I try to ask myself often why I do the things I do. I want to make sure I’m making the most of my life and making choices for good reasons, not for reasons I might regret when I see them with hindsight.

Reading Mark Rowlands book ‘running with the pack’ I realised those questions often mean you look for value beyond the thing itself. You look for reasons to play… because it keeps you healthy, takes you places, you do it with friends. But if you’re doing it for some external benefit, for something beyond itself, then really it is a form of work.

He has made me think, maybe the things that are most satisfying have value in themselves. Those moments when you’re in the flow of something, without past or future in mind, they do feel pretty sweet.

I sometimes feel a huge rush of gratitude from inside when out playing, not thought through logical gratitude but a deep feeling that makes me want to take a deep breath and smile a huge grin. It might be wanting to do well in a race that makes me get out to ride or run in training, but I also have moments of great pleasure just doing those things there and then, in the moment.

That’s an important realisation for me. I’ve struggled with the idea of putting so much time and effort into racing that is essentially an ego trip. Why should I want to prove I’m better than others? But when I don’t race, or more realistically when I don’t train, I feel a bit lost and unhappy.

Its nice to realise the activity itself is the value – when my head clears and I am just breathing in the place and being here and now, that’s a great feeling to have, of feeling really alive, chasing nothing, just being.

Racing gives me the motivation to get out the door, to get over the human instinct we have developed to do nothing and conserve energy. Until our brains catch up and realise the activities make us happy in themselves, we need goals to drive us towards something. Theyre a useful tool.

Trying to run or ride fastest isn’t the point for me after all – that always nagged at me, to be driven by ego has never been a nice thought.

So when I run and ride through life I can know this… “At its best, it is something done for its own sake, play not work.” – Mark Rowlands