Mogal men are on the move

Press, 29 May 1981, Page 13

Mogal men are on the move

The popular conception of a company executive as an overweight person of advancing years who never walks anywhere if there is the slightest chance. of a ride should be thoroughly shattered by the deeds of five executives from the Mogal Corporation in the Nike marathon on Sunday. ■

The five executives are all regular marathon runners and all have completed the "distance in recent; times in less.than three hours. One of thecorporation’s’" sales liaison officer in Auckland, should’ be among the top contenders ..for over-all victory. He’has a personal best time of 2hr 19min. and will be out to better this on Sunday. The other four who will be wearing the Mogal colours are Trevor Bodger and Russell Bodger, from Auckland, and two Christchurch company officials, Jeremy Haselden and Chris Cox. A sixth executive from the corporation who runs marathons regularly is the managing director, Ron White. Now aged 38, he has run 16 marathons in the last four years for a best time of 3hr 2min.

He is a firm believer that running, helps increase his own work capacity, an opinion firmly shared by his other running executives.

Scott, who is 26, single and lists his possessions as “one dog,” began running when he was still at school in 1969 because he was “fed up with team sports.” He has been running about 220 km a week in preparation for the Nike event and if conditions are good might even go close to a world class 2hr 15min. This impressive background mileage has not dulled his sense of . humour. His reaction to one question in a corporation memorandum on marathon running was certainly less than serious. “Do you feel that you now handle high pressure situations in a better and more balanced mapner due to your over-all fitness?” he was asked. Back came the reply, scribbled on the memorandum: “Due to being continuously tired I work more evenly during the day.” However, in a more serious vein, Thomson freely admitted that running had increased . his work capacity. During training, he found himself thinking about work problems and solving them, planning future workloads, and planning further company direction,' Haselden, approaching his fourth marathon on Sunday has a best time of 2hr 50min and if he improves on this he

will be “very pleased.” Responsible for Christchurch area sales, he is 32 and began running two years and a half ago for weight control. He reached a peak of 130 km a week in training for Sun- . day’s big event, | He, too, is convinced that i running had increased his | capacity for work and his & ability to think clearly, ft “Sales is a performance job.

r There is no second place. 5 You either win, or you don’t ’> succeed at all. It is easy to get very up tight, and become very aggressive. I am much better able to cope with this sort of situation since I have been running.” Cox is also aiming to better 2hr 50min on Sunday. The Christchurch branch manager of Mogal, he quite definitely believes that his fitness enables him to handle high pressure situations much better than he other- ; wise would. Unlike some of his colleagues, Cox only thinks about hs work occasionally when he is training. “I tend to switch off everything. The major benefit is that this gives you a mental rest.” Trevor Bodger, the accountant, has a similar approach to his training. Occa-sionally,-if the work problem is of major consideration, he will wrestle with it in his mind while training. But nor-

mally he uses the running to relieve the tensions of work. "Generally, I don’t think abut work problems while running.”

His ’f brother. Russell Bodger, the national sales manager, is quite the opposite? “Many decisions and ideas are made during runs,” he said. Some of his training sessions he regards as “business solution runs.”

Russell Bodger ran his first. marathon in 1979 and has since run eight more. He has reduced his weight from lS'/zst to a healthy 12%st and finds that the amount of energy he has available for work has increased. Aged 36, Russell averages about 60km a week in training.