Just because it looks easy doesn't mean it is

There are a number of things that we see each day that look really easy. Those who know me will know that I am a real cycling fan and while I don't have as much time to dedicate to it I do really love it. Like many others I watch the Tour De France each year and I watch with captive eyes as the professionals hurtle down the road at silly speeds and tear up the mountains with such ease. As a result of this I decided that this year I would make the trip to Skegness and back in 1 day which is around 185 miles. While this is to be that longest single journey on a bike in one day ever for me it seemed perfectly achievable, after all the Tour De France riders do over 100 miles each day racing. So I set about getting sponsorship and planning the date, which incidently is 11th July 2010, and a route. As part of my training I have been out most mornings doing from 18-40 miles each time which has not been too hard.

Reality really sucks ass

So I decided that I needed to do a major distance before Sunday's challenge to make sure I was up to the job. So I called my good friend Richard Tubb at jamescash.co.uk to ask if they would pick up any slack with regard to support for me while I went out on a weekday and of course Richard and the guy agreed, thanks guys I owe you.  So at 6.00am this morning I started out on my journey of 90 miles which would take it me through Ilkeston, Ripley, Ambergate, Matlock, Bakewell, Buxton, Leek, Ashbourne, Belper, Ambergate, Ripley and back to Ilkeston. Having checked out the route using mapmyride.com to see what kind of hills I had to look forward to. Being a little niave I looked at the route elevation and thought that a climb of around 1600ft was no big deal, oh boy was I wrong. By the time I got to Buxton I was hurting but at that point I had not reached the biggest climb. Needless to say by the time I reached Leek I was really hurting and at times I wondered why the hell I continued, but I pushed on. The suffering continued on and by the time I got to the 75 mile mark in Belper I had contemplated on more than 1 occasion about calling someone to come and collect me but still did not. The last 15 miles really hurt and by the time I got home my knee was really hurting as was the rest of me but I had done it.

Lessons learned....

So what did I take away from all of this. First and foremost I am wondering if I have bitten off more than I can chew with Sunday's challenge, none the less I will still go and give it my very best shot. Second is that just because the professionals make it look easy does not mean that it is. The fact is these guys train for hours and hours each and every day which in turn will make it look easy. In the case of cycling, these guys cycle up to and beyond 100 miles each day just training both on flat land and up BIG hills so it's gonna look easy, duh why didn't I get this before? This is also the case with football, especially in light of the world cup. Ok so England played crap, theres no 2 ways about it the performance was terrible. However, I have heard lots of people criticise other teams and even seen on James Corden's World Cup Live show that a goal was so easy 'his mum could do it'. Then just to prove the point his mum did come on the show and make the play and score, fantastic entertainment but just not a true reflection. The fact is that in the heat of the moment, when the action is a split second decision it is really tough to make the right choice and the right play. Lastly, be more objective when looking at things and try not to make assumptions about how easy something is just by how easy it looks.

Anyway, enough about my thoughts. For those of you interested, here are some stats from todays ride:

• 5,255 Calories burned
• 6hrs 40minutes riding
• Average speed 13.2mph
• Average heart rate 150bpm
• Max speed 46.8mph
• Largest hill 1,657 ft
• Total climbing 3,953 ft

 - Rob

I was speaking with a friend the other day and he was having a bad day. First off in the morning his car wouldn’t start as the battery decided to die. Then after a neighbour had managed to get it jump started he then couldn’t get out his street because of all of the snow and had to wait until there was some grit down which meant he was late for work.  Once at work things didn’t get any better one of his companies servers started to have problems which is when we were speaking.  He explain how his day had gone and I said to him, “sounds like you’ve had some fun today”. At this he replied “ain’t that the truth, still, s**t happens!”. This got me thinking.

How many times have we all heard that said? I know I have said it a fair share myself over the years but when you say this what are you really saying to yourself and more importantly what are others hearing? Ok we’ll start with what others are hearing as that is sometimes more important in life. At best they find this funny and laugh it off as just something funny, however more often you will be seen as a very negative person, a ‘glass half empty kinda guy’. People inherently do not like to be around negative people, they want to surround themselves with positive, happy people that are going to help them to feel positive and happy themselves. After all when you meet with someone and they ask if you are well, they don’t want to hear that your back aches from driving 4 hours to see them, or that your tired because you had to get up at 3am to get to the appointment with them on time. They want to hear how great you are and how wonderful life is (though not literally).

So what does it say to yourself? If you are not able to find the positives in any situation then you will always see the negative, obviously. However, the impact on your life can be massive as over a period of time (which could be months or years) it can eventually start to make you feel unhappy with your life and every thing will just seem dour and pointless. It may seem a little extreme but I have been there and after a number of tough years in both work and family I found it hard, real hard with daily life but I still carried on. What changed me was two things. First of is someone who I consider to be a very good friend who over a period of time helped me to see there was two ways to look at everything and what you take from it is a choice and you must choose to take the positive or the negative. The second was when I joined a business networking group, the people there were *very* positive people despite being early morning. What I learned there was while you will make some close friends you can really talk to your must put your best business face on and show everyone there that you are having the best day ever because when you do people naturally gravitate to you.

With that in mind lets take another look at my friends day and see what he could have took from this had he looked at things differently:

“First off in the morning his car wouldn’t start as the battery decided to die. Then after a neighbour had managed to get it jump started” – What can be taken from this? Ok first off the car would not start which is a real pain for anyone who has had it happen. That said a good neighbour came over and helped him get it ‘jump started’ which took a LOT less time than waiting for a break down truck to come. So he has good neighbours to be thankful for.

“….he then couldn’t get out his street because of all of the snow and had to wait until there was some grit down which meant he was late for work.” - So he couldn’t get out of the street straight away because of the snow, after all we did have some last week. However, the positive here is that it turns out that once again one of his neighbours had some grit and went out and spread it the length of the road so all the neighbours could get out.

“Once at work things didn’t get any better one of his companies servers started to have problems which is when we were speaking.” – Here again is another positive. Ok on of the servers is down and clearly he was out of his depth, but what he did was called me and we located the problem, resolve it and had the server up and running in less than an hour.

So next time you’re having a tough day, always, always find the positives in whatever happens because it is always there. It’s all too easy to focus on what it negative in the world but it takes true spirit to find the positives.

I wish you all the greatest success for the New Year, hope you all have a great one!!

- Rob

I wanted to quickly remind everyone that this week general availability for the Windows 7 Beta will be ending:

February 10th: Starting at 12am Pacific Time, no new downloads will be available. If you have already begun downloading the Windows 7 Beta, you have until Feb. 12th to complete the download.

February 12th: Starting at 9am Pacific Time all downloads will no longer be available for the Windows 7 Beta. If you have not finished your download, you will be unable to do so.

After February 12th, folks will still be able to register for product keys for the Windows 7 Beta.

The above schedule does *not* apply to TechNet and MSDN Subscribers.

Special thanks to everyone who is beta testing Windows 7!

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/derbyshire/7831166.stm

My thoughts go out to Shaun’s family, I can only hope that the people involved are ashamed of themselves.  I only hope that this was a sick minority and not a true reflection of “the general public”.