Outwardbound Adventure Race is a Hong Kong Institution. A charity focused adventure race encompassing 24 kilometers of intense trail running, waterfall climbing, kayaking, logic puzzles and orienteering.

What does adventure racing and your career have in common? Quite a lot, as I realised running the race in March.

Our team consisted of two sub four hour marathon runners, a body builder, and me, an out of shape hiker with a recently slipped disk and hip joint of a 60 year old. Here is the first link to career planning. By teaming up with successful people, superior to myself in fitness and experience, I was driven to push myself harder than I ever could have alone. I am a huge believer that success breeds success. If you surround yourself with talented and driven people, their success will rub off on you and drive you to do better. This should be considered whenever deciding upon a company to join, a manager to work with or a person to hire for your team. Ask yourself “Will this person or company make me better at what I do and improve my career?

The race route took us up steep hills and through thick vegetation but we kept a fast pace, until we realised we had run off the track. We were faced with two options, the easy way - retrace our steps and add a few hundred metres to our route, or the hard way - go directly through thick bushes to rejoin the trail. We chose the hard way.

It was here that the second career parallel came to mind. At some point, you might make a bad career choice, maybe you accept a job at the wrong company, employ the wrong person or make a bad business decision. It happens to everyone and the key to fixing your mistake is to be decisive, to work hard and make things right. The challenges we overcome in these times of difficulty give us the experience and resilience we need to succeed in the future. By choosing the hard way, our team didn’t just create its own path, but it cemented our relationship as a team. When we got back on the trail, we had lost 15 places and a lot of time, but we were still in the race.

In every job and every race, everyone has a chance to show their strength. My moment came during the orienteering challenge, with nine markers hidden over three kilometres to collect. We split the team into two pairs with superior map readers leading each pair. I was able to navigate confidently around the badly signed area, and collected all markers well within our self allotted time. By strategically playing to our teams strengths we were able to make up a lot of places in the race.

Over the following 10K of trail running and waterfall climbing, my lack of fitness compared to my team mates started to show, but we kept overtaking other teams and constantly encouraged each other to carry on through the pain.

When we finally made it to Sai Kung bay and after a leap off a 10-metre pier, we began the two-kilometre kayak challenge. The relief of being off our feet was short-lived. Our energy tank was running low and lactic acid burned through our bodies, but thanks to another strategic team split, we kept the kayaks going at a fast and steady pace.

The final challenge was a team effort, one we could not have completed without working together. We had to clamber up, and over a soap lubricated ramp. After the rigours of the race, we were a well-oiled team and knew instantly what we had to do. This is the level of team understanding you should strive to achieve with your team and co-workers.

Despite our detour in early in the race, we managed to overtake every team bar one to come in second place for the mixed elite group and completed the race in four hours and 50 minutes, a reminder that even if at some point in your career you go off the track, it will not hold you back as long as you put in the effort.

So, to recap on how a career is like an adventure race:

- To be successful, surround yourself with success
- If you go off track, work hard to get back on
- Team dynamics are important, play to each others strengths
- Strive to build team understanding

Next year with the right training we plan to finish first.

To see a video of the event from Andy Knight of Bite Communications click here