A few years ago, I started long distance running mostly for cardio fitness, with a goal of doing a marathon. One thing I didn’t expect was the amount of free thinking time that came with it. Training for a marathon involves a lot of long distance runs to build stamina, runs that go 2-3 hours easily. Coming up with a plan for a race is just as important as the training itself. Knowing what your fitness level is, your energy level, hydration, etc. are variables under your control. Race conditions like weather, crowds and the course are factors you have to learn to manage. The trick is optimizing the variables on race day and putting it all together. Marathons can be tricky because it’s hard to stay focused for so long. With enough experience, training and conditions, you can put mind over matter and push yourself beyond what you thought you were capable of.

I recently started doing triathlons to vary my training and work on swimming and biking, sports I had little experience in. In fact, when I was younger, I completely feared swimming to the point where I could go years without swimming and not miss it at all. I knew I’d have to learn to at least get comfortable with it if I was ever going to complete a triathlon.

One way to kick-start your training plan is to sign up for a race which forces you to train and come up with a “work back” schedule for training. While my experience is brief, I’ve learned a lot and believe you can apply some lessons from training back to your work:

Quickly assess your capabilities: One thing I soon realized is that in a lot of ways, training for a multisport event is like running a business; you have strengths to capitalize on, weaknesses to work on and a competitive field all doing the same thing. To be able to compete in triathlons, relying on one discipline to carry you just doesn’t cut it. The same thing is true in business — you need to come up with a strong product or service offering, make it competitive against others, market it successfully and learn how to make it better. If you’re deficient, figure out how to get good at it. Fast.

Get a coach: Sometimes you can go it alone, but most athletes do best when they have a 3rd party to guide and help push people to their best. Consultants can be this advisor, but be sure to clearly articulate your goals and learn to be realistic. If you exceed them, great but more often than not, getting a quantum leap in results requires a major commitment to do so.

Plan for worst case scenarios: I recently did a race in dreadful conditions: choppy open water, dumping rain, hilly courses. It’s easy to prepare for each individually, but also figure out what would happen if there is a “perfect storm” of challenges that seem to be conspiring against you. Don’t stress it, just figure out a game plan ahead of time and then execute against the plan.

Monitor and make adjustments: You can prepare all you want but sometimes life throws a wrench in the best laid plans. In racing, maybe you cramp up or get injured. Depending on the severity, you may or may not be able to continue but if you do, make the required adjustments to get yourself in the best possible position you can. In business, this can mean changing the way you compete such as how you market your offering or adjust it according to customer feedback.

Focus on details but don’t forget to look up to see the prize: It’s easy to obsess over details of your training, nutrition or equipment and yes, all of it does matter. At the same time, don’t neglect the simple things like listening to your body. At work, this means considering how the details relate to one another, how they interact and how they impact the business goals. Sometimes it’s best to keep things as simple as possible and ignore everything that doesn’t help you reach the finish line faster or in better shape.

There are probably 101 more lessons I could write up and I’m by no means an expert. But drawing on other experiences can take your career to places you didn’t know you wanted to go.

Fast forward  a few years and nearly every week, I get a bunch of email inviting me to attend conferences, which range thematically from customer experience to emerging technology to marketing trends. Some of them are more button-down events where I get an opportunity to plug the work we do, while others are more broad-ranging and are about creativity and ideas. (Anyone know why these ones tend to be acronyms? TED, SXSW, PFSK, etc.)

Along with the conference invitations, I also get email about training around specific topics that are frequently becoming relevant to my day-to-day work. Some courses are extremely specific, such as negotiation workshops, convincing clients of the value of X, Y, or Z or ones that are more technical in nature. At some point, I am sure to need each and every one of these so it’s hard to pass them up. But will I need them more than this specific project I’m working on?

Given that every company has limited resources and time, how to pick “extra-workicular” activities that interest employees and employers alike? (This of course, assumes that the employees in question are competent at their current roles.)

My preference would be on the helping people become broader, more lateral thinkers. Here’s why:

• The way businesses engage with customers nowadays changes so quickly, it takes new ways to do so effectively. This requires thinking that isn’t encumbered with one-track processes that can’t make course-corrections when required. Look at Dell’s Idea Storm or Starbucks’ My Idea.
• Sometimes the elegant solution is one outside your immediate field. What does a hospital emergency room staff have to do with Ferrari’s Formula One pit crew? They learned how to optimize their movements by studying the Ferrari One pit crew teams in action.
• It develops a workforce that can successfully transition to other parts of your business which evens out resourcing a lot. This is particularly true in service-based businesses where demand can spike and you suddenly have to hire instead of re-allocating people to other tasks. I like working in teams that are cross-trained and can cover for each other in a pinch without any hiccups.
• For the employee, it helps prevent boredom and becoming obsolete. One of the most popular programs coming out of b-school were 2-year rotational programs which cycled people through four 6-month gigs that gave you exposure into the business and flexibility to try new things without being over-committed.

Letting employees branch out and pursue broader interests will help you retain your staff, regardless of how big a company you are. If you’re in a startup, it’s essential to have well-rounded jack-of-all-trades people. If you’re a 100,000 person multi-national, it’s important to keep people interested and equip them to fill needs wherever they may be. And for all companies, it enables lateral thinking to adapt your business to ever changing customer needs.