I’m Trying to Like College Football, But I Don’t Just Yet

September 12, 2010 Leave a comment

Eight years ago, we moved from suburban Washington, D.C. to St. Louis.  As we did so, I moved from college basketball territory to college football territory.  Unfortunately, I just can’t get into college football.

I grew up in and lived in Maryland, which is not a hotbed of college football.  Yes, Maryland has a team and is a member of the Atlantic Coast Conference, which is a major football conference and a member of the Bowl Championship Series.  But the ACC was and is, in my opinion, a basketball conference.  I grew up a huge Maryland basketball fan, and I still am.

Hung Outside My Neighbors' Home, But No Pull for Me Yet

I went to Williams College for undergrad, a Division III school, where our home games attracted over 2,500 fans at Homecoming and exam schedules took precedence over sports schedules.  The Williams football field was certainly second or third class when compared to some high school stadiums in Texas and Arkansas.  I did go to a home game in Ann Arbor once to see Michigan-Notre Dame.  Being among 105,000 people was fascinating, but, for me, a one-time event

So I moved out to Missouri, and I noticed Mizzou flags hanging from homes and cars on Saturdays.  I noticed the prominence of Mizzou on the local news.  I talked to new friends who routinely made the 90-minute drive out to Columbia for home games and some who also made road trips to Nebraska, Oklahoma, and Texas,  For me, this was a whole new phenomenon.

It was a phenomenon, but not a bug.  I watched my friends, not understanding how they could be interested in college football.  This is a sport that has so much going for it, but four things in particular have always driven me away:

AJ Green Sits for Getting Money, But Georgia Takes All It Can Get

  1. The sport makes massive amounts of money, but none goes to the players.  The recent episode with A.J. Green, a University of Georgia wide receiver, is indicative of the problem.  The kid sells his jersey for $500 or so and is suspended for four games.  His university, of course, sells his jerseys on their website.  See Michael Wilbon’s article pointing on the hypocrisy of this.
  2. There is no mechanism to decide a legitimate champion.  Every other sport and football in every other division has a way to determine a champion.  Why no playoff?  See #1.   More money in the bowls.
  3. The sport has been and, in my opinion, always will be corrupt.  You know that players are paid under the table to matriculate and then attend.  You know that they receive preferential treatment in their academics.  Why does this happen?  See #1 above.
  4. It just takes too much time to watch.  Too many players on each team.  To much changeover each year on the players.  Too many games to follow.

Over our time in Missouri, I have enjoyed watching Mizzou games with friends.  I have gotten used to the Monday morning conversations about college football.  I have started watching and started trying to enjoy it.  It’s growing on me.  The Michigan-Notre Dame yesterday was very exciting, but I got bored by the Boise State-Virginia Tech game the week before.

We’ll see where the evolution goes.  No Mizzou Black & Gold just yet.  I’m trying,  but it will be a long road.  At this point, NHL training camps are more interesting.

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Delta Airlines to Beijing – Bonus Miles Make Up for Spotty Service

September 9, 2010 Leave a comment

Last week, I flew Delta round trip from St. Louis to Beijing.   I didn’t do it for the great connections or flight times.  I did it purely for the miles.

Delta has a program now that provides for bonus miles and extra qualifying miles for elite status for flights from St. Louis, Pittsburgh, Raleigh-Durham and Nashville.  I flew Delta through two connections (and a very, very low price), because every round-trip international business class trip originating in St. Louis and routed through a Delta hub nets 50,000 extra miles and double qualifying miles towards medallion status.  I’m already a Platinum Medallion, which gets me double miles on every flight.  Business class gets a 50% bonus.  It was a bonanza!!

I earned a total of 88,491 miles:

  • Round trip miles (STL-ATL-SEA-PEK-PEK-MSP-STL) = 15,396
  • 100% Platinum Medallion bonus:  15,396
  • 50% International Business Class bonus:  7,699
  • Special bonus:  50,000

On that one trip, I also earned 46,190 miles towards status, which nets me silver for next year and is less than 3K away from gold.  Note that you have to register for this Delta promotion in advance.  Visit this post at Gary Leff’s View from the Wing blog for links to all four city promotions.

