Raising the Bar: why resilience is about capacity, not bigger challenges

I might be contradicting one of my previous articles about going further and faster than ever before, but there’s an important nuance here.

As an adventurer or endurance athlete you’re pretty stuck with the question: “what’s next?”

It comes with the job. Wasn’t the last one enough?! You roll your eyes then unleash your latest plans.

So we keep setting bigger goals, harder challenges, new records. For you it might be chasing promotions or tangible metrics of success. The bar is set higher and creates a new foundation to start from. That seems like a very positive thing for personal and professional performance.

You might assume that after overcoming a challenging event or situation, we can tolerate bigger stresses and challenges in future as a result. It’s like building a muscle. We put it under stress then allow it to recover and adapt so it rebuilds stronger through hypertrophy: and eventually next time we can lift the same weight more easily. But this adaptation doesn’t happen with stress alone.

Gaining this experience gives us greater confidence and competence for next time we encounter the same challenge. A mental note of “you got this”. However, this progressive tolerance assumes we’re facing a familiar challenge that we’re already conditioned for. Ever noticed the aches after your first bike ride or gym session in a long while? We can lose that conditioning if we don’t use those muscle groups for a while, in the same way that skills become rusty without practice.

It also assumes that we consistently have the same capacity and tolerance regardless of what’s going on around or within us. Our stress buckets are often nearly full with everything else: work stress, budgets, health issues, family conflicts, difficult conversations, car breakdowns, childcare, moving house, and so on which leaves little room for the life events that strike when we least expect them. Ever noticed yourself snapping or getting emotional over a seemingly small inconvenience? These were simply the tipping point.

Recently I’ve been navigating Post-Viral Fatigue Syndrome (again) which has reduced my ability to exercise, and essentially means I have less energy available and have to prioritise it in the most important places. If I push through this threshold and try to maintain my usual workload or exercise: I pay the price. So I have to live within my current capacity, as much as possible. Unfortunately I still haven’t cracked being in several places at once. So after a busy week of speaking, travel or back-to-back calls the bucket tends to overflow and I have to recover a lot harder. I’d never wish for a running injury, but honestly, it would be much easier to treat and explain!

A couple of weeks ago we headed to Wales and relived some of the 446 Challenge route, albeit at a much slower pace. Most of it had been resigned to a patchwork of random memories and moments. Maybe I’d just dissociated from the pain. But everything started flooding back to me. We bailed our first walk due to high winds and nav errors (mine) and headed to the pub at 2pm for hot chocolate; whereas back then I still had a marathon and 7,000ft to finish on schedule. It was hard to believe that I did this for 45 days straight: running and cycling between 446 mountains in England & Wales, covering over 3,000km and climbing over 100,000m. Especially when right now I can’t even run for 45 minutes!

But we can all be capable people, even on a low-capacity day. Despite our experience and evidence, anything can feel a bit impossible afterwards when we compare ourselves to those elusive moments of peak performance. Our skills and experience haven’t suddenly disappeared. Something that felt easy six months ago but now feels overwhelming doesn’t mean we’ve lost resilience: it’s just the circumstances around it have changed.

This is probably an uncomfortable idea for ambitious people who are constantly striving for the next goal or achievement. Society reinforces and rewards this. And I’m still ambitious, with plenty of daft things I want to achieve. But perhaps there are healthier ways to measure progress…

Perhaps it’s responding to the circumstances we currently find ourselves in. It’s acknowledging our limits and what we’re carrying so we can sustain ourselves in the long term. It’s having the courage to pause, adapt or change a plan when we don’t have the capacity to execute it right now.

Four years ago, I’d planned to attempt a challenge that would resemble the 446 Challenge I eventually completed in 2025. Long Covid put a stop to that plan. I went from running 100-milers to jogging 30 seconds several times. I worried I’d never get the opportunity again. Fortunately, I was wrong.

Those experiences of overcoming adversity can become a guiding light, rather than a stick to beat ourselves with. They can remind us what we’re capable of, without becoming a bar we have to clear every single day.

Because sometimes resilience isn’t always about taking on a bigger challenge: it’s dealing with the challenge in front of us.