Reflections from the Trail…

 

Sorry – this is a long post and reflects my thoughts across the Oxfam Trailwalker event.

The vital stats:

• Distance: 55.9km
• Time: 11 hours and 4 minutes
• Average pace: 5.05km/h (inclusive of breaks)
• Vertical elevation: 2,110 metres climbed
• Steps: >70,000
• 5th Place Team of 4

Saturday morning started early with an alarm that woke me with a shock a little before 3am.  One of the joys of living outside of Brisbane is that the car travel is always a decent chunk of time – something I’m more than used to with a daily commute into the city, but it still hits you hard on these sort of mornings.

Breakfast, coffee, shower, tape the toes and get dressed.  As always, I’ve ended up leaving home a bit later than planned so have to hustle to be on-time to pick up one of my team mates before heading into the city to meet up with the rest of the team.  Traffic at 4am on a Saturday morning is not surprisingly light and the peace of the morning is a contrast to the rolling thoughts in my head about the walk, gear, food, water, times – cycle, repeat…

Once the team is together it’s now reached 5am and it’s time to get into the cars and head out to Lake Manchester.  Traffic in the city is still almost non-existent – too late for those returning home from a night out, too early for everyone else.  Until we get close to the start point – when we find ourselves in a queue of traffic, and this is largely how the day will now continue with a permanent visible reminder of teams in front and teams behind that help remind you this is not a training walk anymore.

Arriving into Lake Manchester the sun is now starting to cross the horizon and the dawn light is growing in intensity.  A combination of nerves and excitement rest across the open fields as more than 100 teams congregate for registration and to say goodbyes to their support crews, families and friends.  The 5 QUT MBA teams are together for a photo, and then we’re separate again – small groups of 4 going through our final preparations and readying for the walk.

To be honest, our team is exceptionally relaxed.  With only 5 minutes to go one of us is lining up for the toilets and the other 3 are enjoying a morning coffee – not quite a focus on peak performance but this reflects our relaxed approach to the whole event.  What’s interesting is that this relaxed approach has still seen us exceed our fundraising target (by this point we’ve raised over $3,200 of our $3,000 target), we’re together as a group of 4 (despite some significant concerns and a last minute hospitalisation), and we’ve got a rough plan for the day.

 

The walk commences…

In the final few minutes before the start we’re still waiting for Ian to get back from his last minute toilet break (not surprisingly the toilet line for 400 over-hydrated people is long) and then he has to drink his coffee (did I mention the high performance focus of our team J?).  I also realise I haven’t filled my water bottle so it’s a quick run to get some water.

 

By the time of the hooter we’re almost at the back of 106 teams to walk under the arch that marks the commencement of our 55km climax of a 4 month journey for both Adaptive Leadership as a Unit and the Oxfam Trailwalker event.

What we quickly learn is that the first section of course is different to what we had anticipated – we turn right rather than left.  Does this mean it will be less than 55km? Does that matter if we don’t get the full 55km experience? Will there be a later change to make up the distance? Is it because of the course change between Bellbird and Enoggera? So many unanswered questions.

The other major thing we learn is that the walking pace at the back is quite a bit slower than we are both comfortable with and were planning on.  A quick team check that everyone is ok to jog a bit and we’re suddenly hurdling over the scotch thistles and traversing the uneven rocks on the very edge of the 4wd trail to make our way through the field.  The team is comfortable with a run so we jog our way past the other 4 QUT teams in this first few km before settling in for a steady walk on the flats.

When we eventually hit the creeks the impact of the recent rains are obvious as what were dry creek beds and shallow crossings a month or so ago on our training walk are much deeper. As a result, a bit of time is spent traversing the crossings and finding dry rocks to dance across without falling in.  As a result, we lose our leadership spot of the QUT teams with Happy Feet finding a quicker way over one of the crossings and jumping us in the rankings.  It’s a long day though, and at this point no one is that fussed with competing.

