Racing to the Top? Try the Triathlon
It never hurts to be interested in whatever your boss is interested in. Up-and-comers have always worked on their golf game or trained for a 5K run, if that's what their chief executive did. But what if your CEO's idea of fun is swimming 2.4 miles, biking 112 miles, and then running a full marathon--the feats in an Ironman triathlon?
Start training.
It's possible that your CEO or some other high-level executive either runs triathlons or is about to discover them--and soon after, he'll want everyone at the company to discover them, too. As with so many other corporate behaviors, where the CEO goes, employees are finding it may pay off to follow.
Since the triathlon became an Olympic sport in 2000, it has seen explosive growth. USA Triathlon, the sport's governing body in this country, sanctioned 1,820 races last year, up from an estimated 400 in 1999, according to Tim Yount, vice president of marketing.
Type A corporate overachievers seem to have a particular affinity for the ordeal, which does come in shorter versions than the Ironman. Of the 1,744 people who participated in last year's Ironman World Championship race in Kona, Hawaii, there were 78 business owners (equal to the number of professional athletes), 49 executives, and 83 managers, among other professionals.
Ironman has added a CEO Challenge component to its race series; executives compete in designated events to qualify for 15 to 20 spots set aside for them at Kona. Last year 45 people vied for these CEO Challenges.
"All the qualities that go into a triathlon--preparing and competing, having discipline, and interest in mastering proper technique--all translate to business,"says Jamie Maguire, the CEO of Philadelphia Insurance Companies in Bala-Cynwyd, Pa.
Maguire, 45, finished an Ironman race in Florida last November in nine hours and 54 minutes, earning him a spot at Kona in 2006. He plans to do three Ironman races and four half-Ironmans this year. "We have 15 to 20 people who do triathlons; it's fun for the management team," says Maguire, whose idea of lunch is a workout with a handful of triathlete employees.
Head to head. Yount estimates that some 35 shorter-distance triathlons (say a half-mile swim, 18-mile bike, and 5-mile run) now have a "corporate challenge"component that pits companies against one another. One third of the 2,800 participants in the Nautica Malibu triathlon, in California, are on corporate teams.
Walt Disney, Nestle, Kaiser Permanente, Toyota, and DreamWorks all sent teams to the Malibu race last year. Nutrition supplement maker Herbalife has sent large triathlon teams to Malibu, London, Brazil, and Thailand. ESPN enters a team in the New York City Triathlon, while Philadelphia Insurance sends a large "team Philly" to its local sprint triathlons.
It should not come as much surprise that the men and women who manage to land a CEO or top executive post tend to be highly competitive, self-motivated, and goal oriented. The sport tends to sweep through companies where the CEO looks for such personality traits in his hires and where the company culture is aggressive and high energy. "The CEOs who do this are people who have never failed at anything," says Ted Kennedy, who founded and runs CEO Challenges, a Colorado company that runs the CEO Challenge part of the Ironman.
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