Resilience
If you've been wondering why I haven’t posted a report, or anything actually, since the pre-race post on the Adventure Race Croatia, it’s because that race was the very first one in which I did not reach the finish line. Not that I didn’t want to or wasn’t capable of it, but in a team event, there is more than one person making decisions, and after only 33 hours, with a total of 15 minutes of sleep during that time, two of the guys on my team decided to throw in the towel.* Was it inadequate training that forced them to quit? Or lack of resilience? Or both? The term ‘resilience’ can be defined in many contexts: In ecology, the capacity of an ecosystem to recover from climate change; in engineering and construction, the ability of buildings and infrastructure to absorb assaults without suffering complete failure; and in psychology, an individual's ability to adapt in the face of adverse conditions. In endurance sports there are two aspects to resilience: physical and men...