The trip itself was very smooth.  I had six flights and four connections.  The flight from Atlanta to Seattle on the way out was delayed a bit, but I wasn’t close to missing my connection.  Beijing-Seattle pushed back on time, but sat for about 45 minutes on the tarmac.  Still, it arrived early into Seattle.  Thanks very much to Delta for making a four-connection round trip very smooth.

On the Atlanta-Seattle flight I paid $12.95 to use their Gogo Wifi internet.  My experience was very positive.  The connection was easy and fast.  I spent a bit of time chatting with friends, and the connection couldn’t have been smoother.  I used Skype to send texts to my family, although I wasn’t able to receive any back, because I hadn’t preauthorized it through my mobile phone.  I didn’t try voice on Skype, because my headphones and microphone were up on the overhead storage.  The only downside, was that my 757 did not have electric outlets, even in first class.  My laptop battery ran out before time to use the Internet.  What a bummer.

The international business class on Delta had ups and downs.  Although the seat wasn’t a flat bed, it was very comfortable, as were the pillow and duvet.  The flight attendants rated about a 7 out of 10, with most of the points earned by the crew from Beijing to Seattle.  The crew from Seattle to Beijing wasn’t impressive.  One flight attendant didn’t know the wine choice, even though there was only one red and one white, and others tended to be too chatty with a group of flight attendants that were passengers on that plane.

Business Class Dinner on Delta - That's Steak at Bottom Right

There were at least three other negatives to my Delta experience.  First, the video system itself had a smaller screen and a must narrower selection than Continental and United for comparison.  On my return, I watched Breaking Bad on DVD on my laptop and didn’t even pull the video unit out.  Second, the electric plug is located behind the passenger’s right hip and is nearly impossible to reach.  Third, and most notably, the food was just not good.  I took a picture of my dinner from Beijing to Seattle and have posted it here.  Yuk.  At any rate, who wants dinner at 10am anyway.  We should have had breakfast!!

I may take another trip to Beijing at the end of September.  No question I’ll endure the connections and layovers for the Delta miles, assuming the cost stays low.  I’ll renew Platinum Medallion on that trip.  And now I know not to order the steak!

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No Electronics for You!

September 7, 2010 Leave a comment

As a parent of a 15-year-old and a 12-year-old, I can attest to the validity of an article in The Washington Post yesterday about new punishment techniques.

Donna St. George’s article is headlined “A new-age twist on the age-old parenting technique of grounding.”  She talks about a range of punishments from no cell phone, to no Facebook, to no Xbox.  She cites a study by the Pew Internet & American Life Project that says 62% of parents have taken away their child’s cell phone as punishment.  Mrs. Spidey and I are part of the 62%.

In our household, we have an escalating scale of punishments related to electronics.  Typically, these are doled out due to lack of focus on schoolwork.  Sometimes, however, as St. George reveals in one anecdote in the article, we punish for “lapse in good judgment.”  The scale is roughly as follows:

The Ultimate Punishment

  • No computer for the rest of the day
  • No computer or television for the rest of the day
  • No electronics for the rest of the day
  • No electronics for an extended period
  • Changing the password log-in on the computer
  • Removal and hiding of the power cords to the computer, Xbox, television
  • Taking away the iPod and/or phone

Note the progression.  When banning isn’t enough, parents have to prevent children from accessing electronics, whether by changing passwords or taking the power cords.

The worst, however, is taking away a child’s music and telephone.  This means no texting, no walking around with headphones in, and no mobile Facebook.  In sum, this means social isolation, which is really the intent of grounding.

Unfortunately, taking away a child’s phone is also a punishment to the parents.  When children don’t have a phone, they can’t call to be picked up, and they generally can’t be found.

As the article describes, old-fashioned grounding just doesn’t work any more.  To make children feel the impact of their educational failures or “lapses in good judgment,” parents have to hit children where it hurts – smack in the middle of their electronics.

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Week Five – 191.6 Pounds. 5.8 Pounds Down in Five Weeks.

September 6, 2010 Leave a comment

Despite my eight-day business trip to Beijing, I lost nearly two pounds this week.  I’m at 191.6 pounds, a 5.8 pound lost after five weeks and 0.8 pounds ahead of pace.  So much for those challenges I wrote about last week.

When I’m on a diet, I find it a bit scary to be away from my home scale for an extended period.  I don’t necessarily weigh myself everyday, but it is important to check in every few days.  Without the same scale, I really can’t gauge how I’m doing.  I have to admit I was surprised when I got on the scale yesterday.

