Living by Other Peoples benchmark/Objectives

Winning at the expense of someone is not what I believe in. This is part of Steven Covey's 7 Habits Book thought me. As George Elliot puts it "What do we live for, if it is not to make life less difficult for each other?"

I look at success or people who has succeeded in many facets. You cannot call yourself successful if you just do one thing well, and fail at many others. In the recent weeks, i have come to see the other side of some of my "friends". Some of them only sees one angle in life ie just to excel in sports and to make it worse, excelling at the expense of others.

This is not a view that I subscribe to, having gone through life and look at trying to do good in areas of carreer, family, spiritual, frenship, education, health and wealth. There are many other facets, but these are some that i look as my KPI. Sports to me only fill the facets of frenship and health, it is not an objective to me but a means to a better health.

I am commonly asked (or statements are commonly pass), why are u still slow in your cycling since u have all the best bike and spend large sums of money on the bike. I think a lot of people fail to ask the objective of me cycling and forms conclusion quickly based on their standards and believe system. I spend money and buys these bikes as part of my experimentation/research with all the possible equipment available in the market. I buy because I can and also to get first hand knowledge and not just read and try to comprehend secondary information. Ironically, some of these people do try to leverage on my knowledge that I have acquired through my experimentation. They find these advice cheap ;-).

These equipment performance is much dependendent on your riding style, ur bike, ur weight etc. Basically wheelsets, equipment will be based on individuals and I now have a reasonable idea of what suits me. What is also more important, is that I cycle to achieve better health and maintain my weight while having fun with my friends. It is not to be faster then others, not to be able to have bragging rights and most definitely not to "make your friends malu by dropping them".

The same comments and statement is also made about my running to which I find it quite amusing. I started running mainly to prove to myself that I can do better then before. Doctors sometimes tells me not to run as I was quite heavy before weighing in at 115 kg. When I first ran in the Mizuno Wave run, my time was 1 hour 34 minutes just to complete 10km. That was my benchmark and every race after that, I have been battling with myself to improve it by 3-4 minutes every race day.

It is not that I want to beat another Joe who is the same size that I was, nor compete with my friends, I am just competing with myself to show that I can do a 10km run under 1 hour (if possible), thereby achieving better health and gaining good friends and have fun doing it.

I recognize that most of us are weekend warriors, where we have days jobs and these jobs is what pays to put food on the table. I will not steal time of my employer just to train and achieve better timing. When most of us go to races, we would like to enjoy the sweetnest of glory and its better when we are among friends. How can one enjoy their winning alone, if not with friends. Hence, I do not subscribe to glorifying my strength and winning by putting other friends down just so that we can feel better and show that we are stronger. Why can't we win together?