 

Hill time!!

Then we hit the hills – and remind ourselves just how long they can be.  Fortunately the boggy mud of the first section disappears and we hit dry, compact gravel for the climbs.  The one advantage of the hills is that as a team we’re quite comfortable running down the hills, so get some good time back on the downs.  I manage to catch Happy Feet on the big descent but by the time the rest of the team catches up at the bottom of the hill they’ve already started the ascent of the 2^nd climb, but we know we’re close.

The 2^nd climb also starts to take a toll on the legs and Tom elects to make use of the walking poles and this proves to be a great relief and he makes use of them for the remaining 40km.  It’s a long and steady climb but before too long we find ourselves arriving into CP1 at Scrub Road and it’s only 10.30am.

 

Check Point #1 – 8th place?!?

We’ve covered the first 19.7km in 3.5 hour and are well ahead of our schedule.  Our biggest surprise comes as we check the live timing – we’re in the top 10! We never anticipated this and it gives us all an extra boost of energy. We’d already planned for a quick stop at Scrub Road with a sock change the only time constraint.  So it’s only a few minutes before we’re back on the feet and on the trails a few minutes behind the Happy Feet team.

Funnily, I get a phone call from Kim at this point who has seen our result and called to wish us well.  She doesn’t realise we’re not stopping at Scrub Road and are already back on the trail – between the poor reception and the steady pace it’s not a long conversation! It’s also time to update the Support Crew (Tom’s parents) that our pace is better than expected so we’re updating our CP2 arrival time from 2.00/2.30pm to closer to 1.00pm.  It’s a bit after 10.30am, we’ve got 15km between us and Bellbird Grove and now we’re keen to catch Happy Feet (partly because I hadn’t recognised them to this point and we’re disagreeing that it’s a QUT team ahead of us).

Luckily there’s some downhills so we can get some decent pace going.  We’re also starting to pass some of the slower 100km teams now and they are truly inspiring seeing how much discomfort some of them are in and still soldering on.

We’re also adding to the social media banter with the QUT leadership team at this point who are a great support at the start and the Check Points. They’re setup at the next CP and we’re letting them know we’re on our way – put the kettle on for 1:30pm!

A combination of steady walking, downhill running and not stopping along the way sees our average pace up around 5.2km/h as we’re getting closer to the Bellbird CP.  Some evil short/sharp hills in the final trails before the turn onto the bitumen road are really hitting the 100km teams hard but we’re still reasonably comfortable although the distance is starting to impact Ian (his longest event to this point was a 20km Tough Mudder) as we’re now past halfway and on our way into the 35km checkpoint.

The volunteers along the way are exceptional.  They have a mixture of lollies, mints and some great words of encouragement.  It’s always the volunteers that make these events and the team at the turn toward CP2 are one of the best we come across.

As we cross the road to head towards Bellbird we’re greeted by Glen who has phone in hand ready to call in our coffee orders (again, high performance team stuff).  Time to get a jog on for the long slow descent to the CP and our first, and only, support crew stop.  Although the 3rd CP at Enoggera is a supported CP we’ve already agreed as a team we won’t be stopping there as with only 10km between there and the finish we don’t see the need.

 

Check Point #2 – The Support Crew

Upon arrival into the CP we’re greeted by our support crew and also the QUT team who have a great little tent set up and offer both friendly faces and encouragement.  By this point our competitive juices are flowing – we’re in #1 place for the QUT teams and we’re keen to keep this ranking.  We assume Happy Feet isn’t too far behind (having passed them mid-way between CP1 and CP2) and earlier as we’d departed CP1 we’d passed both Thread Bare Grylls and Good Will Hiking.  So we know they’re not too far behind.  The team from Between a Walk and a Hard Place seem to be well behind and we hope they’re still travelling ok.

The live timing only gives updates as each CP so keeping track of the teams isn’t easy. TBG is showing as still resting at CP1 (we are pretty sure they aren’t), so we know it’s not a reliable indicator.