Business trips are also scary, because my eating patterns are way off.  I diet by eating similar things everyday at similar times everyday.  This trip, I forgot to pack Zone Bars for my mid-morning snack.  I could not really control the healthiness of meals.  The times that I ate were different from when at home.  I also had the challenge of not being able to read the nutritional labels in Chinese.

I suspect the weight loss was due to a few reasons:

  1. I didn’t really snack.  The food just wasn’t available, except for some small candies, chewing gum, and some apples I bought at a supermarket.
  2. I kept up my exercise.  Four times to the gym in six days in China.  Biggest challenge?  Figuring out my weight in kilograms and estimating my kilometers per hour pace for the treadmill.
  3. I ate mostly at restaurants, which meant that my food was limited to what I ordered.  This could easily have been a negative, but I made it a positive.
  4. I was able to stop eating when I was full.  This was important, as some of the Chinese meals were family style.

I’ve got another few trips coming up in September and hope to carry this optimism and success going forward.  Now, let’s see how I do this week at home.

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Things About Work I Wish I Knew Earlier – Part 9

September 3, 2010 Leave a comment

Last week, I wrote about how we’re really never as good as we think we are, especially early on in our careers.  I think it’s really important to remind ourselves of that, because certainly no one else will.  That leads me to this week’s post:

9. Few people will tell you the truth about your performance

I almost wrote “no one,” but I have to believe there someone out there that does tell the truth to their direct reports about their performance in a tactful and professional way.  For the most part, however, candid conversations about performance don’t happen.  Those of you with bosses that you like and who help you get ahead should be very, very thankful.  I have benefitted from bosses like that.  However, I have learned that even they aren’t telling you the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.

Whether your performance is good or bad, the risk is too great to tell you the full truth.  There are two scenarios.

A.  You are performing well: Bosses really, really want to tell high performing employees that they are doing well.  As one who has managed people in the past, I know that these positive conversations are a pleasure.  However, if you have an employee that is really doing well, it is too risky to tell them exactly how well.  No one wants an employee getting too big a head, but a more significant concern is how quickly you might promote them or give them more responsibility.  If you tell someone they are doing great and are ready for a promotion, and then you can’t promote them for a while, you risk them leaving or becoming disenchanted and performing worse.  There is also a notion that a high performer might take her bosses job sooner than later.  If this is the case, why tell her how well she’s doing.

B. You are performing poorly: First, no boss wants to have this conversation, and this often stops a conversation about poor performance before it starts.  Second, people don’t want to be mean, even if it’s the truth.  No one will ever go so far as to say, “Fred – that presentation really sucked.  Worst ever.”  That’s just mean.  However, the real reason you are never told completely how poorly you are doing is because your boss needs you to stick at your job and get things done.  If your boss completely demotivates you, then you might leave or not get done even the minimum.

So, what do you do?  You start by doing what I’ve written about in this series.  Stay off the radar.  Do good work.  Keep your head on straight.  Don’t worry about getting feedback on your performance through the normal channels.  You won’t.  If you can get by without this feedback, you’ll be better off in the long run.

I’ll tell you why you are better off and how to get the feedback you need starting next week.

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In Praise of Despair, Inc.

September 2, 2010 Leave a comment

Most people in corporate America are familiar with Successories.  If you haven’t heard them called “Successories,” I’m sure you know them by sight.  Successories sells mugs, pencils, and pads, but is best known for posters which say things like:

ATTITUDE:  A positive attitude is a powerful force — it can’t be stopped!! (photo = waterfall)

SUCCESS:  Some people dream of success . . . while others wake up and work hard at it.  (photo = early morning golf green with footprints in dew)

TEAMWORK:  Coming together is a beginning… Keeping together is progress… Working together is a success. (photo = Blue Angels)

My favorite poster is one of a child that looks strangely like my son and I both did at that age.   It reads:

A hundred years from now it will not matter what my bank account was, the sort of house I lived in, or the kind of car I drove…but the world may be different because I was important in the life of a child.

