My massive failure

So, I write this having just come back from a glorious holiday in Mallorca, I decided to take some of my cycling kit out with me, hire a bike and get out to do a few miles, to help compensate for the excess food and Vino Tinto. Now, I state upfront I am a very amateur road cyclist, would love to do more but with a 1 year old, you can imagine time is tight. So, I decided on the second morning of having the bike to cycle up Sa Calobra!!!  

For those of you who are not cycling fanatics, it’s the big cycling mecca in Mallorca that draws people from all around to go and concur, similar to the Etape in France. Sa Calobra is 10km of climbing at an average 7% incline, my friends said to do it in under an hour would be an achievement.  

So off I set up the mountain, initial thoughts, at 7am was this was beautiful, no one around just me and this challenge. 10 minutes in and the legs just start to burn a little, so I get off and have a drink and a stretch. Straight back on and off again, 10 minutes later, a little more leg burn, but no pain no gain, right? 30 minutes in legs burning, hip flexor start to ache - 6.5km in now. WOW not felt pain like this before. I used to be a semi decent athlete, ok that was tennis and still play to a fairly high standard and keep in, what I say, is half decent nick, but never felt pain like this before! 

 It’s amazing what happens in your head at this point, all the negative thoughts and feelings. You almost start to forget about the pain in your body as you battle the demons in your head. You won’t make it! Your legs can’t do that! Just quit, what’s the point. Mentally arguing with yourself, how weird is that!  

That’s it isn’t it, this is what differentiates the best of the best in sport and business, to be able to push through that boundary, go past all the negativity and pain, believe in yourself and push on through. Look at people like Sir Steve Redgrave, Bradley Wiggins, Mo Farah, Niki Lauda in sport and in business people like Richard Branson when he started an airline, J K Rowling with Harry potter and I can’t believe I’m saying this, Simon Cowell on his bounce back from going broke. They all still have those demons in their heads but manage to push on through and back themselves to deliver.  

 Just over 7km into the 10km climb, I saw the tight switchbacks and my head went. I threw the towel in and turned around and started the very quick decent I had just climbed, at this point I was glad the pain was over, when I reached the bottom and caught my breath, I was disappointed, gutted in fact. Not many times I can say I started something and didn’t complete it, in whatever form it happened to be in. 

I also thought “you silly sod, you haven’t trained, you haven’t put the hours in”. That’s half of it though, how many times do we just rock up to things and go, I can do that! I thought about working at Xpertise and all the training and development we do, spending time to learn about specific markets and technologies to make us experts in our fields, so we can add value to our clients and our candidates. That’s what makes us experts and knowledgeable in our markets. We don’t just turn our hand to everything, we stay in our fields of expertise, so we make sure we add that value. 

 I learnt a lot about myself on that mountain, it was one hell of a buzz, you can see why people go and do multiple Ironman’s’ or marathons. I think we have to keep pushing ourselves, keep pushing that line, hopefully further and further back, is that the point of living in my mind, to keep challenging ourselves?  

It’s not very often I have a defeatist attitude, but I’ve already started planning on going back, putting in the training and kicking that hills ass!!!!