Category Archives: My Work

What exactly do you mean by personal best?

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Non-runners who read my blog often ask me what a PB is. I tell them that it’s a Personal Best – when you run your fastest time over a specified distance to gauge improvements. They look at me oddly as if, well, what does that mean?

Funny thing is that when I listen to my running buddies, it appears to me that most of them are on a sole (excuse the pun) mission to increase their running speed and get a PB. (Hey, wait a minute? So it’s not just me?)

Achieving a PB is the ultimate benchmark for most runners. It’s as if this is the signal that they are getting better as runners. But I do wonder sometimes if speed is the ultimate goal?

Is your best always measured in terms of time?

Here’s where I’m going with this …

I’ve been busy at work refreshing my Key Performance Areas (KPAs) for 2012. A new process has been implemented and apart from the normal ‘doing your job KRAs’, there’s a new section called “Stretch goals”. This is meant to be areas where I manage to perform additional tasks above and beyond the normal KRA’s. But the measurement required to see whether or not I have achieved this is the difficult part.

You see, it’s not like running where I am able to record PB’s which indicate ‘best’. I need something more concrete because I can’t just use a PB (time) to indicate greatness for everything I do. The measure has to be tangible and measureable and different for each task.

But yet, in running, it’s okay to just use time. It’s okay that getting faster and faster is the ultimate measure of improvement.

I think this is sometimes where running fails. Because runners have become obsessed with PB’s that even all their “Stretch” goals are based on time/pace/speed. Are runners also training for goals of fitness levels, endurance or overall post-race recovery…or anything else? 

I do realise that all these contribute to better times and faster running. But is there an alternative measure than the PB? *just a thought*…

For runners, it’s more than just corporate stress

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For those of you who work in a corporate environment, I’m sure you’ll agree with me that 2011 and 2012 have been really tough. Since the economic downturn, it’s as if companies got a big wake-up call and since then, it’s become all about survival.

But with that, and all the many shake-ups, restructures and retrenchments it has also brought with it a change in corporate culture. It’s become a place where people are so busy pushing out work and trying to keep ahead of the competition that nothing else matters.

The sad thing for me is that people have stopped talking to one another. And I don’t mean talking… I mean really talking. Engaging with each other and finding out things about each other beyond work.

I think that sometimes we forget that work is not the be-all and end-all of most people’s lives.

Other than those that are busy planning weddings, pregnancies, sending kids off to varsity, I’m referring specifically to those that are training for the Two Oceans and Comrades marathons. It’s crunch time when qualifying times need to be in, the bulk of the training is almost at its peak and the nerves are setting in as we countdown to the biggest races on the running calendars.

I watch these colleagues at work, focussed on projects, in meetings and I sometimes wonder if their minds aren’t a million miles away. How do they possibly still make time to run, be it in the morning or evening when meetings are booked at ridiculous hours of the day? I sense their irritation when their colleagues come to work with flu, knowing that they can simply not afford to get sick now.

I take my hat off to these athletes knowing that in addition to the stress of the corporate jungle, they’re dealing with the stress of knowing that in the next couple of months, there are big races to conquer. There’s no turning back now.

It gives me *goosies* just thinking about it!

A corporate challenge doesn’t necessarily need to be a challenge

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It was in November last year that I approached management with the idea of entering a small team of runners from our department to partake in the J P Morgan Corporate Challenge.

An email was sent out late one afternoon to gauge the appetite for it and by 8am the next morning, 70 people had put up their hands, eager to participate. To be honest, I was quite surprised as this was an evening event which involved physical activity.

I immediately realised that I could in fact make this into something more than just a 5.6km race and potentially use it to bring the team together. Well, that was my plan anyhow…

So here’s what I did:

  1. I sent weekly emails with running, exercise and healthy-eating related information to the team. You’ll be surprised how people soak up information when it concerns their weight and general well-being (especially us women!).
  2. I made as if we were all training for our first marathon and distributed training schedules. Experienced runners among the group scoffed because to some of them, 5.6kms was a mere warm up. However, majority of the team had never run that distance before and were genuinely nervous.
  3. I slipped mini facts in to each email about different team members to allow people to get to know one another. So-and-so does aqua aerobics at the gym after work. So-and-so completed Half Ironman so speak to her about training. People were in awe once they started to learn more about their colleagues.

I’m not sure if it’s because of the emails, but people started to talk back. They started to share their stories with me. They’d pop past my desk to chat about running. They’d confess their sins if they had bought take-out on the weekends. They would report back if they managed to take the stairs instead of the lifts. I started to see shifts in behaviour and excitment for the race growing. Even I got nervous!

After 3 months of building up to the race it turned out to be a stunning evening! Together with 530 other runners from Standard Bank, we were proudly announced the 2nd largest entry!

If I look back, I realise that I personally gained so much out of the experience. I took a chance. I exposed myself to a bunch of people without knowing what their reaction would be to my constant communication. I discovered that a simple email, which honestly did not take more than 10 minutes to write, could contain so much influence and motivation behind it.

But I guess the biggest lesson for me is that team building doesn’t have to be complicated. Sometimes, we under-estimate people’s willingness to just get involved and have a bit of fun.

We’re all so different. Keep running.

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I was sitting in a team meeting on Tuesday engrossed in a discussion about diversity and culture and how it’s important to understand each and every individual and just how different we all are.

It was a late afternoon meeting and I kept checking my watch hoping the meeting would end early enough for me to get home and run. My mind wandered off and I secretly checked my Twitter timeline to see what everyone was up to.

As I scrolled through my list of Twunners (runners on Twitter), I saw the tweets about afternoon training sessions, updates on evening time trials and even some blogs posts about the Pirates 21km and Peninsula Marathon from the weekend.

It’s then that I made the link between the discussion focussing on diversity, and my thoughts about running. We’re all different. As individuals, as work colleagues and as runners.

I often make the mistake of comparing myself to other runners, particularly when it comes to my pace, the distances I run and even training methods. But I shouldn’t.

You see, just as in life, every individual is different and so too are runners.

Some are lightning fast, others are slow. Some like to incorporate training sessions at the gym, others like to do track work at athletic clubs. Some runners wake up to run at 4am, others prefer to run in the evenings.  

Some runners are able to run 21kms in under 1.5 hours, others do it in 3 hours.

The point is, we might all fall under the category of runners but we’re all so very different. I need to remind myself of that next time I compare my running with other runners (and walkers).

The focus should be on me. What’s my PB (personal best), what’s my PW (personal worst). How am I doing? Am I improving? Am I having fun? Am I reaching my goals? Because that’s what counts.