So with these sometimes sappy and sometimes motivational posters out there, along comes Despair, Inc. which turns Successories on its proverbial ear and provides a humorous turn to these posters.  Instead of platitudes like those I wrote above, Despair looks at things a bit differently.  It’s posters, called “demotivators” put forward statements such as:

APATHY:  If we don’t take care of the customer, maybe they’ll stop bugging us (photo = telephone)

CONSULTING:  If you’re not a part of the solution,there’s good money to be made in prolonging the problem (photo = handshake)

IDIOCY:  Never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups (photo = skydivers falling in a circle)

Here are three of my favorites:

There’s a lot more where these came from.  If you’ve got the guts in your office (I don’t!), they are spectacular.

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My Final Business Trip to Beijing

September 1, 2010 Leave a comment

My company no longer needs me in China.  This is a good thing.

I’ve made seven trips in the past 12 months, including this one, but our plan of establishing the business and transitioning to a local team is nearly complete.  Appropriately so, there is no place for someone like me, who isn’t a deep technical expert and doesn’t speak the language.  Thankfully, we are also exploring other areas, and I already have two projects in two different countries.

Visiting Beijing so often, on trips ranging from four to sixteen days and visiting Shanghai and Hangzhou in addition to Beijing, has been fantastic.  I made it to the Forbidden City and the Great Wall.  Like many business travelers, I suspect, I will need to come back as a tourist to fully appreciate the country and its culture.  Even with the business meetings and the feeling some days that I might as well be in Akron, it’s been fantastic and many things will stay with me.

When traveled in younger days, the ubiquitous American phrase across the globe was “Big Mac and fries.”  You went to McDonald’s, and you were home.  Now the phrase is  “Grande Latte,” at least in China.  Starbucks is seemingly always just around the corner and tastes the same.  Starbucks would be smart to put more items like mugs in  Chinese as souvenirs.

"Grande Latte" - Now a Global Phrase

China is no longer the remote place it might have been in the past.  It’s a major global city with full connectivity.  With the Internet, an iPhone, and satellite TV, you are never really that far from home.  As I write, I’ve got an ESPN Gamecast of Yanks-A’s in a separate window.  While Twitter is blocked by Chinese authorities, it comes through on my iPhone and through my company’s VPN.  Our apartment has CNN, CNBC and Bloomberg for news.  The local English paper, China Daily, is good enough.

The iPhone has been indispensable on these trips.  I’ve got language applications and an application with restaurant and bar reviews for Beijing.  Of most help, however, has been Google Maps.  The application works here just like it would at home, and the maps show place names in Chinese.  I’ve used it to show cab drivers exactly where I want to go and to find my way to a subway station on a cold, rainy night in February, when I was completely lost.

I’m going to miss the haggling in the local markets for knock-off clothes and purses for my daughter and electronics for my son.  I’m going to miss the 11RMB or $1.61 cab rides across the city.  I’m going to miss that “wild west” feeling I get from time to time when you realize you are having a nice meal and glass of wine overlooking downtown Beijing or Shanghai.  I will miss handing over business cards, keys, money – literally everything — with two hands and a slight bow. I will miss getting jammed into subway cars on my 2RMB or $0.28 ride, where, at 5’6″, I can see over most people.

I can’t say that I will miss the pollution and the smog.  (I was asked if a recent thunderstorm drove out the smog.  I said yes, but added that “replacement smog” came right back in.  I won’t miss the traffic jams on the ring roads 24×7.  I won’t miss the rock hard bed here in our corporate apartment that just ruins my back and leads me to my Advil bottle every four hours or so.  I won’t miss the agonizing slow speed with which documents are saved to or retrieved from our corporate servers back in the US.

In one year, I climbed the Great Wall in the snow.  I got my daughter more “Juicy” items than she can handle.  I got a knock-off iPhone, and may get a knock-off iPad in the coming days.  I ate duck tongue, pig’s ear and donkey.  We’ll see if the next country can live up to this.  It will be tough.

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Teaching Our Son to Drive – Part One

August 31, 2010 Leave a comment

In mid-August, our 15-year-old son got his learner’s permit.  So, between then and next July, it is Mrs. Spidey’s and my responsibility to teach him drive.

I remembered my brave mother, who took me for my license on my birthday and, that very day, allowed me to drive to school.  So, wanting to be similarly brave, we took him out to practice without hesitation within days of getting his permit.  Here’s what we’ve learned so far:

  1. Pressing the imaginary brake in the passenger’s seat doesn’t slow the car down.
  2. It is necessary to repeat instructions not once, not twice, but three times – your voice increasing in volume each time.
  3. The radio is a massive distraction, especially when you can read the songs in the windshield through GMC’s “heads-up display.”

