I got dominated by a 65 year old bloke this weekend. Whilst I've got youth on my
By George Barnett Reid 👀 · September 24, 2025 · Curated by George's Blog
I got dominated by a 65 year old bloke this weekend. Whilst I've got youth on my side, and grit, and legs, what I didn't have...was experience.
Sure, I've cycled a lot over the years. But despite all my road cycling experience, I am somewhat of a v-Mary when it comes to gravel riding.
As such, I completely fluffed it. Pints the night before. Not enough nutrition or water in the morning of. Forgot my water bottle and clip in shoes (15-20% power lost in the latter). And didn't test my new gels before ploughing 8 of them into my pocket.
This resulted in me blowing up. The terrain was foreign and my prep was poor, so I cramped and bonked heavily.
At the end we caught sight of someone up ahead. And for 8km roped them in. Battling hard to the final few hundred metres. Where we discovered it was the old boy we'd crossed paths with a few times throughout the day.
After I just managed to hold onto beating him, literally 20 metres, he declared "not bad for 65 year old".
A fine lesson.
Everything in my mind said I was suitably equipped to perform better than this person.
But what I didn't have, was experience.
Specific experience for the task at hand - day long gravel riding.
He had that.
As such, he massively outperformed me for his age. and kinda excluding his age.
I've ran an Amazon agency for 8+ years, and worked at Amazon for 2 before that, but despite all of this I'm still not the best person to decide if someone is suitable for a "Senior Amazon PPC Manager" position. Even though I've hired and interviewed many.
My partner in crime is. He's managed Amazon ads every day for the last 10 years. In small accounts doing a few hundred grand, up to $200m/year accounts.
He is far superior than I at vetting candidates.
At Paring the thousands of people we get applying, down to 3 or 4.
Because he has literally the exact experience he's hiring for. He can sniff out what I cannot.
And you can tap into that experience of his too.
➡️ Pare .so (Talent Hub)