Marathons are named after a city in Greece where (as the story goes) a messenger ran from the Battle of Marathon to Athens to announce victory over the Persians. The distance is set at just over 26 miles and the current world record is about 2 hours. If you think about that time, it works out to less than 5 minutes a mile for the whole race. I can’t keep that pace even for just 1 mile.
If you’ve ever watched a marathon, you know that a group usually heads to the front and stays together for much of the race. But the saying goes that the race isn’t won on the flat areas – the race is won on the hills. It is during the hills, the most challenging portions of the race, that the leader tries to break away from the pack. This is because dealing with the hills is hard enough, and it takes extra reserves of energy to break away. If you can build a lead during the hills, then the leader can usually keep the lead on the flat areas for the rest of the race.
Using the marathon analogy, the current environment we are in is a large hill for every business. But the winners are the companies that will use this time to build an advantage over their competitors. So while we acknowledge that this hill is a tough climb, let’s do what we can to use this time to increase our lead over the competitors and come out stronger on the other side.