Islandman
In June 2021, pretty much on a dare, I committed to running my first sprint triathlon. Specifically, The Islandman in Avalon NJ. I would race with my 2 sons Connor and Keith, and in a great event which would support the Travis Manion Foundation. At age 53, this is what I signed up for:
- a 1/3 mile ocean swim
- followed by 12 miles of biking
- and finally a 3.1 mile run
In June of 2021, I was definitely nowhere close to being triathlon-ready. Decades of bad habits had caught up to me, and I couldn’t even complete a simple 3.1 mile run….forget about the swim and bike.
Motivated by fear, I started working out a lot. Having a wealth of experience in this race, my son Connor told me the ocean swim was the hardest leg, mainly because the ocean would be cold, deep, and unforgiving. I am comfortable in the ocean, and spend a lot of time in it every year (especially surfing). But with no surfboard to rest on, there were potentially serious consequences for not being prepared. So in addition to running and cycling, I made sure to swim to exhaustion at least 3 times a week.
Fast forward to race day 2022. I had come a long way. Still far from being an actual triathlete, I felt ready to meet my goal of simply finishing the race. With the early morning sun shining brightly and seagulls arcing overhead, I found myself standing at the water’s edge. About 60 other male racers in their 50s clustered around me as the starting horn for our group was about to sound. Anxiously staring at larger-than-usual surf conditions, and coming to grips with the amount of energy it was going to take to just fight through the breakers, I said to myself “Uh oh……those race buoys stretch really far out”. I quickly realized this was going be a lot tougher than my training swims in the placid and much-too-perfect Doylestown YMCA pool. It’s really easy to establish a breathing rhythm in an indoor Olympic pool. Not so much in what resembled a giant angry washing machine of cold saltwater.
Next to me was a guy who looked like a grizzled triathlon veteran, and I nervously blurted out “this is my first race….ever”. His first reaction was to chuckle a bit uncomfortably, which made me think “Oh no...what have I done?” Then in the short few seconds before we started sprinting into the ocean, he told me “Listen. There is probably going to be a point during the swim when you are overwhelmingly exhausted, and tired of swallowing gulps of saltwater, and you might think about waving to the guards for help. But it’s probably just in your head. It’s irrational fear. And your body can probably push through it. If you can mentally get past that scary moment, you’ll be fine”.
And that’s exactly what happened. I hit the halfway-point red buoy, gasping for air with my muscles burning and feeling like jelly, and found myself furiously glancing around for the lifeguard boats. My brain was screaming “so what if you don’t finish?!?…This is insane! Just bail out now and worry about that later”. But thanks to the kind wisdom of a stranger, I was able to avoid taking the easy path of failure. Once I beat back my fear, I was able to leverage just enough physical strength to keep moving forward. Stroke by stroke, my muscles wrestled control from my panic. Eventually, getting a little help from an incoming wave, I felt my feet barely brush the sand (the sand never felt so good on my toes). After that, the bike and run felt comparatively easier. Even though I placed dead last in my age group (which just enflames my competitive nature), I did finish the race.
What does any of this have to do with financial planning or investing? You probably already figured it out. The less experience we each have with markets and investing, the more likely we are to give in to our own irrational fears when things get tough. Rough down cycles are normal in the markets, they are an event we all signed up for when we became investors. They are going to happen. What matters is how each of us decide to act in that crucial moment. Grizzled veteran investors still get uncomfortable. But they also know their fear is irrational, and their past struggles enable them to push through. For the rookies………those without decades of hard-fought investing maturity, it can be a lot more challenging to avoid calling the lifeguards and bailing out. That is one of the reasons I write so many more Marketmails during the tough cycles. To try to share market wisdom, gained by my many years of mistakes and self-inflicted wounds, so others can overcome their irrational worries and finish their race.
As author and entrepreneur Jack Canfield is fond of saying, “Everything you want is on the other side of fear.”
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