To be fair, our son has done well in the amount of time he’s been behind the wheel.  I think that the difficulties he’s facing are normal for someone driving for the first time.  The hardest thing is understanding how hard or soft he needs to push on the brake or the gas to achieve the desired result.  This means he accelerates too slow and stops too slow.  I reference point #2 above.  If there was a tape of discussion in the car, it would show my tendency to say “Stop.  Stop!!  STOP!!!” with some regularity.

He has tended to put himself and not the car in the middle of the lane, resulting in some near misses with the mailboxes in our neighborhood.  He has tended to accelerate into turns, despite us reminding him to decelerate into turns and accelerate out of them.  He also doesn’t turn the wheel until the last minute on turns.  All of this, of course, is correctable.

For me, the most humorous moment was when I noticed that the radio station was changing very fast.  In our car, the driver can change the station on the steering wheel.  So, I figured that our son accidentally had his hand on the button.  I asked, “Did you know you are changing the radio station?”  He said, “Yes, I’m trying to find something good.”  ARGGGGH.  “Focus on driving!!” I said with some emphasis.  Instead of focusing on the road and other cars, he was reading the songs on a display we have in the windshield which should be used as a speedometer.

Mrs. Spidey had the pleasure of letting our son drive with her parents in the back seat.  Do I need to say more?  “I didn’t sign up for this,” said my father-in-law.  “You wanted a ride,” said my wife.

More to come on a semi-regular basis here.  It’s already an experience and no doubt will continue to be so.

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Week 4 – 193.4lbs. On Track, But Challenges Ahead

August 30, 2010 1 Comment

Writing from Beijing on an eight-day business trip.  On the Friday morning before I left, I was at 193.6 pounds.  That’s four pounds in four weeks.  I am right on pace at one pound per week.

Unfortunately, this week brings two challenges that many people deal with in the course of their diet.  Both are outside forces that are only partially under our control.

The Business Trip

I don’t care how diligent you are and how much willpower you have.  Business trips suck for diets.  Often, the food that you eat is selected for you or, at best, limited by the restaurants and hotels you frequent.  It takes an awful lot of willpower not to join the rest of your team in hearty meals and alcohol.  It takes a lot of willpower to make those good decisions when you have the chance.

Generic Cereal for Breakfast - They Get Soggy Quickly, But Are Better than the Buffet

My approach on business trips is one of moderation combined with exercise.  I eat well when I can, and moderate when I cannot.  For example, I take advantage of having a corporate apartment here in Beijing to avoid the breakfast buffet at the adjacent hotel in favor of generic Cheerios and milk in the apartment.  I buy fruit at the local supermarket and carry it with me to the office.  If I remember (and I didn’t this trip), I bring Zone Bars with me from the US for snacks.  In lieu of Zone Bars, I chew gum to get the sweetness and calm the hunger pains.  I also make sure that I exercise every single day without fail.  I burn about 550 calories exercising, and that goes a long way towards making up for some of the bad eating.

Reality is, however, that I’m not always in a place where dieting is an option.  For example, yesterday the team went for lunch at a buffet at a nearby western hotel.  I didn’t deprive myself by pecking at salad.  I stuck to sushi and some seafood salad, with one or two pot stickers, but I enjoyed the variety.  I passed by the desert table and more caloric Indian food.  Later, at dinner, I found myself eating bar food with cocktails.  We ordered some ahi tuna spring rolls to balance the french fries, and I also didn’t eat a thing later.

Stress

I don’t need to cite scientific studies to suggest that stress and dieting are not a good mix.  While I’m not one who uses food to soothe aggravations or frustrations, I am at risk for making bad decisions because of stress.  I may decide to eat more french fries or ice cream “because I’ve had a bad day.”  I simply lose the focus.

Knowing stress can be a problem is half the battle.  I try to be constantly vigilant, but that’s tough when I’m stressed.  It’s even tougher when my stress is combined with team stress.  Joining your team on a night to “blow off steam” isn’t a positive thing for a diet.  You don’t want to excuse yourself, but you don’t want to spend the night worrying.  You have to find the balance.

