Pacing Ourselves – what fell running teaches us about mega projects

A close friend’s family member was recently diagnosed with Motor Neurone Disease (MND), so we decided to run (yes, run!) the 24.5 miles and 1,500m elevation of the Yorkshire 3 Peaks challenge in May to raise money for Funding Neuro – an organisation researching innovative treatments for this debilitating, fatal disease.

So, headfirst into the world of fell running … new trail shoes required.

After the initial body shock of increasing my miles per week from zero to lots, and having overcome some out-of-comfort-zone panic, two weird things started to happen …

First, there’s a lot of time to think while out running in the wilderness of the Lake District fells with only a small dog for company, and my brain started to make some surprising connections between this new world and my life in major capital programmes:

1) Safety first

As you climb higher, you immediately become very aware of the risks of being in such an extreme environment. Falls from height, slips and trips, exposure to weather, exhaustion … many of which are common to construction #project delivery.

Dynamic #riskassessment skills required. But the challenge with endurance running is to maintain a clear focus and rational judgement of risk when your energy and hydration levels start to drop. This reminds me of the need to consistently maintain focus on a healthy #safetyculture at work, to maintain high safety performance even when there might be competing drivers to deliver faster or cheaper.

2) Prepare, prepare, prepare

Water? Yes, but not enough.

Food? Yes, but not enough and not the right stuff.

Route planned and shared with family? Yes.

Fully charged mobile phone with google maps? Yes.

Geolocation switched on? No. Oops. Following some scary stories from Security colleagues about how fraudsters can use your Strava data and information gleaned from social media to hack your life, I normally avoid giving away any information online (except on LinkedIn).

When I got home, my wife said to me, “you could have turned your geolocation on just for this run”. Oh yeah. In this instance the safety benefits would have outweighed the security risk.

Right tools for the job, not being applied. So we learn from experience and improve next time.

How about a physical map? No! My old scout master would be appalled. Would we begin a major #infrastructure project with only plan A and no fallback?

Major capital #programmes require holistic, integrated planning – are we confident that we are hearing all voices?

3) Pace versus speed

Endurance running – it’s a marathon, not a sprint. If you get your pace wrong, you don’t finish the route (and you’re quite possibly stuck two valleys away from a bus stop). If you're running into a headwind, you might unknowingly use more energy per mile to maintian the same pace. If you run too fast up a hill, you might burn out too soon. It's a constant balance to control pace accounting for internal and external factors.

This #management of energy resource is much like the management of resources to deliver major projects at an achievable pace. At work, our project timeline extends 100+ years – the right pace to deliver the mission might not be the fastest speed, and needs to account for many other organisational and environmental factors.

Your comfort zone is not your friend

Second, I realised that I actually enjoy the challenge of running up hills – who knew?! To quote Adriènne Kelbie CBE , your comfort zone is not your friend.

Work is one part of life. To do good work, we need to be #happy and #healthy. Fell running might not be your cup of tea, but why not get out of your comfort zone – activity and #nature are good for your body and mind, and you might even make some surprising realisations of your own!

If you’d like to support us, we are super grateful for all donations to Funding Neuro