Teamwork in its purest form

Sunday 7th July 2024, end of our Wansfell Category race, 24th out of 92 teams overall, 8th Vets out of 40 teams, and 11th out of 48 mixed teams.

So my wife Claire and I completed the 2024 Saunders Mountain Marathon over the weekend just gone, and when thinking about a found us blog post to write realised it is a good example of what is teamwork in what is a stressful environment, not to mention the weather.

Erm. What is a Mountain Marathon?

You may know what fell running is, it is the English for mountain running. It comes from The Lake District where it originated from, hence to term fell. The word fell comes from the old Norse for mountain.

Fell running is therefore running and racing on mountains. Note, we don’t really have mountains in England so it is more about running up and down hills, and it is not exclusively in the Lake District any longer. Funnily enough the sport originated out of gambling, when the Victorian rich and aristocrats would travel via the new train system to the Lakes and their Estates, gambling on the prowess of their boys who worked their land racing up and down hills in competition against other lads working the land from other estates. In effect Victorian upper class types gambling against each other, with the lads able to win sizeable life changing purses of money versus herding sheep.

Orienteering is where you run in a competition against others navigating off a map via checkpoints. And you need to be good at navigation!

The Mountain Marathon combines the two and is unique to fell running and orienteering in the British Isles. You have a weekend and run with a partner across a course in the Lakes carrying all you gear including tent and cooking kit to a half way camp, and on the following day do the same. It is about fell running, navigation, and of choosing your route, yes your route, to pick up checkpoints whilst trying to find the best navigational lines, and completing each day at the fastest pace. It is jolly good fun, challenging, and team work is vital. And weather can take an event in the Lakes and turn it completely on its head…

Team work - a definition.

Teamwork in my words is about one or more people working together to do something. It is that simple and does not need dressing up, but for the purists here is the Collins Dictionary definition.

teamwork

(tiːmwɜːʳk )

uncountable noun

Teamwork is the ability a group of people have to work well together.

Today's complex buildings require close teamwork between the architect and the builders.

Synonyms: cooperation, collaboration, unity, concert More Synonyms of teamwork

So there we have the definition. The official dictionary one, yet all of us know what teamwork is. We a a species are not that daft.

Using the Saunders MM, what is my take on teamwork?

Teamwork with a fell race as the medium

Teamwork means you have to work together to achieve something. As you cannot or choose not to do it alone. Sometimes you have choice of fellow team mate, sometimes you do not.

And teamwork is not purely I now realise the sole preserve of business; it happens in all spheres of life. With the wife, the children, on a holiday trip, having dinner, blah, blah, blah. Teamwork encompasses us as people as human beings very rarely function in isolation, and that applies for a lot of the animal world as well.

Some observations and tips.

Pick your team mate if you can, but not always the case. You see I am married to Claire and she is my Soulmate and understands how I tick in the physical and spiritual planes. Sounds funky, but is important. Humans are creatures of emotion and spirituality and that is how they work together, apart from the obvious physical task.

Chose your team mate if you can (even if nuts.)

So you need to be attuned to emotions, a person’s spirituality, and baggage. You have to make an emotional and spiritual connection for teamwork to serve its purpose. So in our case, Claire and I needed to follow a course on a map as fast as possible and with minimal navigational snafus. This is the task and pretty obvious, yet driving the task are people - Claire and I. And we function differently. And this is not simply about gender. Claire compared to me looks at the world differently and has different worldly objectives and dreams as driven by self, as moulded by her life experiences.

I want to win and become frustrated at being slow. I can thus shortcut. My emotional electricity drives me to run, to win, to achieve as I have past baggage of not being good enough.

Claire wants to enjoy and be careful with navigation, and within the world of orienteering fell running this is vital. She sees the beauty of the Lakeland fells and not just the race. It is an experience for her. She also wants to enjoy, and this does not mean she won’t push herself. She wants to be certain of where she has been, is, will go. Her emotional baggage is to be safe, secure, placed, in control.

Now if you cross compare we have two competing interests that won’t lead to two people reading a map correctly, agreeing on route, or running together at a directional unified pace. Yikes.

But we as a couple have to understand each others emotional and spiritual electricity, of how we see the world, of our place in the world, and how we interpret and filter it. The task is obvious, what is not is figuring out how we connect.

In practice we leverage my drive, sense of winning, myopic focus. With Claire we can leverage her ability to see the bigger picture, see outside of the narrow channel of my vision. I provide uncertainty and risk, taking navigational decisions where all information is not available. Claire provides the caution. Steadies my vigour. She understands my emotional and spiritual drives, but explains them to me with logic and emotion.

I leverage and utilise Claire’s sense of caution, or seeing beyond the singular route and thought process I have to hand. She reminds me of the team, the joint effort, of looking at where we are together - the beauty of it all.

I have to accept Claire, she has to accept me - emotionally, spiritually, baggage and all, for us to function as a unit. And this is the key to team work, and human relations.

And then there is environment

Environment can be a benefit or pain in the bum depending on where you are, and let us not forget time and need.

In our case, we had the possibilty of rain hanging over us for Saturday and Sunday afternoons, especially Sunday from 11am. And this makes for hard running on the fells; difficult and what can be treacherous navigation.

The sun was out and it was humid, and climbing hills, running, bog and tussock hoping meant the sweat dripped off us, and led to occasional frayed tempers. 95% me, 5% Claire.

Something I have to work on is how I choose to let environment and its people affect me. It is a defect of mine. We were obviously under time pressure and objective achievement. And this does not have to be up a hill near Hawswater, it can be on the way to the airport, pulling a business pitch together, managing the kids at a footie match and so on.

Don’t be Pete, be like Claire - at one with what’s about you.

One has to remember we have choice and control over our actions, but not those of the place we find ourselves in and its people - always remember the phrase people, places, things. Let go and focus on you and how you filter or interpret what I have just mentioned. Consider your relationship with that which is outside of you, utilising empathy and understanding to ensure a goal, dream, objective is achieved.

So you can let (in my case) sweat, a steep hill, the sun, the humidity, your rucksack and the list goes on, affect you and thus your team mate. Don’t. They are merely objects if you like in their own right.

Teamwork comes from not just working with team mate, from the people, places, things. It comes from how we chose to interact with them.

Don’t forget we have to work with place (environment), people (covered this), time (but we can make our time), the objective (goal, dream, desire), things.

It is how we govern our spiritual and emotional relationship to them, and not the people, places, things themselves that truly matters.

So with teamwork

Yes do focus on the task at hand. And -

Know your emotional, spiritual attributes, and baggage. And don’t view them as positive or negative. View them as they are, and harness them.
Try to understand your team mate’s emotional, spiritual attributes, and baggage. Harness them.
With understanding and playing to your own and another’s way of ticking you make a connection and two or more become one unit. And the task can then come into play.

Teamwork in its purest form

teamwork

Lochgilphead… where’s that?

A taste of honey. (disposed, disruptive, dysfunctional.)