Our support crew stop is pretty brief – reload the food bags, change socks and shirts, eat some solid food and fruit, check strapping and refill the camelbaks.  As we’re resting we get word that apparently Happy Feet has departed CP2 – this get’s us moving and we’re quickly back on our way.  As we refill the waters we can see Happy Feet still resting (clearly our spy, Glen’s daughter, has given us bad intelligence, but it did get us moving!).

On the climb out we pass TBG and then Good Will Hiking.  Interestingly when we pass Glen he is concerned as he hasn’t seen any of the other QUT teams – either he was asleep or they took the shortcut (that many of the 100km teams were taking to avoid the steep descents).  Bastards.

As we settle back into a steady pace we’re now with 20km of the end and a bit over 3 hour until sunset – how close to the end can we get before dark?  Suddenly our initial target of finishing by sunset is actually within reach.  It’s also more and more serene on this section.  As we navigate around Enoggera Dam we have long sections where we aren’t within sight of any other teams.  Just 4 guys, some Australian bush and the awareness of a time pressure to keep moving.

Our pace is slowing a bit with Ian starting to show the effects of almost 40km of walking and it’s a constant push to keep the pace up where we think it needs to be in order to keep our lead over Happy Feet. Late into this section we get passed by an all-female team who look incredibly fresh.  We try to keep up in the last 2km before CP3 but they are clearly travelling much better than we are and although we keep up we start to accept they are going to beat us to the end.

 

Check Point #3 – no time for stopping now!

CP3 is another lightning stop.  No one has to refuel as we still have supplies from CP2 so we check-in and out in one go.  Tom wants to change socks and check his feet as there’s some pain creeping in, but we’re only in the CP for a few minutes. We get sent out with a couple of 100km walkers who have lost 2 team members, but they quickly drop off our pace and settle in with another 100km team.  As we climb the small hill out of CP3 we pass Happy Feet and it’s seemingly game-on for the final 10km push.

Checking the live timing it shows Happy Feet having departed CP3 10 mins behind us. At our pace that’s 1km. Not much and easy to close over the next 2 hours.  Although everyone is clearly fatigued we manage to find some running legs for the downhills.  I’m pushing the team for a bit of pace and a few times my encouragement is clearly a bit much with a few short responses about whether it matters if they catch us.  Despite this, we make great time on the first 4km out CP3 and get the pace on this section up to 6km/h.  We also get some great views of Enoggera Dam and out to Mt Coot-tha where we will be in the next 2 hours.

Soon we find ourselves on the suburban streets of Chapel Hill and the other areas around the base of Mt Coot-tha.  This is also Red Bull time as we’re within the final 4km and it’s getting close now. There’s no more running once we hit the suburban streets and it’s walking only.  I’m counting Ian down through the final few km and you can see the effect of ‘3km to go’, ‘2km’ to go etc as we get closer to the end.

As we cross onto the trails for the final climb the darkness is falling upon us both literally and figuratively.  By the Garmin GPS, we’re at 54.1km as we hit this final section and I’ve only just told Ian that it’s 1km to go.  Then we hit a sign that reads ‘1.9km to go’ – deflation! The sense of negativity and disappointment is obvious – the final 10 minutes of the event has been stretched to a final 20 minutes, and we’re looking at a decent climb ahead of us.

This final climb ascends as the dusk descends.  Views to the hills slowly dissolve to darkness and by the time we’re nearing the top the only lights we have are our headlamps and the lamps of the 100km team we’ve just passed.  Step, step, step. It’s nothing more at this point than a single step after a single step. The altimeter shows we’ve just cracked 2000m vertical for the day, we’ve just hit 55km and we have a stunning view ahead of us – a volunteer marshal who is channelling their inner Christmas tree (1000s of lights) and then the appearance of the twinkling lights of the city of Brisbane.

Spectacular, clear, still. The twinkling city lights are perfect as we feel the relief of cresting this final climb and now have a 900m trudge to the finish.  Keeping a careful eye on the trails behind us (no one wants to get passed this close to the end), we’re focused on getting all 4 of us to the end.  Encouragement, a few songs and counting down the 100m sections (and hoping that this time it’s accurate).

We can now see the finish chute before painfully turning away from it for the final twist of the knife, and trail.  We resolve that we’re going to jog into the finish as a team.  Finally, we reach final milestone – the final volunteer post where they ask if we have a song preference for our finish! No surprises here – as long as it’s the Nancy Sinatra version and not Jessica Simpson’s effort of ‘These Boots Are Made for Walkin’.

Our feet leave the trails for the final time and touch the bitumen of the finish chute.  A quick check of the team and we’re “jogging” (shuffling is probably more accurate) and our song is blasting as they announce our team.  We see family and friends and the QUT team to welcome us home.  Hugs, handshakes, congratulations and photos before the final check-in of the event.

And we’re done.  We’re told that we are 6^th team across the line – later we can see that we’re 8^th, but 5^th of the teams of 4.  Unexpected.  A great sense of accomplishment and triumph.

It was only 2 weeks earlier that we’d joked (half joke, half genuine concern) that we might not have 4 at the start and were still $46 short of the minimum fundraising to even start.  There had been lots of jokes about whether Ian existed (since neither Tom nor Jon had met him or spoken with him) and we even had Glen lacing up the trail shoes as our risk mitigation.  Suddenly we had exceeded the expectations we had of ourselves and undoubtedly others had of us – first QUT team to finish, 5^th team of 4, well over our fundraising target, and most importantly we were still talking to each other!

 

Does performance drive expectations, or do expectations drive performance?

The performance of other teams gave us thought on the trails as to whether performance guides expectations, or do expectations guide performance.  Much has been written about the psychology of sport and performance of elite athletes.  In behavioural economics, concepts of reference dependence and anchoring show that we have biases toward recent experience and performances to guide expectations.

The risk, therefore, is that a strict plan for performance may hinder achievement as performance is anchored to anticipated performance.  In our team, the lack of a clear time-based reference point allowed us to continually drive ourselves to improve our performance against the benchmark of others (the other teams in the top 10) rather than ourselves.

In a professional setting this can be achieved through stretch goals, continual improvement techniques (ie benchmark performance and continually improve), or the selection of a challenging peer group.  The risk, is that performance targets are instead based on past performance (not stretch goals), consistency is preferred to improvement, or that the peer group selected is comparable rather than an aspirational goal.

Stretch goals – exceeding expectations

One of the highlights for the team in completing the Oxfam Trailwalker in 11h4m was undoubtedly a ‘top 10’ finish (we finished as the 5th full team and 7th team overall).  The big question we all were asking ourselves was how we had achieved this – exceeding the expectations of ourselves and everyone else.

 

Setting a stretch goal 

In the initial planning for our team we had agreed on a stretch goal of finishing by sunset. We knew this gave us about 10 hours with a 5pm sunset and would require a 5.5km/h pace – without any training under the belt we thought this sounded reasonable. As the training commenced we began to adjust our expectations back toward an 11 hour pace (5km/h) but much more toward 12 hours once breaks were included.

 

Tracking progress

We didn’t specifically set milestones or undertaken any major analysis of our performance as we went through the training experience. But with Strava we are able to evaluate each longer training walk.

Mid way through our training, Jon & I completed a decent walk of 30km at a pace of about 5.3km/h so we were thinking we were looking good. However, our expectations took a slight hit when our last long training walk ended up under 5km/h despite it being across fairly flat ground for on the initial part of the real course.  In short, we were back to thinking about the 12 hour target.

