There are not many chances for NBC Sports Ventures VP/Sales STEVEN JUSTMAN to spin his wheels during the week, so he takes his weekend mornings at home in Armonk, N.Y., to cycle around Westchester County with some close friends. When he is not on the road pedaling, he can be found pedaling around to one of his daughters’ sporting events.
RUNNING WITH THE PACK: Typically, Friday nights I try to make a tradition of having dinner with the family. My wife and I try and take the girls out. Both of my girls are very active in playing sports. So typically, including Friday nights, I’m often at a game: whether it be basketball, soccer or lacrosse. Friday night there’s a basketball game. So I’m coming right off the train in my suit. In that case we’ll take the girls out for dinner after the game with their friends. What’s nice about my girls playing sports is that they’ll play with all their friends so that the families are kind of their own little fraternity. So we kind of travel in packs, which is nice because it becomes a very social setting as well. Though I think at times the parents are more interested in the outcome of the game than the kids are. I try to strike a healthy balance.
PEDAL TO THE METAL: On weekend mornings, as long as it’s over 30 degrees I’m going to be on my bike. I’m a big cyclist and have a great group of guys that I ride with. There’s about eight to 10 of us and we’re usually out on the road for several hours. Most of the group is either accomplished surgeons, there’s a few other doctors and a couple of investment bankers. What’s fun is we talk about all different things and none of them really understand what I do for a living. They find it interesting. It’s also a group that supports friendly competition. ... I’m not sure friendly comes before competition. We typically ride forty to sixty miles.
MILK DOES THE BODY GOOD: We have a home base, it’s a friend of mine. After the ride his wife is very, very generous and puts out a big spread for us every single time we go. First thing in my body is chocolate milk because I read somewhere that’s a good recovery drink. It’s the protein and the carbs, but any reason I can to drink chocolate milk I’m just going to take advantage of.
MISTER DO-IT-YOURSELF: I like just doing stuff around the house. I grew up in an apartment in Queens in Forrest Hills. So now that I’m a homeowner it’s like a big playroom for me. I like to work with my hands, so I’m always fixing things or doing projects around the house. I enjoy manual labor.
OFF THE BEATEN PATH: Saturday night is usually a date night. Usually it’s either going to a movie or going to dinner, either with ourselves or sometimes we go with friends in our town. We just like to go for a nice, mellow dinner. Enjoy the food, enjoy the company, enjoy the conversation. Because we live in northern Westchester, you can kind of go off the beaten path. There’s some really great places that have a warm country feel to them, where there’s a fire going and a lot of old-style charm to the restaurant and a history. Those are places I like a lot.
KEEPING IT OLD-SCHOOL: I’m not a huge TV watcher outside of sports. I live through technology but I purposely on Saturday and Sunday get the N.Y. Times. I enjoy just the discovery of reading articles that I may not discover going through the Times or the Wall Street Journal on my iPad. There’s something nostalgic about it, there’s something traditional about it that I’d like to hold on to. That’s the only magazine or publication I still receive in printed form.
NAME THAT TUNE: I’m familiar with so many songs that appear on kids television that I could pretty much name them. If there was a “Name That Tune” of kids' TV songs and theme songs, unfortunately I think I’d win. The girls will watch all these shows on Saturday and Sunday mornings. So I can now recite these songs to memory. I’m sitting there reading the paper and they’re watching their shows. So I’ve pretty much committed most of those songs to memory.
