After the Meihua Lake triathlon relay, I lay on the grass completely spent, every muscle aching, but my mind was oddly sharp.
My thoughts weren’t replaying the race itself, thrilling as it was. What kept circling in my head was a single question: why did this relay give me a more visceral understanding of “team” than any corporate training I’ve ever attended?
The answer is in the rules. A triathlon relay is simple, and merciless: three people, each responsible for one leg: swimming, cycling, running. If any one person drops out, the entire group’s result is void.
Not docked points. Not a partial credit. Void.
You could swim like Phelps and ride like you’re on the Champs-Élysées. But if your running teammate cramps out in the final five kilometers, everything you did ceases to exist.
Education You Feel in Your Body
Why does this rule work so well as a teaching mechanism? Because it creates a felt sense that no classroom can replicate: your outcome is not entirely within your control.
During the race, you inhabit a strange psychological state. In the water, you’re not only tracking your own pace. You’re thinking about your teammate. Can he hold up on the bike? On the cycling leg, two things run on a loop in your head: don’t go too slow and drag down the runner, but don’t burn yourself out and force a DNF that takes everyone with you.
That awareness of carrying others in your mind: it cannot be taught from the front of a classroom. It requires a real situation with real consequences before it can take root.
And there is something in the atmosphere of race day that no team-building exercise can replicate. When people who share a goal are placed together, a mutual energy emerges on its own. In the transition zone, the moment your teammate comes sprinting toward you and hands off the relay band, you understand: he has given you everything he had. Now it’s your turn.
In that instant, you don’t want to let him down. Not because anyone is watching. Not because of a prize. Simply because he left nothing in reserve, and you have no right to do less.
That is group education. Not the textbook definition. The lived version.
The Lone Wolf Era Is Over
I’ve encountered too many lone wolves in professional life.
They tend to share certain features: strong academic credentials, impressive individual capability, undeniable technical expertise. Put them in a team, though, and the trouble starts. They resist adjusting to another person’s rhythm. They see meetings as a waste of time. They can’t accept a teammate modifying their plan. They believe they’re better than everyone around them, so why listen?
I’ll be honest: I had traces of that mindset when I was younger. As a graduate of one of Taiwan’s top universities, I once believed a good degree was proof of competence, and that the most credentialed person should naturally be the one making decisions.
Starting a company cured me of that quickly.
The first lesson entrepreneurship taught me had nothing to do with building products or raising capital. It was this: you cannot accomplish anything alone. You need someone who understands technology, someone who understands the market, someone who understands finance, someone who understands law. These people are not your subordinates; they are your partners. You cannot lead them by asserting superiority. You have to draw them together around a shared goal: let’s build this thing.
The era when a credential alone made you formidable is genuinely over. I wrote about this in “The Arrogance of Elites, the Way Forward for Youth”: meritocracy teaches winners to attribute everything to themselves, but in the real world, no one accomplishes anything meaningful in isolation.
The Underrated Case for Physical Education
If group education matters this much, why does Taiwan’s system almost never address it?
Because sports, the best available vehicle for group education, are badly undervalued in Taiwan’s educational structure.
What role does physical education typically play in most schools? “Let the kids run around and sweat a bit.” “Mental refreshment.” “We can use the gym period for exam review.” P.E. is treated as a supporting act for academic subjects, sometimes even an obstacle: too many gym classes eat into study time.
But look at what sports actually contain.
Team sports require you to match your rhythm to others: you can’t only play your own game; you have to read where your teammates are. A relay demands trust: you cannot control how fast your teammate runs, but you must believe he will give everything. Losing is part of it, and learning to lose (and then face it together with your teammates afterward) is a capability of real consequence.
When I’ve led teams, I’ve noticed consistently that people with competitive sports backgrounds tend to collaborate better. It’s not that athletics made them smarter. It’s that they have already been through countless repetitions of “I have to work with other people” on the field or in the pool. That experience is written into the body. It activates without conscious thought.
The Training That Actually Matters
In an era where people increasingly have to create their own work, the value of credentials is eroding fast. What replaces them?
The ability to identify problems and figure out how to solve them. The ability to draw on resources and work alongside people with different expertise. The ability to articulate ideas clearly. And something harder to name but indispensable in practice: reading interpersonal dynamics accurately (knowing when to press and when to step back).
These abilities share one thing in common: they all require repeated practice in environments where other people are present.
You cannot develop collaborative ability in isolation. Just as you cannot learn to swim by watching instructional videos. You have to get in the water, get water up your nose, and learn to make peace with your own fear while submerged.
I wrote in “Emotions Happen in Relationship” that the relational dimension of emotional intelligence can only be developed through interaction with others. Collaborative ability works the same way. Understanding the concept is not the point. The point is repeated practice in real situations.
The triathlon relay is exactly that kind of situation.
Notes from the Finish Line
A few hard-won observations for anyone considering a triathlon.
Don’t let adrenaline run the race for you. Everyone is hyped at the start, and the temptation to surge is real. But a triathlon is an endurance event, not a sprint. Finishing at your own pace is vastly more important than looking heroic at the gun and collapsing an hour later.
Hydration always matters more than you think. Bring enough water; don’t count on aid stations.
After swimming and then cycling, your legs will hate you by the time you’re running. Muscle-relief spray is not optional.
One last thing: when you spot the race photographer in the distance, compose yourself. You’ll be grateful later for a photo where you look like a human being rather than someone actively dying.
The educational weight of shared physical effort reaches well beyond improved metabolism. Sports are the most authentic arena for group education. And group education is the scarcest, most undervalued thing we could be teaching right now.
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