I recently decided that the challenge of the coronavirus crisis was not enough of a test of my perseverance. Since I like to ride bikes, I joined the Trek Bicycles Century Challenge (https://www.trekbikes.com/us/en_US/trek-century-challenge/ ) which had a simple premise — ride 100 miles, 500 miles, or 1,000 miles during July to claim a small prize. To keep things interesting, Trek established a leaderboard on Strava, an app that tracks exercise via GPS data and has several social networking features.

I had never ridden 1,000 miles in a month before. In fact, my record for a month was 764 miles in August 2019. Now I know there are some incredible cyclists out there that have ridden a lot farther than I have, but I am proud to say that I rode 1,121 miles in July. My longest day was 70.6 miles and shortest was 12.1 miles. I rode every day during the month, averaging 36.16 miles per day. It required all of my perseverance and more to accomplish that achievement.

Running a business, managing your part of a company, or leading your family, especially during the coronavirus, requires perseverance. You never learn how much perseverance you have until you have to put your nose down, accept adversity, and keep putting one foot in front of the other like we all out doing now. As I reflected back on what I learned during the Trek Challenge, I recognized that the four things that help develop a great team (see post #35 — https://www.thefivecoatconsultinggroup.com/the-coronavirus-crisis/great-teams ) also helped develop my personal perseverance and can help you build your personal perseverance:

1. A goal and a roadmap of how to get there is extremely beneficial. I used the leader’s intent to set my goal back at the beginning of July:

   • Purpose: Increase my mental and physical fitness by participating in the Trek Century Challenge

   • Key Tasks:

     • Ride 32.26 miles per day, every day, in July

     • Earn a break — Ride more than that per day if I need a break.

   • End State: On July 31, 2020, have ridden 1,000 miles during the month.

2. A scoreboard that tracks the progress — the Trek leaderboard reinforced how powerful knowing what my peers and the competition were doing. It was interesting to watch other’s strategy — some rode 1,000 miles as quickly as possible and took the rest of the month off; others rode a ton of miles the last week; others rode a lot one day, then rested the next; and still others were like me, grinding it out every day to achieve 1,000 miles. You may want to think about what strategy your company or team follows. Is it appropriate for the current business environment?

3. A culture that provides the guardrails for the team to operate between — I’m lucky to live in an incredible biking community, with great bike shops (Brickyard Bike Co — https://www.facebook.com/BrickyardBikeCo/ ), the superb Dragonfly Trail system ( https://www.facebook.com/dragonflytrails/ ), and a great group of cyclists who encouraged me, and each other, to keep on striving for their goals.

4. Develop trust in the team (yourself) through shared experiences and hardships — this hardship was mainly a solo experience due to social distancing, but it took me to the discomfort zone where I grew and developed. I really value the power of shared or individual hardships. I didn’t realize I had the mental discipline to stay focused and ride 1,000 miles. Now that I’ve accomplished it, I know I have it in me to go even farther in the future.

Thanks to Trek for putting together a great virtual event that developed my perseverance and helped me get through July.

Whether you are trying to develop your personal perseverance or a great team requires four elements — a goal and a roadmap, a scoreboard, a culture, and the development of trust in yourself or the team through hardships. Although the Trek Challenge is over, I’m looking for more challenges on the bike in the coming months to keep pushing myself and developing my perseverance. I hope you too can find your own challenges that take you to the discomfort zone and help continue to develop your personal perseverance or your team.