So I occasionally get labeled as “competitive”. This happens often at work where we have various things going on. I can kind of agree with it, but I’ve never really thought of myself as overly competitive.

This past week though, I realized that there are 2 kinds of competitiveness. I usually think of someone that is competitive as someone that just hates losing. You often see this in pro sports. There are stories about Michael Jordan or so just really HATING losing and when they lose they are just livid.

I’m not really like that. I really don’t mind losing. This is in contrast to my early life when I think I did hate losing much more, and I also had a pretty bad temper. I’m much more mellow now-a-days.

But my philosophy is that if I’m going to play, I might as well win, right!!!

So I do get a little competitive in the sense that I seek out every advantage / loophole I can in an attempt to win. I don’t cheat or actively break the rules but here’s an example. A few years ago, the IT department where I work had an “Amazing Race” around Mason. So in the few days before, I drove around Mason looking for possible clues, including visiting the Chamber of Commerce seeking possible locations that we might be sent to. We ended up finishing 2nd there due to this one guy sinking a crazy half court basketball shot at one of the stations. Of course, the fact that I still remember this maybe means that I do hate losing a little bit at least. I think it’s mostly due to the luckiness of that other team. I don’t really mind losing to a team / person that just played better; but I do get a bit singed at playing well enough to win only to lose due to luck or other factors out of my control.

But anyways… it was once again National Employee Health and Fitness week at work, along with the various competitions that they had. I of course signed up for just about everything.

Monday there was kickball – despite successfully instituting a no bunting rule, our team lost the first game and were eliminated.

Tuesday we had Ultimate Frisbee. We ended up winning that, and then my friends’ volleyball team needed one more player so I played that afterwards. I typically do not like volleyball because people get so particular about the various rules like “in the net” or “carrying” that makes it not very fun for me, the not very good player. But this was a pretty laid back game, and fun. We ended up losing in the finals.

Wednesday we had a relay race. It was pretty lame. 4 legs and only 2 teams showed up. First team finished in 45 seconds and then we finished in 31, winning. Then we went over to the croquet station. While not quite the Extreme Croquet that I prefer, it was still fun. My team won 2 games and the overall championship.

Thursday was an off day.

Friday we had a scaled down version of the Amazing Race, just around the campus at work. My original partner had a “production work issue” (supposedly!) so I had to find a backup partner. The sabotage of the other teams was very much an issue as I got a flat tire on the way to work which delayed me. The first clue had us finding a particular emergency pole (we have 5 or 6 around in the parking lots and out back and such that I guess if you are mugged while walking around the path you can get help?). My new partner just happened to know which one was pole #5 and that was pretty much the ballgame. We ran around to the various stations and ended up winning in about 14 minutes, about 5 minutes ahead of the 2nd place team. In fact, we finished, got our food (free picnic at work also that day!), came back and sat down and ate outside and watched the last few teams arrive!

So we ended up winning 4 events and finishing 2nd in another one. It was a lot of fun, even if some of the events were not organized quite up to “Dan standards” 😀