Chipps urges you to put in that extra 10% today and you’ll get 30% back tomorrow. It’s like a fitness/friendship pyramid scheme…
In some respects, ‘Going the extra mile’ and ‘Giving 110%’ aren’t really related. After all, going another mile sounds easy enough (and it only equates if you’re going exactly ten miles, right?) whereas, giving 110% is leaning into the world of experimental mathematics in my book. You’re either trying as hard as you can, or you aren’t, right? Well, we’ll get to that…
The sentiment for both, though, is that good things happen if you go and do just a little bit more than you were originally planning to. As if adding on an extra 10%, or that mile or two onto a fifteen-mile ride is going to have a disproportionate effect and deliver way more benefit than it should otherwise do. Your 10% effort on top will give you a 30% or 59% or whatever, benefit…
In my experience, and perhaps unfortunately for inherently sluggish people like me, it does, annoyingly, seem to be true. One of my fittest summers came after I’d decided to add one extra hill to every ride. The ride would finish and I’d ride one more hill on the way home, rather than taking the valley bottom cop-out. By year-end, I was flying…
The thing is, though, it doesn’t just work for cycling and I’ve been trying to reap that benefit in other things like simple friendships. I make sure I take time to see people I’ve not seen for too long by just adding a cup of tea’s worth of time when I’ve been travelling. And while this ‘110%’ business rings of inspirational quotes from personal trainers called Thor, the principle is sound. If you’re doing something, just do it a bit more. If you’re going riding for three days and you could make it four, then make it four. If you’re planning on six runs at Bike Park Wales and you’ve done four by lunchtime – why linger over lunch, when you could get a full eight in?
The same counts for interpersonal stuff. When did you last see your young-times riding pals? Don’t let things like time and distance get in the way of keeping in touch with the people who helped make you who you are. Vaguely in the area? Make time to pop in for a visit. Got time to scroll through Instagram? Then you have time to call an old friend.
We used to have cycling legend, John North, who lived over the hill from Singletrack Towers. He was someone who always made those extra miles count, and would somehow tease them out of the rest of us. I once told him that I’d entered the Three Peaks race, having been scared off a decade earlier.
“Are you fit, lad?” came the voice on the phone.
“Not really, John, no…”
“Right then, make sure you’re free next Tuesday. I’ll see you at the layby next to Clapham village at nine. Bring a jacket. You won’t need money for lunch. We won’t be stopping for any.”
And, as you might expect, this retired racer cheerfully dragged me around the Yorkshire Dales for several hours in the company of several other fit retirees, kick-starting my eventual return to fitness.
In return he would come to visit the office when his local rides took him our way and, however busy we were, no matter what unmissable deadlines were crashing around us, I always made myself down tools for John and spend as long as he wanted to chat, while he drank a pint of the weakest decaf tea you’ll ever see. In that moment, panic and deadlines were for another time. Stories, sage advice and laughter were for now. Looking back, those past deadlines and work worries all blur and fade, but the stories and moments we share with our friends, whether over a cuppa, at a five-bar gate on the moors or around the barbecue or bar, last forever.
And then, John would finish his tea, bid me farewell and he’d always ride the hard way home.