Tuesday : Tell-a- Tale

It took me about a week to complete reading this book ” The man who cycled the world”, written by Mark Beaumont.

Reading is a pleasure and a passion for me- most weeks I read about 3-4 books. This last week has been different- this book took me about 6.5 days to complete.

Why did it take me so long to read this book ?

For one thing, this book has a lot of geography in it- the places Mark cycled through, as told by a person who has actually seen it and experienced it- was a novelty plus- he wasn’t a tourist- he saw the places from the perspective of a person who wanted to get the job done.

The job on hand : To get the world record ( Guinness Record) in cycling the world and he wanted to do it in less than 200 days. The previous record was by a person who did it in around 250 days. This whole goal setting thing was fascinating for me, with my constant struggles to improve myself and so I held on to every detail of the book and tried to get the most out of it- almost as a person who sucks a bone and gets the most meat and marrow out of it.

Did he beat the record ? 

Yes, he did- in 197 days and a few hours, he traversed the globe,  I would say, around the equator, which is probably the widest part of the globe- crossing the two mandated points, in order to qualify for the record. He cycled about 18,500 miles around the world.

Goal setting and how he did it ? 

Mark’s overall goal was to beat the record but he broke his goal into small aims- like one country at a time and when even that looked insurmountable, he broke a country into one day at a time, trying to achieve a target of a 100 miles per day.

What did I learn from reading this book ?

Man can do anything he sets his mind to. All he needs is :

1. A determination
2. A strong focus
3. Help from people near and dear
4. Help from people not so near but yet, whom one can make friends with
5. A goal, aims and targets( Read post by thebikinibookworm on SMART goal setting)

When all these are put in the proper places, man can achieve his dream, because everything else, including nature will come together to put things in their proper places till his dream comes true.