Getting To The Top of the Hill

Getting a podium finish can be a deeply satisfying experience. Going onstage to receive your degree from your Dean of Faculty is also a richly rewarding experience. To complete a marathon and earn your medal and finisher-tee are also worth relishing. Getting to the top of the summit for Ironman Norseman – the extreme long distance triathlon – after the 37K mark of the marathon for a steep, rugged, climb up, may be just as memorable [at the time of writing, twice-Ironman World Champion, Tim DeBoom won the 2011 edition of Norseman. Full report on the Endurance Conspiracy website].

Education has always emphasised success through examination grades, as well as landing the best jobs. Plaudits and pundits have agreed that it is better to be at the top of the game and stay on top, instead of being at the rank bottom. Our language is peppered with altitude-raising language like ‘top-dog’, ‘top scorer’, ‘top student’, ‘head honcho’, ‘high-flyer’, ‘corporate ladder’, ‘top rung’, ‘topping your performance’ and ‘head of the class’. Even the alter-ego of television known as Reality TV flouts highly-important titles like ‘Top Chef’, ‘Top Model’, ‘Top-40 Hits’ and the like. Here are the top-50 leadership blogs for 2010.

We, at Leadership Lessons from Triathlons, are already into our third year of sharing our content. We hope to get onto one of these prestigious lists in the near future. We have earned a few badges of merit in the past two years like appearing on AllTop, The Entrepreneur Blog, and currently a top-100 ranking for a leadership blog.

Google recently ranked us as #2 on its encrypted version, and #9 on its standard version for ‘Leadership Lessons’. It is an honour to be ranked just below Time magazine. We are, currently, #86 for the top leadership blog on Invesp.com. We boast no authors, television celebrities and renowned experts – well, at least not yet, however we do have a panel of excellent featured guests, and stories on excellent people. Everyday People with Extraordinary talents, abilities and lives – these are what we are motivated by, and strive to bring to you.

All these numbers mean little unless we stay current, contemporary, and fresh in our content. Our success is measured by our scope and depth of collaboration with others, degree of connectivity with our readers, and feedback from our readers.

*****

All the best to participants of Ironman Regensberg in Germany: Matthew, Clifford, Mano, Conrad, Chris and Angeline. Have a splendid race! Congratulations to Don Ng and Tee Boon Tiong for completed the grueling, extreme long-distance triathlon, Norseman! We extend our long distance kudos to this Dynamic Duo for being the first Singaporean and Malaysian to complete this race within the cutoff. Enjoy your top-of-the-world feeling!

Identifying With Your Group Branding

Our Monday evening’s swim squad has an official shirt to accompany our strong identity. This marks a weekly commitment by the core group for the sponsored, two-lane, swim at Buona Vista Swimming Pool. Any member of the branded Triathlon Family or friends of members can join us in these once-weekly session led by coach Dion, or any of our seasoned swimmers like Julius. On alternate Saturdays, we have our open-water swims at Sentosa Island (lead by our fearless leader, Matthew); which is, sometimes, followed by a short 4.5K run, when a biathlon is near.

This evening, after teaching class I proceeded home for an hour of swim drills comprising catch-up drills, fist swimming, bilateral breathing and kicking. Then, I was off for a management committee meeting; after that, I set off for the Changi International Airport, Terminal 1 to send Matthew Wong and Clifford Lee off. Both were travelling this evening to Germany for Ironman Regensberg. Both were decked in the t-shirt that Richard Leong designed, so they looked casually official. More friends like Conrad, Angeline, Chris and Mano will be flying off tomorrow. I arrived just in time to get a couple of snapshots with my two training buddies. This will be Matthew’s second Ironman triathlon, and Clifford’s twelfth; as of now, we both stand equal at 11 completions each. We will both be part of the Singapore contingent at Ironman New Zealand 2012.

Meanwhile, I have a few key races lined up before the Singapore Marathon: mainly varied distances from 5-21K, and an inaugural long-distance triathlon on 11 September. I look forward to Sunday’s 5K, trail-run time trial with the Macritchie Runners (MR25). I hope to run sub-22 minutes, and qualify for a higher individual ranking, which is based on a faster-running animal. My short-term case of plantar fasciitis has almost cleared after I laid off the long runs, and resuming running with Vibrams and doing my core stability work.

Photo-credits: Desmond Chow & Clifford Lee, 2012