“Hi 😊 My name is Ben. I am a CEO and a running addict”.
If there was a Runners Anonymous self-help group, a lot of the addicts would be CEOs. These days, running (or maybe endorphins) seems to be the drug of choice for CEOs. Why is that? And why am I following that stereotype? I hate to follow the crowd. Any crowd. I see myself as an unconventional thinker, a trail blazer. Yet here I am fitting right into a stereotype and perfectly happy doing so.
Last Sunday morning I ran 13.1 miles — effectively a half marathon, except this was on my own — around the coast of Manhattan and Brooklyn, in 1 hour 35 minutes. Just for the fun of it! (Though I was also keen to try out my new Lululemon running gear.). This was a new personal best and follows a pattern of me beating my personal best a half-dozen times per year for the past four years. At the age of 46, surely I should have peaked long ago, and now be gliding gently towards my rocking chair ….
Always on the Run
A little background: I have always been a runner of sorts. I started my career as a British Army officer, which involved running 2–3 times per week, along with all sorts of other exercise. I was fit. When I left the army in 1999 to enter the world of business (initially as a strategy consultant at McKinsey), I dropped that frequency to one run of six to eight miles every weekend. This was at an unmeasured pace — probably around nine minutes per mile — with my dogs tagging along. So I have never been unfit. However, through the next 13 years travelling the globe working in executive jobs at McKinsey, Coca-Cola and Google around the world, I flatlined at that level. My assumption was, that over time, I would let my fitness slip gently.
So what happened to make me a running obsessive, and fitter now than I was when in the army? I think the most likely explanation is becoming a CEO in 2012. CEOs make conference speeches and TV appearances more than others, and I am no exception. This leads to seeing your own picture a lot more often, and noticing yourself looking a bit chubby is a great motivator to get fitter. You also hear a lot about the link between fitness and being able to cope with stress. Getting some alone time is attractive too, given that your days are packed with back-to-back meetings. Therefore, since 2012, I have one-by-one initiated a number of actions that have each nudged me towards ever-increasing fitness:
- Running midweek: In 2012 I toured the U.S. with a colleague and he suggested running together for fun. So I took my running kit and loved it. What better way to see the cities I visit for work than running around them at sunrise, when everyone else is asleep, the streets are empty and the sun is just peeking over the horizon? I now run twice per week midweek, in addition to my weekend run.
- My own gym: I bought my own indoor gym equipment for the spare bedroom. I had often joined commercial gyms in the past and not gone to them. The time required to get there, work out, get home, get changed etc. just seemed too much. However, with a home gym you dramatically reduce the ‘unproductive’ admin time associated with working out, so you have no excuses. I now workout 3 times per week.
- Half-marathons: Four years ago, I signed up to my first half marathon in years and loved it. I wasn’t particularly happy with my time though, so I signed up to run around six half-marathons per year, in order to always have a ‘test’ ahead of me, to prevent slacking off.
- Company health: When the insurance broker came to me a few years ago, and said that our healthcare premiums would rise by $1,000 per person per year, even if we maintained the same level of claims as before — just due to industry cost inflation — I decided to try to fight it. I gave the HR department $300 per employee, to get the organization fit and reduce the number of claims. They then set about giving out subsidized Fitbits, organizing fun health-related activities and incentivizing health improvements that were based on twice yearly medical checks. Clearly, I needed to lead by example. We did avoid those health cost increases, and also had a lot of fun in the process.
- Fitbit: Clearly, this has been a major driver of fitness for many people. Since getting my first Fitbit, I have tracked my pace on every run and always strived to keep improving. Benchmarking my weekly steps vs my friends and colleagues is also highly motivating. Like other CEOs, I like to win, and certainly hate to be out of the top three in my friends’ league table (of about 80 people) so can’t have a single ‘slack day’. I now average around 120,000 steps per week — between running, walking and working out.
- Running tourism: Given my new habit of running midweek at sunrise, I started to try to find the perfect morning running route. I now scour Google Maps for every city that I travel to, looking for the best runs — based on views, architecture, history, serenity and other factors. My current favorite is in San Francisco — taking an Uber to Sausalito just before sunrise, then running back over Golden Gate Bridge and along the Embarcadero. Awesome!
- Setting minimum standards: I have set myself several ‘bars’ for acceptable running standards. These include:
- Never running less than six miles per run.
- Never running slower than a seven-and-a-half minute pace per mile.
- Always overtaking at least 10 times more people than the number that overtakes me (to keep me in the top ten percent of runners).
- Calendar blocking: To ensure that I manage to fit exercise into my overloaded calendar, I pre-block my calendar with recurring entries — three runs and three workouts per week, at sunrise. That keeps the time free. If I need to schedule an early morning call, I move the calendar block to a different time in that day, to ensure I get my exercise.
- HelloFresh: Diet clearly plays a part too. I used to eat too many carb-heavy, rich meals. Then in 2015 I subscribed to HelloFresh, which now delivers three boxes of ingredients to my house every week, for me to cook awesome meals (clear instructions are provided). The service provides very healthy ingredients and sensible portions, and this has definitely led to a bit of weight loss, enabling even faster running times ….
- Tough Mudder: What a great invention! Running 12 miles with a bunch of friends — braving mud baths, monkey bars, razor wire and electrocution — strikes me as a fine way to spend a Saturday morning. I have completed two this year and am planning many more …. 😊
All those Miles Pay Off at Work
Now that I am much fitter, there are all sorts of benefits for my effectiveness at work:
- Higher Energy: I have always been a high energy person, but I have seen zero drop off in that energy level with age or workload.
- Clear head: Some people like yoga or meditation to relax and clear their heads. Morning running is my zen time — a fantastic way to prepare mentally for the day.
- No jet lag: My run sets my body clock for the day, so by running/ exercising at dawn in new time zones, it resets my body clock to that time zone, virtually eliminating jet lag.
- Low stress: Several studies have shown a link between fitness and being able to cope with stress. I certainly would be a good example.
- Company health: The company is healthier, happier and more productive, and our health insurance premiums have been growing below the rate of inflation for years.
Physical Fitness, Business Performance
So is my experience unique, or is it actually good for company boards to hire fit CEOs?
According to Connect Sports, the average runner of a Rock ’n’ Roll Marathon in 2013 was $116,771. Overall, the National Runner Survey reports that 76 percent of marathon runners have a college degree and 73 percent have an annual household income of at least $75,000. There is certainly a correlation between business success and extreme running.
More interestingly, Becker Healthcare found that after identifying CEOs of S&P 1500 companies who had completed a marathon in each year between 2001 and 2011, researchers found the firms with top executives who had completed a marathon to be valued 5 percent higher on average than those that had executives who had not. As a fun aside, it seems that running also beats golfing. Biggerstaff, Cicero, and Puckett (2014) find that among the group of golf-playing CEOs, those in the top quartile of golf rounds per year are associated with relatively poor firm performance.”
It is hard to say whether it was becoming a CEO that led to my running obsession. However, now that I am doing it, I believe it does make me a much better CEO and also makes my life much more rewarding.
So I will keep running.
Have any thoughts? Leave me a comment below — or better yet, let’s chat during a run!
Brooklyn Bridge, August 2016
Brooklyn Rock ’n’ Roll Half Marathon, October 2016
New Delhi, India, November 2015
Tough Mudder, somewhere in the desert east of Los Angeles, April 2016