This blog is turning into a cycling blog. The past few weeks I have posted several times on the century (100 miles) I’m doing next Sunday. Although I have now been told that this have little or nothing to do with running a marathon, I think that the underlying requirements are the same. The requirements for completing either of these two are adaptability and determination.

These are the same requirements for getting out of debt and becoming wealthy. One might say that they are the requirements for any major change, but I don’t think that is true. Some changes also require skills. Now some people will say that these also require skill but they are certainly not rocket science. Thus the major ingredients remain adaptability and determination.

Those who have both can do anything. Try, try, and try again. If something is not working, change the plan(*) and keep pushing. Those who have only determination but not willingness to adapt will make small and slow changes but eventually get there after several years. Those who have the willingness to adapt but no determination have to be led all the way (I’m not mentioning any names here!). This is an unthankful job. Those with neither usually go back and live in the comfortable misery of chronic pains or debt.

(*) Yesterday, I changed the eating plan and ate every 30 minutes while I was cycling and I brought gatorade instead of water. The change was amazing compared to Wednesday’s “disaster”. I went 70 miles (108km) at an average speed of 17.8mph (28.5km/t) (this generally means true speeds of 20mph – the average is lowered because of me having to stop at stop signs, red lights, etc.). I even got intertwined in an amateur road race for a couple of miles and managed to keep up. I am now quite confident about next week’s 100M.

People who run marathons often talk about how it makes them a better businessperson, etc. Training for the goal requires certain personal traits. Those who don’t have them have to acquire them and this is what makes them better businesspersons. Those who already have those traits are unlikely to gain any personal development from the training. On the other hand achieving such goals are typically seen as trivial, why all I have to do is to go out and ride every day until the legs fell like they are going to explode into an ugly mess and the lungs feel like they’re on fire. How hard can that be? Really.

Originally posted 2008-04-27 09:47:25.