In 1976 Finland’s Lasse Viren immortalized himself in Olympic history by becoming the first male to win both the 5,000-meter and the 10,000-meter races in successive Olympiads. After his stunning achievement, his coach decided to take on Emil Zatopek’s record. Zatopek had won the three longest distance races—the 5,000, the 10,000, and the marathon—at the Helsinki games earlier in the century.

There was just one problem. Viren had never run a marathon before, and the Olympics aren’t exactly a warm-up event. Further adding to the difficulty was Viren’s understandable weariness. The guy had just won two distance races against the fastest men on earth, and now he was going to enter a marathon?

Even so, on the last day of the Montreal Olympics, there was Viren, lining up for the marathon directly behind American Frank Shorter, who had won the gold medal four years earlier in Munich.

Once the marathon got started, the waiflike Shorter found he had a shadow. Viren’s coach, knowing that his country’s pride had never run a marathon, much less won one, had come up with a brilliant strategy.

"Stay on Shorter’s shoulder," he told his charge. "When he surges, you surge. If he holds back, you hold back."

Viren wasn’t able to stay with Shorter the entire way, but the strategy proved amazingly successful. Viren placed fifth in his first marathon.

In parenting, we are Frank Shorters to our children. We’ve been there. We’ve done life before. We know what to expect. Our kids are Lasse Virens—full of talent and promise, but untried at that long a distance. The only way they know to run this race is to run it directly behind our shoulders.