Trailblazers Hunt 29 Mar 2008

This was the first treasure hunt for the year for our team. After announcing internally to my regular team that we should target to conquer the top 5 position this year, it was a slow start fro the treasure hunt season, thus finally in end March we got the chance to get onto this hunt. Of course the disadvantage was that the usual suspects of experts had already a few down their belt for the year, and were more fresh... and of course it was another CoC.

There were a few things at stake here, we agreed we would go for Kiwanis Hunt (which was quite expensive and some of us a bit tight on schedule), if we emerge top 15 and of course the standing promise that if we ever achieve our top 5 breakthrough I promised that after this "breakthrough", the next hunt after that I will drive my car for the hunt!

The bad news is that of course we messed up, and probably turned up more than the Kiwanis participation limit for the hunt, and did poorly in overall compared even to a team whom we know with two members who were our colleagues and were not regulars.

The good news (I'm ever optimist) is that I think we manage to break our thinking rhythm. We finally had some patience to figure out the sequence of what to be looking for and worked as a good team to find some of the answers. The only problem remains in that we had two weak areas - one was on treasures, and the other was not being careful to decipher and match the whole clue, causing us to drop a few route questions rather carelessly and figure out some of the difficult ones(!!).

So what do we need to do differently? I think we need to think about our approach clearly again, as definitely this was not good encouragement to be always hunting in the middle of the pack, and if we dont do something, nothing will improve.

One thing I noticed was how I was always told, treasure hunting is a sport. It is emphasised again and again by the experts. I do not disagree with this statement, but the beauty of this sport is that it is controlled by the brain. I know in my team, we have the capability to be the best because we have that capability within reach, whilst running a race really requires adequate conditioning of the body, conditioning of the mind was indeed more within reach than the body. But one thing I wanted to see more, in every sport, the most interesting thing is enjoyment, I do find the treasure hunt community to be a bit tight on themselves. To be honest, what is wrong about laughing about yourself or be more friendly after or before the race? Even during the race, nothing to stop you from giving the friendly competitor a bit of devilish smile. I find it odd that those who heckle the organiser are really the average joes, whilst the winners keep quiet and tense and hide their "interest".

Our time will come...