Balance is one key to solving both the business trip and stress challenges.  You can’t make yourself miserable and punish yourself for every slip up.  Do you best, but then make sure you exercise and make sure that, where you can control your eating, you do.  Avoid the cookies in the business meetings.  Drink lots of water.  Ensure you order things like those spring rolls instead of the nachos.  Hang in there until you get back home or the stress subsides.

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Three Quick Observations About Sports in Beijing

August 29, 2010 Leave a comment

I write this on a Monday morning in Beijing, just as the United States is settling in for what’s bound to be a long night watching the Emmy Awards.  This is my seventh trip to China in the past year, although it’s my first since March.

I’m afraid that I can’t go into a deep analysis of sporting life in China.  That is likely a topic of a PhD dissertation somewhere.  Instead, let me make a few observations about sports here.

Sports is More Global Than Local

Beijing Guoan F.C. - Did Anyone Notice They Won the Championship?

On an earlier trip in March, the local Beijing soccer team, Beijing Guoan F.C., played for and won the championship of the Chinese Super League.  If the buzz in cities is said to be “palpable” for big events, then the buzz in Beijing at the time was, well, “unpalpable.”  There was no talk of it among our Chinese colleagues and little mention in the English-language newspaper, China Daily.  Imagine Manchester United or Olympic Marseilles or even Real Salt Lake winning a championship and no one noticing.  Can’t happen.

There is a local channel, CCTV 5, which is dedicated to sports.  It shows mostly international fare, from what I can tell.  I watched USA-Croatia live in the basketball world championships Saturday night. As I write, it’s showing a replay of China-Germany from the 2008 Olympics.  (The cynic in me says that China wins, but I’ll have to wait and see.)   Back in February, this channel broadcast the Super Bowl with Chinese announcers.  They returned late from halftime, and we missed the onside kick by the Saints, but that was the only glitch.

There was a buzz last spring when Stephon Marbury came over to play basketball in Shanxi in the Chinese Basketball Association, but that died down after a while.  I think that’s the way it is with local sports leagues here.  The interest rises with news and then dies out.

The expat communities in major cities, however, keep the buzz going about English football, American basketball and other sports with regular gatherings to watch the games at local watering holes.

ESPN is not ESPN

Satellite television available in western hotels and in western apartments has a channel called ESPN.  This is not your mother’s ESPN.  The goal of ESPN is not to push American sports on the rest of the world, but is to bring the model of sports broadcasting outside the US.  Thus, it broadcasts mostly sports of relevance to Europe and Asia:  soccer, auto racing, and motocross.   This morning, ESPN ran a 20 minutes loop of “ESPNews” showing soccer, golf and auto racing over and over and over.  I did get to watch Yankees-White Sox on Sunday morning (Saturday night), but those games aren’t regular, except for the weekly Sunday night game.  Right now, ESPN is showing a tape of a Little League World Series game between Hawaii and Texas.

If you want to catch highlights of your favorite MLB, NHL, NBA or NFL teams, your best bet remains, by far, the Web.  If you are going to be over here for an extended period, you may want to consider either a) subscribing to one of the league’s online broadcast packages; b) getting a Slingbox to connect from home;  or c) getting knowledgeable about free online broadcast feeds.

Expats – Have Sports Will Travel

The cover story of September issue of The Beijinger, the local journal for expat activities, is about sports.  Always good at covering the city’s restaurant and bar scene, the Beijinger showcases the breadth of sports available to expats, from cricket to softball to Australian rules football to croquet.  I know from searching before, that there are some local pick-up ice hockey games.

As some of you may know, when you put a bunch of expats in one spot, sports leagues are bound to start up.  The global phenomenon that is the Hash House Harriers is a great example.  Back in the early 1990’s, Mrs. Spidey and I lived in Moscow and played in the broomball league, a full contact version of that game you played in college, played on flooded tennis courts at the foreign embassies in frigid Moscow.  Expats, as you know, can’t exist without sports leagues, and I’m ecstatic that br00mball is alive and well in Moscow.

At the same time, perhaps as part of Beijing’s continued emergence as a global city, I see health clubs sprouting up and more and more joggers out in the pollution.  There is a Beijing Marathon and a Beijing Triathlon.  In The Beijinger, they highlighted “The Great Wall Charity Challenge.”  This team event involves sailing 40KM, running 12KM and then “scrambling” up the Great Wall for 2KM.  Sounds intriguing to me – except for that sailing part.

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