Principle of the Hiding Hand

Before.

After!

This race report is overdue - largely because I vacillated between the approaches to a race report.

Option A was a detailed, kilometer-by-kilometer analysis which would I would set forth, in lawyerly fashion, every pointilistic detail which went into the making of the experience. 

This would have meant:

•     every Zulu mining song in the pre-dawn dark of the Durban start line,
•     every high five,
•     every energy bean;
•     every brim-full cup of Pepsi spilled on my right shoe at km 66,
•     every weird blister (not unrelated to the Pepsi incident?),
•     every skinny dude in super short shorts sitting with his head between his knees, moaning low, awaiting medevac.... (you see the trajectory dimming a bit).

Happily (for you, gentle reader), I managed even to bore myself with the draft versions of Option A.  Instead, I have chosen Option B, which can be subtitled "Things I may have learned from this".

The things I may have learned can neatly be placed under the Principle of the Hiding Hand (PHH). 

PHH states, simply, that most things which (may) prove worthwhile are so costly and so hard that it is best not to overthink the hurdles at the outset.  PHH is, in origin, a tool of economics, applied to such undertakings as national highway projects or dam building. 

Post WWII, planning experts were routinely wrong about the cost and operational assumptions that went into such projects, by a factor of 1000 or more.  In fairness, the sorts of projects they were undertaking had never before been done by our species. Once concluded (ridiculous cost over-runs and blown deadlines notwithstanding) however, many of these project benefited huge portions of humanity both directly (cheaper transport, more water, the Internet!) and indirectly (by adding how-to (and how-not-to!) knowledge to our planet). 

The fact is, PHH is eminently relevant to our day-to-day lives inasmuch as running Comrades is not dissimilar (for one person), really, to building a national highway system. PHH applies, to the 9th dan, to child rearing as well:

•     you really don't know what you're signing up for,
•     your diligence is sketchy and your assumptions rosy,
•     you commit the hell out of your personal life and public personna (inseparable from your inner self-image, really),
•     and yet, despite all this, you just have a vague but unshakeable sense that, once engaged/completed, this will be fundamentally good for you. 

In this light, here's what I think I learned:

1 Do, rather than think. Self-explanatory, really.  But I generally divide my annual goals up into 'Mental' and 'Physical'.  That architecture is dead for me.  My 2014 list will be couched exclusively as 'actions to be completed'.  My mind is a nice tool for solving discrete tasks, but not for the initial parceling required of larger ones. 

2.  My ability to internalize staggering pieces of information is high.  For instance, the concept of 3D printing is, now, to me, barely cool.  Yet, just six months ago, I thought it was a poor science fiction deus ex machina.  Similarly, in November 2012, the thought of running an 87 kilometer race was like science fiction.  But I just sidestepped the parting clouds, the blaring trumpets, the 'Oh I couldn't possibly', and got down to the nuts and bolts (and tedium) of preparing.

3.  I care desperately what people think.  Finally, and I think this is key to the PHH yielding positive results, I declared my intention to run Comrades, in a way not dissimilar to the way a government announces a 5 year plan, or that it is hosting the World Cup: we stake prestige and self-belief in a public way.  With this public flag planting ceremony, unforeseen hurdles are tackled in creative and resourceful way, and not as personal crosses to be borne. 

Und so, a propos of nothing, and by way of closing celebration, I give you the following impromptu magic/puppet show: