Matt Fitzgerald (1)

While some of what Fitzgerald says makes sense, he is too cavalier with how he picks some advice from papers and other advice from anecdotes. At times, it becomes impossible to tell which is which. (Even the advice from papers is suspect as he is obviously choosing between papers.)

He is similarly confusing when he fails (at times) to distinguish between advice for marathoners vs half marathoners and beginners vs experienced runners. Lastly, the writing style is much too uneven. For example, he flips between grams and calories seemingly at random. Similarly between lbs and kgs, only rarely giving equivalents. (Makes me wonder where his editor was. An editor should catch this. But Fitzgerald has written many books and articles - he should know better.)

On the other hand, he did give some solid advice (but most of it is well known). Some advice was new to me, quite intriguing, and which I have incorporated such as his idea about using supplements every other long run.

In total, I found the book rather maddening to read and I have trouble recommending it for anyone else.… (more)

Sometimes I get on runs of books that just fail to thrill me. I like Matt Fitzgerald's points: humans evolved over millennia to eat basically all food and all fad diets are dumb. This is also a pretty obvious point to anyone who's spent any time thinking about food or metabolism and since I'm a professional metabolist...

I was hoping either for scientific rigor or bystander fascination (e.g. a review of the craziest fad diets of all time.) Instead I got a lot of common sense: people are healthy eating a wide-range of foods in moderation and there's no magic diet mostly stated without citations.

I will say, though, I was grateful to the chapter dedicated to the overhydration cult and the dangers of free water intoxication as that's my personal pet peeve.

Unclear who his target audience is: most people who already think about these things already know what he's saying to be true OR have their heads buried in the sand of their favorite fad diet.… (more)

Maybe I'll try this out at some point. But I refuse to stop doing distance-based exercise. I don't know how to do timed runs without resorting to out-and-back courses, which are boring.

The author definitely resorts to a lot of anecdotal evidence (it works for his clients -- even though there's no control group in that sample of individuals -- therefore it must be effective for everybody) and very small sample-size studies for "scientific proof" that 80/20 works. I'm willing to try it, but I'm not convinced it's the end-all-be-all for becoming a better runner or triathlete.… (more)