More Than a 1% Solution

Ovidia--every other Tuesday
Singapore is a very small island--you can drive across it, coast to coast at its widest point, in under an hour.

But still, when you're underground, especially when you've just entered one of the tunnel expressways, it can feel like it's going to be a long, long road to travel before you'll see the light of day again.

Kind of like following news of the American elections--but I'll leave that to Jeff and Patti.

I took this on the Kallang- Paya Lebar Expressway (KPE). At 12km, with 9km underground, it's the longest underground expressway in Singapore and (I think) the sixth longest underground road project in the world.

The only practical option is to just keep on going forward and not think about what would happen if there's a power disruption or a cave in... the same principle that applies to writing books and living life, I guess!


There are other roads that can feel endless too--I'm thinking of the Tour de France that is on now. But because GCN+ is no longer live streaming the race since the change in ownership, here in Singapore we're reduced to watching highlights and live commentaries.

Anyway, I'm following the Tour de France more from nostalgia than anything else, now I no longer ride and all the riders I hero-worshipped are retiring/ have retired.

It's lucky writers have a longer shelf life than riders, but I still remember how inspiring I found Dave Brailsford's 1% Solution when I was starting out writing and riding.
Brailsford believed in the “Aggregation of marginal gains.”
Simply put: if you improve every area related to riding/ writing by just one percent, those small gains add up to a significant improvement.

Brailsford took on Great Britain's professional cycling team in 2003, a time when British riders were performing so poorly that a top European bike manufacturer refused to sell the British team bikes, fearing it would hurt their sales. After all, in all the 110 years of its history, no British cyclist had ever won the Tour de France, the greatest bike race of all.


Some of Brailsford's 1% improvements were almost laughable (at the time). He got them to redesign bike seats for greater comfort, made riders wear electrically heated overshorts to maintain ideal muscle temperature and travelled with pillows and mattresses to ensure better sleep. He even hired a surgeon to teach each rider the best way to wash their hands to avoid getting sick, and painted the inside of the team truck white, so dirt would be more easily spotted.


Brailsford claimed that if they followed his strategy, Team Sky would be ready to win the Tour de France in five years.
Well, he was wrong.
They won it in three years when Sir Bradley Wiggins became the first British cyclist to win the Tour de France in 2012.
That same year, Brailsford coached the British cycling team for the 2012 Olympic Games, where they won 70 percent of the gold medals.

Chris Froome (my personal hero!) won the Tour de France for Britain again the next year. I've been following his riding career ever since, starting with Team Sky, then INEOS and now Israel Premier Tech.

He won three consecutive grand tours in 2017–2018: Tour 2017, Vuelta 2017 and Giro 2018 before finishing 3rd in Tour 2018. He's the first and (so far) only, rider to wear all the winner's jerseys beginning with the Tour de France, and was the first to do so when the races were in the order 'Giro-Tour-Vuelta'.

Even more, he recovered to ride again after crash injuries that weren't just career threatening, but life threatening, morphing from tour leader to super domestic as younger, faster riders came along.

I find the Tour de France a good focusing tool, because it's a reminder that when you're in the middle of a grand tour or in the middle of a book draft, all the theories in the world don't make a difference.

For riders and writers, you just have to keep your butt in the seat and plow on, regardless of how rotten you might feel. When you're in the middle of a race or a book, that's the only thing that counts; never mind the theories of the past or the ideas of the future, the race or the book you're in the middle of is all that counts.

So--even though Froomey isn't riding this Tour, I'll be using it to try to pace myself to 75k words over the next three weeks...
The big plus of writing over riding is that when you crash or fall off you're less likely to end up with broken bones or road rash.
And I'll be making all the 1% improvements that I can--setting 30 min timers to remind me to stand up and stretch, drinking a glass of water each time and yes, I'll be washing my hands!

The most painful sacrifice is giving up mysore practice for the duration, because even though the atmosphere at The Yoga Shala does me more good than anything anywhere else, I can't afford the two hours it takes to get there and back.

Luckily I've found a neighbourhood place (literally named The New Place) where I can go for classes, and I'll work on staying healthy and working towards the end of this tunnel the best I can!

Wish me luck!