Keeping Pace. Best foot forward

Nikhil Arora didn’t plan to become a recreational endurance athlete when he was running around the Queens borough in New York in the early ’90s, delivering The New York Times at four every morning. “I needed that job to pay my college fees. That’s how I started running longer distances for the first time in my life,” says Arora, the managing director of Internet domain registrar and web hosting company GoDaddy India.

While starting his day early became a habit pretty quickly, his love for running had to wait to be rediscovered till he moved to India a few years ago. A combination of weight gain and a deep-ear infection led to tinnitus, and the suffering pushed him to take up running very seriously.

“With tinnitus, one has a permanent ringing sound in the affected ear. The challenge was a mental one, where I needed to learn to ignore that sound and focus on my day and work. Running was a great tool in helping me zone out the ringing and train myself to focus on what I was doing. Slowly, I was able to bring that training to bear even when I wasn’t running,” adds Arora, who starts his day at 4.45 am with an hour of cardio and follows it up with an hour of strength training in the evening.

Two passions, one goal

The Delhi-based Arora counts work as his first passion and running and fitness as his other abiding passion. For him both passions are intertwined as one helps the other. “During a run, all of your body’s energies are focused on enduring the run and making it to the target, effectively zoning out everything that’s not important. Over time, this state of being becomes second nature, which is great for work as well,” he explains.

He finds professional excellence and running are not very unlike each other. Both are solo journeys. “When you work towards your running targets, you learn to surpass your own record every single time. This is exactly what you need in business too: Focus on your achievements and exceed them with a better performance the next time. Eventually, this incremental improvement is bound to result in business excellence.”

Running has also changed the way Arora works and networks. He finds that running is a great conversation starter at work. Another big change he has made to his professional life is the way he travels. Before heading out on a work trip, Arora, who is on the road 15 days a month, connects with local running groups at his next destination and heads out for a run to beat jet lag. Also, the TRX band (an equipment for suspension training) and running gear are among the first things he packs.

Big-risk appetite

Arora is not averse to taking big risks as long as they are well thought-out and calculated. This trait is evident both in his career and endurance sports exploits. His decision last year to participate in two half-Ironman races (the Ironman is a 226.31-km race that requires participants to swim, cycle and run a full marathon back to back) within a space of three weeks, knowing full well that he might not recover from the first race in time, isn’t unlike the time he gave up a successful job at a media marketing firm in New York for work in post-Soviet Kazakhstan.

Or when he decided to start GoDaddy’s 50-member con-calls spanning four geographies and involving three functions shortly after he joined the company in 2017. That con-calls involving five or more members are usually futile is an unspoken corporate fact. “I had to work closely with the teams for a big project... and that required a lot of planning and coordination,” recalls Arora. He could have used email. But that wasn’t fast enough. He took a big risk, again, and started a Monday morning con-call with all 50 people at one go. “One of my jobs as a leader is to bring everybody on board. I went about engaging the team and set milestones and discussed the roadmap to achieve them. Then we started the GoDaddy Voice forum, where all 50 shared their progress every Monday morning. The shared consciousness helped us achieve our goal,” says Arora. Another factor that contributed to this success was that they celebrated both successes and failures so long as the effort had been put in, not unlike the seasoned runners who finish their race and then cheer on those still on course to reach the finish line.

Improving teamwork

Arora, who has run 25 half- and full-marathons, takes it upon himself to make his colleagues aware of the benefits of a fit body and mind. “Everything you do towards developing fitness helps in developing agility and focus. I believe these traits can cut across personal lifestyles and working habits.”

The 48-year-old also believes that participating in any kind of fitness activity with your team helps build great camaraderie. Last October many of his colleagues from GoDaddy ran the Airtel Delhi Half Marathon, where he was an official pacer (a runner appointed by race organisers to help other runners finish within a certain time). “This galvanised a lot of enthusiasm from everyone, as it felt like a team event that we were all participating in together. I think these runs strengthen our bond and create camaraderie, because while running — just as you would do at work — you encourage them and help them push themselves to achieve goals,” he signs off.

( Keeping Pace is a series on business heads in India and their passion for running)

Shrenik Avlani

Shrenik Avlani is a freelance journalist and author based in Kolkata