Under 2 weeks out from the event and we had a major cause for concern as Jon was admitted to hospital and suddenly the whole event was at risk.  Up until this point, our largest team risk was the absence of Ian at any of our training events. Individually, each of us was time poor and the planned training activity seemed to be below-expectations for everyone else in the team (according to Strava).

 

Being flexible and adjusting the target

As I’ve noted elsewhere, on the day we recognised early in the event that we were exceeding our own expectations as we entered CP1 in 8th place and started to believe a top 10 finish was possible – but being careful to note that 3/4 of the team had not completed over 30km in either training or other events, and it was still a long way to the finish. However, our stretch goal made a resurgence and we were suddenly racing the sun and pushing to finish by 5:30pm (civil twilight).

On the day, it was with some surprise to the team that as we passed the 35km mark of the Oxfam Trailwalker that this suddenly was within potential grasp – at 1:30pm we had completed 34km and averaged 5.2km/h (including our main break).  We now had 21km to go with 3.5 hours until sunset and 4 hours until civil twilight – we weren’t going to make sunset (5.7km/h) but civil twilight was within reach (5.2km/h).

The next 10km to CP3 would take us a bit over 2h (about 4.7km/h) and then final 12km to the finish took us 2h20 (5.2km/h).  A chance encounter with the QUT team Happy Feet as we exited CP3 saw our pace quicken substantially with the first 4km of this segment taking a little over 40 mins at a pace of 5.7km/h – a 20% jump on our CP2-CP3 pace. Clearly comparative performance can be more influential than comparison purely to a stretch goal!

 

Celebrate victories and recognise success

A key aspect of what we did, even if not fully acknowledged at the time, was to celebrate success along the way and recognise the contribution that each person was making to the team success.  We constantly checked in each with other, coached and supported each other, and took turns to set the pace for the group.  These small milestones and celebrations undoubtedly assisted with our momentum and overall success.

Plans, reality and achievement

On the morning of 17 June 2017, our team for the Oxfam Trailwalker 55km event met together for the first time! With only 2 hours to go until the starting horn would be heard, we made polite introductions as both Jon and Tom met Ian for the first time. Team dynamics would have to be both developed and assessed on the trail – not ideal, but a great test of our Adaptive Leadership skills we had learned over the past 3 months.

 

“No Battle Plan Survives Contact With the Enemy” – Helmuth von Moltke

 The words of the German military strategist of Field Marshall Helmuth von Moltke ran through my mind in the weeks leading up to the Oxfam trailwalker event.  As logistics leader for the team I had the primary responsibility for an event plan and providing guidance on our finishing time.

What I had learnt in the Gold Coast Kokoda Challenge in 2016 is summed up in the paraphrased quote from Dwight Eisenhower that “plans are worthless, but planning is everything”.  In the 2016 event I had taken a similar team role and prepared complicated timing estimates for the full 96km that estimated different pace on the ups, downs and flats.  It was based on analysis of our training efforts and the full 2015 results where I compared to comparable teams.  I had a detailed table that plotted our projected performance and finish time.  What I quickly learnt is that you need to adapt on the fly – congestion on the first part of the course, a lost support crew (that cost us 90 mins in the first check point), sore knees, rain and illness.

So this year I approached it differently.  We entered the starting box with only a vague plan with no set walking pace guides, times or expectations.  Our expectations were both ill-defined and reflected our relaxed team culture – finish as a team and enjoy the experience.  We had an expectation of finishing around 7:30-8:00pm (we had to make some estimates for the Support Crew) but that wasn’t based on much more than a 5km/h pace with time for stops along the way.

 

Exceeding expectations and setting new targets “on the run”

As we entered the first check point (CP) of the walk we discovered we were actually in 8th place on the live timing. Considering we’d started at the very back of the 100+ teams only 3.5 hours earlier it was an absolute surprise and suddenly we were inspired to push on. Re-joining the trails we started to contemplate a top 10 place later than evening – could we do it? We had originally anticipated arriving into CP1 around 11am or a bit after, not only were we ahead of time by 30 mins (more than 10% faster than we thought), but we also hadn’t anticipated the other teams would be in range at this point.

