You look up and see a ridge line. The top, surely, you think to yourself. But when you get there you find it was another false hope. That behind one hill there generally stands another and higher one. Getting to the top always takes far longer than you’d hoped, and far more energy than you planned to burn.
My preferred solution is to adapt to this tricksy behaviour and only ever set myself close and easy targets. “I’ll just go to the top of this hill and then see whether to turn back or not.” Then I can take a decision once I’m there: go on to the next hill or call it off. The truth is that I always do go on, but it feels much more comfortable to persuade myself that I have the option.
This approach fits neatly with a methodology derived from the business world: the setting of objectives that have be SMART: specific, measurable, achievable, realistic and time-bound. It isn’t clear to me how “achievable” and “realistic” differ from each other but, hey, who wants to quibble when the price might be losing a fine acronym?
I lived out an instructive case study in the application of these principles just the other day, during our Christmas holiday – strictly a non-Christmas holiday, since the only Christmassy aspect was the dates – in Fuerteventura, one of the Canary Islands. I decided to walk to the top of the road to stretch my legs, a walk of five minutes or so. A specific objective, you see, and time-bound. It was obviously measurable. And it was realistic because it was achievable, or it may have been achievable because it was realistic.
Every box ticked.
At the end of the road was a path heading up a hill, behind which were the mountains. So I set out on the ten-minute walk up the hill. To a specific point in a set time. SMART again.
But this was the beginning of the mountains and mountain rules applied. Get to the top of one hill, and another appears, posing the next challenge. Or, putting it another way, fulfilling one SMART objective only led to the next.
Still, I could operate that way. From goal to goal up into the mountains. Each step small but the overall goal satisfying when I reached it.
Although, to be fair, it wasn’t that grand an achievement. I’d reached the highest point in a series of climbing hills, but beyond it, separated by a deep valley, far higher hills climbed one after the other to the tallest summit on the island – hardly massive on a global scale, at 807 metres, but nonetheless over twice the height I’d reached so far.
The question became, would we make the attempt to conquer the highest peak? The answer was purely academic when we realised that my youngest son hadn’t merely scaled it, he’d run up. What he could run, surely his brother and I could walk? It was a matter of simple self-respect to prove we could do that much.
Unfortunately, it was a project to which my carefully-honed methodology simply didn’t apply. The object was specific enough, for sure, and it was measurable (807 metres, 7 kilometres). But achievable or realistic? That remained to be seen. And it certainly wasn’t time-bound – it would take as long as it took.
In fact, when we reached the sign at the start of the path, we were told that it would take 3 hours 20 minutes, which at least set a time-objective of sorts. We debated whether to go for a 200-minute goal instead, but finally decided we really ought to be able to do better than that on a walk that amounted to 7 kilometres each way. Hardly Amundsen material.
I felt this was a major infringement of the method. “Ought to be possible” has nothing to do with being realistic. Aiming to achieve what we ought to be able to do, rather than what we are able to do, sounds seriously like setting oneself up for failure.
Still, 7 kilometres over the flat – surely we could do that in under three hours? Even if, as we admitted to each other, next to none of the walk would actually be over the flat.
Again, it was Nicky, the runner, who cut through all the hesitation.
“I’m going to run up again. I’ll turn at the top and run back down to meet you again.”
“Somewhere near the beginning,” I suggested, unambitiously.
“Don’t be silly.” He’s good at putting me in my place.
His words became a challenge. We just had to be closer to the summit than to the beginning before he got back to us. .
In the event, he reached us again 2.7 km from the top. So he managed to run rather over one and third times the full distance in the time it took us – well, me, really, as my other son Michael slowed his pace down to mine – to do a little under two-thirds.
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| Looking back the way we came The patch of green was - inevitably - a golf course. Taking scare water in an arid landscape... |
In under two hours. So we crushed the 3 hour 20 minute time set by the signpost at the beginning – though later it did occur to me that this might have been for the full 14-km round trip. We beat that target too, but a lot less convincingly.
There was a bit of a “because it is there” element to our reaching the summit, since the sun went in just before we got there. Rather reducing the beauty of the view.
“You should have run up with me,” Nicky told us, “it was beautiful before.”
That naturally made us feel a lot better.
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| View from the top Note the lowering cloud at the top of the picture. And the rocky peninsula that had been the goal of a previous walk |
As for the return, well that was downhill. A doddle. It took us less than half the time. Hardly worth setting an objective at all. Though it did have a prize associated with it: fish fresh from the bay with large beers to wash it down (except that I was the designated driver).
Still, that’s what I call a SMART-R objective. Specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, time-bound and – rewarded. .
The best kind for dealing with the exasperation of a mountain walk.
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| Odd sign in the mountains Please close the door? To avoid a draught or what? |
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