolts of the PlantPower Diet

APPENDIX II
A PlantPower Day in the Life

APPENDIX III
Resources

The crash comes out of nowhere. One second Im feeling good, cycling as fast as I can at a good clip, even through the pouring rain. Then I feel a slight bump and my left hand slips off the damp handlebar. Im hurled off the bike seat and through the air. I experience a momentary loss of gravity, then bam! My head slams hard to the ground as my body skids twenty feet across wet pavement, bits of gravel biting into my left knee and burning my shoulder raw as my bike tumbles along on top of me, my right foot still clamped in the pedal.

A second later Im lying faceup with the rain beating down and the taste of blood on my lips. I struggle to release my right foot and pull myself up using the shoulder that doesnt seem to be bleeding. Somehow, I find a sitting position. I make a fist with my left hand and pain shoots up to the shoulderthe skin has been sheared clean off, and blood mixes with rainwater in little rivers. My left knee has a similar look. I try to bend itbad idea. My eyes close, and behind them theres a pulsating purple-and-red color, a pounding in my ears. I take a deep breath, let it out. I think of the thousand-plus hours of training Ive done to get this far. I have to do this, I have to get up. Its a race. I have to get back in it. Then I see it. My left pedal shattered, carbon pieces strewn about the pavement. One hundred and thirty-five miles still to go todayhard enough with two working pedals. But with only one? Impossible.

Its barely daybreak on the Big Island of Hawaii, and Im on a pristine stretch of terrain known as the Red Road, which owes its name to its red cinder surface, bits of which are now deeply lodged in my skin. Just moments before, I was the overall race leader at about 35 miles into the 170-mile, Day Two stage of the 2009 Ultraman World Championships, a three-day, 320-mile, double-ironman distance triathlon. Circumnavigating the entire Big Island, Ultraman is an invitation-only endurance-fest, limited to thirty-five competitors fit enough and crazy enough to attempt it. Day One entails a 6.2-mile ocean swim, followed by a 90-mile bike ride. Day Two is 170 miles on the bike. And the events culmination on Day Three is a 52.4-mile run on the searing hot lava fields of the Kona Coast.

This is my second try at Ultramanthe first occurred just one year beforeand I have high hopes. Last year, I stunned the endurance sports community by coming out of nowhere at the ripe age of forty-two to place a respectable eleventh overall after only six months of serious training, and that was after decades of reckless drug and alcohol abuse that nearly killed me and others, plus no physical exertion more strenuous than lugging groceries into the house and maybe repotting a plant. Before that first race, people said that, for a guy like me, attempting something like Ultraman was harebrained, even stupid. After all, they knew me as a sedentary, middle-aged lawyer, a guy with a wife, children, and a career to think about, now off chasing a fools errand. Not to mention the fact that I was trainingand intended to competeon an entirely plant-based diet. Impossible, they told me. Vegans are spindly weaklings, incapable of anything more athletic than kicking a Hacky Sack. No proteins in plants, youll never make it