Being careful not to forget we had only completed 19.5km of a 55km event, we did lift the pace slightly and continued our downhill running in an effort to catch a few teams who sat just ahead of us (and keep those already behind safely behind).

As we walked we re-calibrated our expectations and set some new team rules around performance. It was going to be a short stop at Bellbird (CP2) and we had to keep our pace going around the same intensity. We made contact with our support crew and pushed on.

 

Leader or Follower?

Completing a 55km walk as a group of 4 in only 11 hours, and finishing as the 5^th team of 4, allows for many moments of reflective practice in relation to my individual leadership strengths and preferences.  During the event preparation and on the day, I confirmed that I am much more comfortable as a leader than a follower – that I would rather be the fittest member of the team who then takes a leadership role in relation to coaching, communicating and supporting the team to achieve a combined goal.

Finishing 5^th and feeling capable of more, I reflected on whether I would rather take satisfaction from guiding our team to 5^th, or being in a more competitive team of higher fitness and finishing in the top 3.  Whilst initially I considered that better performance would have been my preference, on reflection I believe at top 3 result where I was a less-strong team contributor would not have offered the satisfaction that we took from our team’s above expectation success where I played a key leadership role across the team.

As an introvert, I am not comfortable as a visible leader, but take great satisfaction from playing a leadership role and enjoy leadership through example. In this experience, I have enjoyed “leading” the team through support, mentorship and coaching – even if such a leadership role was not always as a visible “out the front” leader.

Self belief and self confidence – the hidden character traits that can reduce team performance

Last night we had our final workshop for Adaptive Leadership – an insightful class that looked at mindfulness with the engage Professor Brett Heyward.  In the workshop there were plenty of moments of suitable parallel between my own experience in competitive events and with the snippets that Brett shared from professional sports, coaching and high-performance environments.

As an example, anchoring and the negative impact that being aware you are behind a particular performance target vs the positive influence of believing you are ahead of target (the engaging story of the Australian speed skating team and their qualification for Olympic selection when coaches lied about their pace during events).  I had seen similar performance barriers raised in amateur events with people claiming they were unable to run at a certain speed even though, unbeknownst to them, they had only recently achieved such feats.

However, the biggest lesson for me as an individual came during discussion around the Oxfam event and the interest from my class colleagues as I shared my personal insights into nutritional planning, mindfulness and physical preparations for the upcoming walk. Knowledge that I assumed was common to all, was clearly not. In turns out that others had not applied the same logical and structured approach to planning for the event that I had taken – an approach that included analysis of caloric burn, assessment of necessary calorie intake and analysis of the various nutritional options open to teams.

A professional parallel is that when I share knowledge in a healthcare setting I am surprised that my insights are not commonly known across the team. What I am slowly learning, is that being cognisant not to share simple lessons and things “people already know” is significantly hampering my ability to contribute as this knowledge would be very helpful if I had the self-belief and self-confidence to both occasionally be wrong,  but more importantly accept occasional embarrassment if my personal insight did in fact end up being a plainly obvious insight (which it rarely is).

This is definitely an area I’d like to investigate and consider further.

Essentialism and Leadership

Review of Essentialism: the disciplined pursuit of less by Greg McKeown.

This past week I have been listening to a recommended audiobook on leadership that has caused me to pause and reflect on my own leadership and professional styles.  The topic of essentialism is boiled down to one key statement by the author – less, but better. How can we be strategically selective in what we commit to, how can we be more focused, present and diligent, and how do we achieve our life’s purpose by better focusing on what really matters.

As part of the book, Greg McKeown references the simple practice that is promoted by Derek Seivers – when considering any task or invite there are only two possible answers: hell yeah, or no. If for any reason you aren’t passionately engaged by a proposal or invite, the default should be ‘no’. This then frees you up to engage in the more essential and beneficial tasks, even if they haven’t arrived onto your radar at this point.

