spring ride + sydney via micn2sugars on Flickr, Some Rights Reserved.

I remember reading an article in The Good Weekend, in the lead up to 2009's Tour De France, and I was a little taken aback as to how borderline clinical (and I hate to say it anal) that Cadel Evans was depicted. Each to our own I know, hell, even I can be as wound up as the next guy, but what struck me when they talked about race strategy and how everything was planned down to the wire was that Evans didn't necessarily strike me as someone who could deal with change. Evans never attacks, there's been a lot written about him in this respect. He never really goes for it - something that's easy to say when you're sitting on the couch screaming at the television - but at this year's world championships he did just that, rearing up out of the saddle with around 4kms to go and turning probably the shittest year of his career, and 15 years worth of second places, into a world championship.

What I took out of this is that a strategy needs to be flexible: it needs room to move. You can't think of every single outcome, every possibility, but you need to build it out to allow for you to change tack at any given moment if things aren't going in the right direction. This is how I build software with Jonny. This is how I push content out with Angus. We say end game is this, we execute, we analyse incoming data, rinse, and repeat. I know this isn't anything new but it's funny how something like Evans' win, in a bicycle road race, can reinforce everything that I do in running a little digital shop. Nice one Cadel, congratulations.