There is a simple question that offers so many and yet so clear answers:
What is the appeal of trail running?
What answers do you come up with? For my part, I would say: being in nature, moving in the open air, camaraderie with other athletes, absorbing natural spectacles and experiencing emotional moments. On the trails of the Grossglockner Ultra Trail or on the Pitz Alpine Trail you can see hundreds of peaks that are over 3000 m high, to experience sunrises or sunsets in the mountains chasing the goosebumps over my back. And one attraction is certainly to prove yourself, to compete.
And what makes your professional life so appealing?
The upbringing in one’s own activity, the good feeling of having made a valuable contribution to the current project, the knowledge to approach the goal step by step, so to the “big whole”, the exchange with other people, the employees, colleagues, business partners may become friends. At Smarter Business Solutions, we not only try to make SharePoint lovable for our customers, but also strive to create a meaningful working environment for ourselves.
But let’s be honest. As beautiful as the charms may be, the reality looks very different most of the time.
My preferred training track is a hill behind the house, 500 m long, 111 m in the climb. The majesty of the high mountains is far away, and when the day turns into the night, the sun does not say goodbye with one last ray on my skin. The fact that one of the most important gas pipelines in Central Europe is under my feet may be economically interesting, but as an athlete It is one thing for me. When I walk stubbornly up and down there (everyone is always welcome to join me!), i steel body and mind, then I harden myself in an unfriendly training environment for nicer tasks. I think of the UTMB with its trails and I am looking forward to being able to act there soon. And again a lap is done, and again it goes a hundred meters uphill.
In our professional life, too, we need goals that we work towards and that make sense of our current actions. But those who work a lot also make mistakes (the saying is that there are also those who do not make mistakes!), and I accept setbacks – in sport as well as in the job – gratefully. Only through these we learn, only through mistakes we realize how we can solve our tasks better, correctly.
“Trail and error”, trial and error to find solutions may not always be the most charming and sympathetic way to the goal. Before the victory, the gods put the sweat. And I think of a caterpillar and say: Before beauty lies the ugliness.
Knowing what we’re working towards, and accepting all the hardships and mistakes for it, is simply smarter.