What does this mean for my leadership journey? In short I need to reflect more regularly, be diligent in being selective (seek out the ‘hell yeah’ tasks and opportunities) and make a single decision that will seamlessly make 1,000 downstream decisions more easily (clarity of purpose).

For a quick 5 minute summary check out this interview with the author.

Being Present in Nature

One of my personal challenges from both an individual and leadership perspective is being present, engaged and focused on a single task. I am easily distracted, unfocused and a consummate procrastinator. The ever-presence of social media, email accessibility, multiple browsing windows and a lack of discipline when it comes to time management would be key descriptions of how I survive in the world. Presence is a major challenge.

What I really like about both running and hitting the trails is the inability to multi-task. It is very difficult to check Facebook while running on the trails (possible, but dangerous) and there are limited external distractions. I like the thinking time, the solitude and the need for focus on the task at hand.

This last Easter Monday I hit the trails at Nerang State Forest for a training run with the crew from the Nerang Short Course Series (of note, ‘short course’ is a deceiving title as this was a 20-25km training run and there was nothing short about it!). In a small group of 6 we headed out onto the trails and I quickly remembered how painful and challenging trail running can be – in Nerang there are very few flats, the ground is very loose and rocky, and the constant elevation change is devastating on the legs.

Elevation profile of the hills at Nerang State Forest.

For the first 15km or so we trained as a group but I was clearly the weakest link on the day and was very much not trail fit. Running at a solid pace on the flats is in no way comparable to trail running and I was feeling it. It’s not a comfortable place for me to be – either from a physical or a psychological perspective – as I’m not accustomed to be the weaker of the group. I was always the last up the hills, last down the hills (I don’t have the confidence or capability for downhill running) and there were so few flats I never stood  a chance at keeping up.

At the 15km mark my group headed up a side track to do an extra 3km out-and-back while I continued on the loop to finish it off. This allowed for greater time to reflect, pause and “enjoy” the surroundings (as much as you can when you’re approaching 20km and have been out there for over 2 hours). I reflected on being the constraint in the team, how my lack of preparation (relative to my peers) meant there was nothing I could do at that point to rectify my contribution, and that a better project plan would have seen things play out differently.

A happy snap of the Nerang State Forest while I enjoyed my solitude.

The challenge of teamwork is that the weakest link will always be the constraint that determines overall team performance. Most of my other sport activities are individual pursuits where no such restriction exists – you achieve what you can individually achieve, and there is no impact on others. It resolved me to focus on my preparation, contribution and presence in delivery of the task at hand.

Breaking down the work into the component pieces

Finishing the Gold Coast Triathlon (Luke Harrop Memorial) yesterday gave me pause to reflect on how to improve in season 2017-18. Triathlon is a challenging sport with the 4 disciplines of swim, ride, run and transition (you can lose a minute or two in transition if you don’t do it well). Over the last 3 years of competing I’ve focused on general fitness, doing a bit of running, a bit of riding, rarely swimming and just generally hoping my times improve over time.

In 2018 the Age Group World Championships will be held on the Gold Coast and I’m keen to vie for selection in the Australian team. I don’t need a major improvement to make the team, some strategic race selection should do, but to be competitive in the field I really need to deconstruct the event, look at each part as it contributes to the whole and then rebuild it back into a single event by the end of 2017.

