Thanks for joining me for another edition of the SerenityThroughSweat blog. This is one of my favorite (and incidentally my wife’s least favorite) time of the year. It’s tour season.
The Tour de France that is. The grand daddy of classic bike races that spans 21 days of self inflicted punishment across the natural beauty of the French countryside.
There is a special place in my heart for endurance athletes, fellow sadists, doing objectively silly things solely in the name of glory. Who really needs to ride that many miles in the name of personal aggrandizement?
But within any challenge or any game there are tactics. And the best tacticians can adjust in real time as it becomes necessary and suits them.
I’m enjoying a store picked single barrel bourbon from Lexington that I picked up on a layover a few weeks ago. There is an undeniable similarity between the bourbon and the the tour replay I’m watching. The smooth pedal strokes of the professional cyclists dancing up the Col du Galibier, (The highest pass in the TDF), match the smooth amber liquid. Yet, there is a subtle burning that lingers in the background. The natural beauty passing through the French Alps . The confluence of nature from the corn, rye, barley, and charred oak. The internal struggle as the lactic acid accumulation begins to burn. The ethanol’s pungent reminder that beauty is not without it’s cost
As I’m watching this stage on my short La Guardia layover, I’m reminded of game nights with my brother and my father. I come from a family that plays a lot of cards. Euchre, hearts, and pinochle, and board games like risk, monopoly, and anything else where variable strategies and adjusting tactics are rewarded.
The ability to start with a a tactical plan, and adjust those tactics based on real world scenarios is a skill I admire In the professional bike riders. It is also a skill I sought to develop in those family game nights. It is an aspect I look for when buying new games. (Which I do frequently, much to my wife’s chagrin)
A strategy is the plan of action, where you want to go. Tactics describe a procedure or set of maneuvers engaged in to achieve an end, an aim, or a goal. tactics are the individual steps and actions that will get you there.
In the middle of a battle, bike race, or board game or card game as it were, your strategy doesn’t change, your tactics do.
The Tour de France is broken up into 21 stages. The overall leader based on cumulative time wears the yellow jersey. Within each stage are sprint points and mountain climbs. There is also a competition for the best cumulative time for those riders under 23. Plus each stage is its own race. There is a level of prestige reserved for professional cyclists who win a stage on the tour de France, even if the don’t finish the whole tour.
This leads to the necessity of variable tactics. There are races within races going on. In order to maintain your strategic goals, your tactics might have to change based on how any one of those individual races with the tour is unfolding on a particular day.
You might be trying to protect your lead in the King of the Mountains competition, and end up having to battle the Yellow jersey competitors to do so. The sprint point might be in-between two large climbs, or at the end of a stage. Your path to an individual stage win might risk the attention of the overall competitors chasing you down to keep their overall rankings intact.
The point is, these athletes are able to adjust in real time. Roll with the punches. Start off with one tactical plan, and have the awareness, despite days of self inflicted suffering, to adjust those tactics as necessary.
We talk a lot on this platform about tools. Having the right tool for the job. Tools that I want to equip my boys with. Being able to adjust tactics as a game, competition, (or life for that matter) unfolds, is certainly one of them.
It is one of the many skills I am happy my parents passed on to me, largely through games. It is one of the many reasons I love the Tour. As my toddlers melt down when their “plan” for bedtime routine doesn’t match up with reality, I realize we have a little more work to do towards variable tactics, and serenity.
Thanks for joining me, stay safe and stay sweaty my friends.