Running a family, a company and a marathon are all tough work.
Here’s how one dad –
Stefano Passarello
– juggles his parenting
duties, a demanding job and training for a recent marathon win.
E
njoy a wide variety of healthy
food
. Eating well is crucial for
every healthy body and mind.
In our multicultural family, we
combine both Asian and Western
flavours to create exciting dishes, full
of greens, to keep us fuelled, but also
satisfied.
Be physical, and enjoy it
. By being
fit and enjoying exercise myself, my love
for sports rubs off on people around me
– it’s just the kind of role model I want
to be to my son. We often kick the ball
around, and while it’s not really sport
yet, since he’s still little, it is physical and
we both enjoy it. Combining exercise
with a father-son routine provides the
best excuse to ditch the BlackBerry and
focus on our time together.
Be disciplined and consistent
.
There are only 24 hours in a day, so I
think of every minute as gold. Discipline
here is key. I never skip a morning
run, even when I am on a business
trip. When I’m home, I always try to
include my family in everything I do.
In the morning, when I do my laps at
the beach, I’m quite lucky to have
my family hang out there and cheer
for me. The sweet, cheerful voice of
my son saying, “Go, Daddy!” echoes
in my head all day long. It’s the most
wonderful way to start a work day!
Follow the rules
. As a father and
as an athlete, rules are important to
me. If there are no rules, there are
no competitions. In every race, there
are winners and losers. Competitive
runners don’t always strive to win or get
a better ranking; our real goal is often
to achieve better results in every race,
and that only works when the race is
fair. A Chinese proverb says
There is a
sky outside of the sky
– there are always
faster runners out there, especially at
international races, but as long as I try
my best, then there is nothing to regret.
Teaching my son about fairness in sport
will not only shape him into a better
sportsman, but also into a respectable
citizen.
Stick with the problem
. Marathon
runners sometimes “hit the wall” – a
sudden physical and mental block at
Racing ahead
some point into a race. It’s a moment
of struggle and the time when many
people give up. At this year’s Standard
Chartered Hong Kong Marathon, I hit
the wall at the entrance of the Western
Tunnel – the 37-kilometre mark – and
I stopped. But, with a bit of help from
the volunteers who encouraged me
to walk a little, combined with my own
desire to complete the race, I was
able pick up again and cross the finish
line as the first Hong Kong runner. In
life, we need to solve big and small
problems; but, as I like to say, pain is just
temporary, but pride is forever!
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