So, breaking it down I have the following parts and my performance on the GC:

1. The Swim – 12th / 62. I don’t train much for the swim (at all really) but could save 1 or 2 mins in this leg (16%). I want to focus on a 1 minute saving here, about 8s/100m.
2. Transition 1 – 12th / 62. Not much time to save (8s slower than position 1, 10%), but better fitness and I could push harder to get out a little quicker.
3. The Ride – 32nd / 62. A lot of time here as I’m 4 mins down on the leader. A bad end to the cycle yesterday probably cost me 30 seconds but that still leaves a 3m30 gap. I should be able to push for a 3 minute saving here and move into the top 10.
4. Transition 2 – 7th / 62. Regretting the lost time at the end of the bike I pushed hard. Only 7s behind the fastest but there’s always improvement!
5. The Run – 20th / 62. This has been my weak discipline for some time so 20th was a good improvement. About 4 mins behind the top runner so a good improvement needed – 2 mins should be achievable, 3 mins as a stretch goal.

Overall – 19th / 62. If the combined improvements can be achieved, this 7-8 minute improvement would propel me into the top 3.

It’s interesting how breaking the improvements down into pieces makes it seem achievable – a few minutes here and there – but if I’d sat back to look at taking 7-8 minutes out of a 71 minute race I’d think it was impossible.

The same applies both in the Oxfam Trailwalker challenge – for training, fundraising and the event itself – as well as the business environment. The enormity of a project, the competing priorities and vague stretch goals do not inspire performance. But breaking the activities into achievable steps, moderate improvements and actionable tasks makes it seem quite reasonable.

In my previous Personal Leadership Plan I set myself the action of improving my “holding to account” skills. Reflecting on my progress since 2014 I can see that I failed to set achievable tasks or break down this large, ambiguous goal. By deconstructing the area for development I could have much more easily achieved improvement, tracked my achievements and ben more disciplined in my approach. Fortunately, the opportunity to improve is as alive today as it was yesterday.

Progress, recognition and reward

They say that employees only really require two main elements to drive performance – some measurable progress, and recognition for correct behaviour / achievements. One of the great things about exercise, running and the outdoors is the ability to easily plot performance and progress.

For me this was achieved last night when I hit the riverside paths after my MBA class (Strategic Marketing). I wasn’t sure as I left QUT what I could achieve but I thought I’d head out fast for the first 5km and then see how I was tracking. After 4km I was feeling really comfortable and a sub-21 min 5km was looking on the cards. Unfortunately a few little inclines and some footwork across the last few hundred metres saw me fall short of 21 min by a few seconds, but still the fast 5km time I’ve done in about 8 months.

So, on turning back to QUT I kept the pace up and wanted to push for a sub 42 min 10km (my PB on 10km to this point was a bit over 43.5 mins).  The constant feedback with a range of incoming data points (current pace, km pace, average pace) and the bio-feedback of how the legs and cardio were doing were very similar to how a business operates – the data inputs have to be interpreted, the project manager has to make adjustments and the constraints have to be managed.

At 8km I could feel the hamstrings tighten up and the limits were being tested – at this point you mentally start to play games and the psychology of running takes over. Conflicting thoughts of slowing down / going faster start to enter your mind – if I slow down to 4:45 / km I will get a PB, but if I can push to 4 min /km I can go sub 42 min. Your body tries to tell you that your body needs to slow down as the pain is too much and what are you really going to achieve. The interplay between physical and psychological strength is fascinating and you need to dig deep at this point to keep going.

Of greatest challenge on this particular evening, the final few km pass under the Riverside Expressway and GPS connections are intermittent, the data inputs aren’t reliable and you have to trust that you’re on pace.

As much as I tried to lift in this final few kms I couldn’t break 42 mins, but 42m21 is still a major PB and the sense of achievement is a major reward. Online communities like Strava then give you extra inputs with ‘kudos’, comments and endorsement from your running community friends. The small tokens of achievement from Strava also give you a positive psychological boost, recognising the effort you’ve just put in.

Reflecting on my personal leadership practices – I know a major flaw in my current practice is recognition, praise and reward. I am not one who naturally reflects on achievements, recognises the team’s progress, or provides a consistent system of reward. I need to take lessons from Strava – how simple tokens, peer feedback and ongoing progress measures can continue to drive, influence and motivate further improvements.