My team set a target of 30 hours way back in the summer, which we failed miserably. That's pretty much how I feel - miserable, like a failure.
I've worked pretty hard to prepare for it. I started out being the slowest member in our team, and I had serious doubts at the time that I could ever walk the entire MacLehose trail in one go. But I had agreed to work towards the 30 hours target with my team, so I trained as much as I could, as hard as I could, without seriously injuring myself. I would say I probably hiked 60km/week on average since the summer, Carol and I even walked though some extremely hot weather and a couple of typhoons. I've walked when I was sick and I've walked when I was injured. I've also walked when I was exhausted from some extremely long kayaking journeys. I also had to miss some kayak training in order to practice with my team.
Despite all my efforts and determinations, my team failed. It's not making sense, but I feel embarrassed, ashamed, and angry about it. I really don't like it when I commit to something, do everything within my power to make it happen, and in the end, fail.
My initial reaction is to blame Yuki. We all know she hasn't trained enough for the event, she missed a lot of our practice hikes and didn't bother to do any training on her own. Somehow, in her delusional little world, she still thinks she is ready and can do it, in the mean time, both Paul and I worried that she hasn't trained enough and the event would be too much for her to handle.
Obviously I still think she is largely responsible for our failure. Somehow I don't think she ever took our team target seriously. During one of our practice hikes (stage 1 - 4), I overheard Yuki telling Paul that "I haven't been doing much practice at all, but I'm still doing pretty good!" She tells anyone who would listen that she is full of confidence and believes she can "win the race." If you haven't figured this out already, I'm feeling so contemptuous about this big head hers, I want to slap her. False confidence isn't confidence, it's called delusion.
But I'm slowly warming up to the idea that this is a team deal. I'm so used to doing one man shows, I've completely forgotten the cliche that a chain is only as strong as its weakest link. I knew Yuki wasn't doing her part all along, Paul and I both knew Yuki was our weakest link, but my strategy was to "just make sure *I* can do the walk."
So I shouldn't act surprised when we fail to meet team target.
Because I haven't worked with my team. I worked on my own.
Thinking back, we should have encouraged Yuki to come out and train more -- encouragement being an euphemized term for coercion, of course. If I want it badly enough, I should be prepared to confront or support my fellow teammates to do what's necessary. Alternatively, we could have changed our team goal to accommodate Yuki's limitation. But to keep silent when we all knew Yuki was heading in for failure, in itself, is pretty malicious.
In July, I confessed to Dennis my doubts and concerns about my ability to finish the trail. Dennis had encouraged me to consider signing out of the team if my honest assessment is that I will not be ready. That wasn't what I had wanted to hear, but I needed to hear it. I wonder if it had been easy for Dennis to be impolite and say such thing to me, because it had been very difficult for me to say something to that effect to Yuki.
On stage 7, Yuki said that she was too tired, that she might not be able to keep going for much longer, and so has decided to quit and go home at that point.
At that point, I had a bit of internal struggle of my own. On one hand I wanted to say something to hurt her, I already knew by that time that we weren't going to meet our 30 hours goal, and I desperately wanted to punish her for it. But then I remembered I've said myself that our top priority is to finish together, and lashing out at Yuki now wasn't going to help us reach that goal. So instead, I told her what I thought she needed to hear.
"Yuki, we all see how you've been struggling. We know you're hurting and you're tired. It's your body and your decision. If you really can't go on, if you want to go home, it's your call. No one is going to say you didn't try hard enough because you've decided to quit now.
But don't quit because you're afraid you might not be able to finish in the end. If you don't give yourself a chance and try, you will never find out whether you have what it takes to do it."
It's what I always tell myself; it's what I would have told my children if I had any; and it's the first time I've ever done anything for my team to help us reach our goal.
Suddenly I realized I didn't really hate Yuki; I'm not perfect either, and the team didn't let me down, and I still have much to learn about team works, and I'm also guilty of arrogance in my own way.
.
.
.
Then I came home to read the news online, ferries tipped over killing hundreds, coal mines exploded killing dozens, little children are being prostituted and beaten by their parents, and I'm worried about finishing a hundred kilometer walk 5 hours behind schedule. Somehow, I think, I have my life made.
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