Copyright 2002 by Scott Hays
Magazine: Men’s Health Magazine
Topic: Busy Executives
Byline: Scott Hays

You’d like to exercise, you say, would love to keep in shape, but you’re just too damned busy, and can’t possibly find the time.

Balls.

Think there’s more on your plate than an ESPN sports anchor? Figure a billionaire microelectronics CEO gets to take it easy? How about the governor of New Mexico—has he got less on his hands and mind than a busy guy like you?

Not likely. These men, who you’ll meet in the following pages, have every excuse in the world to stay out of the gym and glued to the chair, sprawling fat and flabby. Attending to the people’s business. Growing the company. Providing fans with stats and scores. Fine reasons to let weeks slip by without any exercise. Yet these men persist in directing the same will that has brought them worldly success to the development and maintenance of strong, healthy, physical frames.

These days, long hours with high stress and zero downtime come with the six-figure salary. The typical executive tends to manage his health with less efficiency and devotion than he brings to his business, which puts him at high risk for serious health problems. A study last year found that only 27 percent of executives get enough exercise to qualify as “healthy.” The rest remain a flaccid lot. These guys figure they can’t afford to spend 45 minutes every other day to trim down, tone up, and stave off the affects of aging, when most spend more time than that answering personal email.

The executives considered here are the exception. Not only do they broker killer deals, or lead very public lives, but they are extraordinary physical specimens who exercise and practice good nutrition even amid frenzied work schedules. These are not typical men, but then neither are you. Otherwise you’d have long ago thrown this rag aside, reaching instead for TV Guide.

How busy are these guys? So busy you can’t even get them on the phone during regular business hours, or reach them via cell during the remainder of their waking hours. So busy the only time they can squeeze in a workout is before dawn, during lunch, or long after the sun goes down. Some pursue triathlons. Others bike or play basketball. Many engage in cross-training. Not one would settle for a candy-ass workout every other day in the company gym, or even for a moment consider adding dead weight to their butts by slurping down fast-food grease for lunch.

What motivates these obsessed executives to get off their duffs and expend the same hustle and intensity they bring to their work in achieving cardiovascular fitness, good muscle tone, and flexibility?

They’re competitive creatures, and they want to be the best—at work, and at play.

Scot McLernon, 43
Executive Vice President of Sales/Marketing
CBS MarketWatch.com
As the sun dies into the waters of the Pacific, Scot McLernon pounds through the chaparral of Mount Tamalpais, just north of San Francisco, his face muscles slackening as his body strains to negotiate each footstep along the five-mile dirt trail. His day not yet done, McLernon marks the mid-point of his run at a steep ridge overlooking a small pocket of darkening beach.

Be it a punishing evening run, or a weekend bike trek, McLernon has learned to rely on exercise to purge from his system the multiple stresses of managing the sales and marketing departments of CBS Marketwatch.com, an online financial news and information service company.

McLernon has successfully negotiated a rocky series of financial quarters, as electronic revenues continue their precipitous decline. The pressure to produce roughly 50 percent of his company’s revenues is a crushing burden for any high-level corporate executive, but particularly so, these days, for a man in the dot-com realm. “You’ve got to have a pressure valve in this industry,” McLernon says; exercise is his.

McLernon is a captive of a jammed and unpredictable schedule, of 12-hour workdays and long weeks spent out on the road. It’s the 21st-century entrepreneurial lifestyle of cell phones and laptops, lengthy airline flights and late-night client dinners; a lifestyle that finds so many “high-powered” executives suddenly packed away in pine, their plugs prematurely pulled by heart disease or diabetes.

To avoid such a fate, McLernon runs, bikes, and swims. On average, he manages to run four to five miles twice a week, and pedals his mountain bike some 50 miles on weekends. When traveling, he works the hotel pool. And instead of planning exercise around his workday, McLernon plans his workday around his fitness routine. “You have to make exercise the priority,” he stresses.

And that means no excuses.

“I’ve come up with every possible rationale not to exercise—it’s too cold, too dark, too whatever,” he says. “But the rewards far outweigh the sacrifices.” So, even when he’s on the road, with only 20 minutes before his first appointment, McLernon will take the time “do a little something” in his hotel room.

“It may not make a difference in terms of my body fat or cardiovascular condition,” he says, “but it definitely makes a difference in terms of my mental state. I couldn’t run at this pace for long without exercise. If I couldn’t schedule sixty minutes every other day to maintain my sanity, there definitely would be something wrong.”

Gary Johnson, 48
Governor of New Mexico
New Mexico Governor Gary Johnson may be the nation’s most physically fit public servant. Since ascending to his state’s highest office in 1995, Johnson has only enhanced his reputation as an outdoorsman and athletic adventurer. While governor, Johnson has not only fenced with the press, wrestled obdurate legislators, and boxed with special-interest titans, but competed in ultra-endurance races and a 500-mile, cross-state bike endurathon, meanwhile manfully overcoming sprained ligaments, a bruised hip, and even a broken back.

“A long time ago, I came to the realization that when I’m in good physical condition, everything else in life works,” Johnson explains. “From a confidence standpoint, I’m an obnoxious individual. But there’s no question I’ve got an edge when it comes to the real world.”

