The most important lesson I’m learning in business (thanks, running)

I choked when I challenged my thirteen-year-old son Valentin to a one-mile run.

I’m not an athlete but have run consistently in the last fifteen years. I’m sure that at my age — forty years old — my running stats are in the top percentile for my age group.

My kids are competitive athletes. They play tennis and my oldest son Maxim (Max), a high-schooler, is a running fanatic. His routine consists of stretching, long runs, slow runs, tempo runs, interval training, and even strength training in the gym.

Early in the pandemic year, Max introduced me to interval training and around the start of the COVID lockdown, I started to ramp up my running, eventually breaking the six-minute/mile barrier.

I got all confident and cocky and challenged my younger son to a one-mile run. Unlike Max, Valentin doesn’t like running. It’s quite an effort to persuade Valentin to run but run he must, at least occasionally, because he’s a tennis player. “If I beat you, I don’t have to run or read for ten days”, Valentin announced. Reading is another activity that Val resists. I accepted the deal.

Before the race, Max and I strategized, kind of. Not that I needed coaching, but Max wanted me to win. Sibling rivalry, I guess. Max advised me against “pacing” Valentin. The strategy was to keep up, stay a little behind, and attempt to overtake towards the end of the race.