The world according to Johnson typically begins at 4:45 a.m., with, depending on the weather, a 12-mile run, or a 30-mile bike ride and a one-mile swim. Johnson used to lift weights in the morning, but earlier this year slipped on some treacherous ice during a run, and fractured two vertebrate. “Weight lifting is the only activity I still can’t do since the accident,” he says. “The doctor says it’s going to take at least another year before the residual effect goes away.”

Johnson says his fitness level has “skyrocketed” since the accident; he swears he’s “fitter than ever.”

He knows this to be true because he measures in “points” his various athletic activities: one point for running one mile, biking three miles, or swimming a quarter of a mile; four points for forty minutes of weights; and so on. Every activity receives a point—hiking, kayaking, cross-country skiing. Twelve points a day is equivalent to running 12 miles a day. Johnson’s goal is a minimum of 80 points each week.

Exercise, to Johnson, is anything but a hassle. “Sure, I’m busy,” he admits, “but there’s a Zen-like quality to what I do. You’re constantly in the moment. I analyzed my life a long time ago and concluded exercise was the one component that made everything else work.”

What’s next? Johnson plans to climb Mount Everest in 2003, shortly after leaving office.

Karl Ravech, 36
Anchor
ESPN’s Baseball Tonight
For someone who had the world by the short hairs—college-sweetheart wife and two fine children, killer job as anchor of ESPN’s Baseball Tonight—Karl Ravech took a huge risk three years ago when he let himself balloon to 180 pounds.

“I would never have been accused of being fat, just terribly out of shape,” Ravech says. “But then I was never a serious workout guy. I was more the type who liked to play games on weekends.”

The games stopped when Ravech suffered a heart attack during a basketball workout with some buddies from ESPN. “I had eaten a tuna-fish sandwich about an hour before; I thought it was just heartburn,” he recalls. Doctors at John Dempsey Hospital in Farmington, Connecticut, quickly diagnosed his condition and performed an angioplasty, clearing the blockage and restoring the blood flow to his heart.

The experience convinced Ravech to stop eating garbage and start working on restoring and preserving his health. Although he didn’t slack off from the same frenzied work schedule he’d maintained before the attack, Ravech did begin running during his free time, rather than sitting on his ass, munching chips.

As anchor of one of television’s more respected sports shows, Ravech spends a huge portion of his day at the office—researching, writing, watching and reporting baseball games—working well into the early morning hours. During the off-season, he anchors a show called College Hoops 2night. “It can be brutal,” he says of his schedule.

But not so brutal that he doesn’t—now—make time to exercise. Like many of his peers, Ravech believes exercise helps keep his body and mind in shape for the long hours those in the business are required to work. He runs between five and 12 miles almost every day, depending on weather and his mood. And he lifts weights “to keep my muscles strong,” during the winter months. “When you can’t workout,” he says, “it feels as though you’ve taken a huge step backwards.

“It’s the potential for another heart attack that drives me,” Ravech admits. “I’ve got a wife and two children, and a pretty good lifestyle. What worries me most are those demons that hide in your body that you can’t see.”

Ravech says his cardiologist has determined that he’s now as healthy as most professional athletes. “Once you’re in shape, my friend,” he advises, “it’s something you never want to lose.”

Henry Nicholas, 41
President and CEO
Broadcom
Henry Nicholas regards the battlefields of the corporate world as specific and personal. When he launched his microelectronics company, Broadcom, in 1991, with but a few thousand dollars, he was told he’d fail. Today he’s worth $4 billion. A notoriously cutthroat executive, Nicholas flogs himself through an endless succession of 20-hour days, jetting back and forth on short notice between Wall Street and Silicon Valley. On a madman’s schedule packed from front to end, Nicholas often goes days without sleep, and spends quality time with his three young children only on weekends.

Nicholas brings this same fervor to his workouts, scheduled between midnight and daybreak, located at either the Irvine, California, headquarters of his microchip company, or 30 miles away at his mansion home. He insists on squeezing in three weight workouts per week, as well as two cardio sessions—running, cycling, or rowing on a competition-caliber Concept II machine.

“I get my best ideas when I exercise,” Nicholas says, “when the blood is pumping in my head and the adrenaline is flowing. It keeps me focused on achievement, not indulgence.”

When he first became rich four years ago, Nicholas could easily, as had so many before him, have focused on indulgence. But the idea—and the image of an “indulged” body—frightened him. Instead, Nicholas pushed himself even harder, achieving cast-iron abs and a lean, knotted-muscle frame. He maintained his workout routine by applying creativity and money to the challenge, hiring a personal trainer, on call 24 hours a day, and deciding to live on power bars, mineral water, and but four hours of sleep.

What drives Nicholas, in both business and fitness, is the notion that he has still barely tapped his potential. He feels he started late, and is hungry to see how far he can go. Rather than set vague personal goals, the 6’7”, 172-pound president/CEO works determinedly for the day when he can gross $10 billion in revenue, run six miles in less than 36 minutes, and bench-press 350 pounds—all in the same year.

“There are times when every cell in my body tells me to stop exercising, and my mind fabricates every reason why I should knock off: I’ve got to be at work early. I need the sleep. I’ve done enough.” But then Nicholas remembers what it is he’s working for, and, in seconds, he’s back at the weights.