The Pain Cave
"By endurance we conquer" Ernest Shackleton
In 1977 James Earl Ray, the man who assassinated Martin Luther King, escaped from Brushy Mountain Penitentiary.
Unfortunately for him, the prison is surrounded by some of the most unforgiving terrain on the planet - dense mountainous forest, unnavigable to pretty much anyone except local residents. After spending fifty four and a half hours on the run, Ray managed to travel a grand total of twelve miles before being caught.
A local man, Gary Cantrell, was so uninspired by Ray’s “achievement” that he is said to have remarked “I could do at least a hundred miles”. And with that the Barkley Marathons, the toughest ultramarathon in the world, was born.
Each year, thirty five brave souls descend upon Frozen Head State Park in Tennessee to run a race that only twenty people have completed in thirty eight years.
The course consists of five, twenty mile unmarked loops which include 60,000 feet of ascent - around twice the height of Mount Everest. There are no aid stations out on the route. Runners can study the course map before they begin, but after that, they can only rely on their own notes. The sixty hour time limit means that a couple of the laps will have be negotiated in the dark.
In applying, potential entrants need to submit an essay entitled “Why I Should Be Allowed To Run In The Barkley”. If successful, they receive a letter of condolence.
Provided you can spare a few quid to watch the documentary, I would highly recommend it.
Last Friday, Jasmin Paris a vet from Midlothian and world class endurance athlete, became the first woman to finish the Barkley Marathons when she completed her fifth lap with ninety nine seconds to spare.
Photo credit: David Miller
Surely one of the Great British sporting achievements.
“If you’re going to face a real challenge, it has to be a real challenge. You can’t accomplish anything without the possibility of failure.”
Gary Cantrell
Although we all enjoy a moan from time to time, there has never been a better period in history to be alive than today. The modern world places almost anything that we could ever want at out fingertips, and these events provide a stark counterpoint. An opportunity to those looking to mould themselves in the pain cave.
Having dabbled with ultra marathon running in the past, I have had the pleasure of meeting quite a few fellow runners at these races.
When you speak to these people, what you find is that they tend not to talk about their achievements - the finishes and the t-shirts and the medals. What they remember most is the darkness, the times when they were at their lowest ebb and managed to make it out.
There are obvious parallels with life, with business and (given that this is a finance blog) with investing.
When we set out on our financial journey, with our neat little colour coded plan, we should feel well prepared. But a lot can happen during a thirty/forty/fifty year period and we need to recognise in advance that there are going to be times of extreme difficulty.
Any adviser who is doing their job properly will try to prepare their clients for these events in advance by stress testing the numbers to ensure that when (note, not if) capital markets go through periods of decline, the result will not be catastrophic.
I refer to this exercise as a “lifeboat drill”. The software that we use to create financial plans for clients allows us to stress test portfolios against such events as the Great Depression, World War II and the Financial Crisis to provide us with confidence that the clients have “enough”.
But there is a world of difference between running this exercise on a sheet of paper, and negotiating such difficulty when it comes to pass in real life.
Shamefully, I have only just finished Morgan Housel’s second book Same As Ever1 and in one of the later chapters he neatly encapsulates the issue with these lifeboat drills.
When we stress test our financial plan to show a, say, 30% drawdown in the value of our investments - we imagine that the world will look just as it is today, only that stock market valuations will be 30% lower.
This patently will not be the case. Downturns do not happen in isolation, they are accompanied by wars, recessions, pandemics.
It can be difficult to envisage at times like this, when the sun is shining and markets are ticking along quite nicely, but it is only a matter of time before the next thing arrives and when it does the prevailing narrative will provide overwhelming evidence that the correct thing to do is to cut and run - “not for me, this”.
We won’t just have to navigate stock market drawdowns either. Life has a habit of throwing curve balls at us, often at the worst possible moments.
Having a plan is a necessity, and gives you the best chance of avoiding catastrophic errors at times of high emotion. But ultimately, we are the combination of our lived experiences and a spreadsheet cannot possibly show you who you are in advance.
A financial plan must be built to endure the point of maximum stress. But at these points, it isn’t the plan that keeps clients on track - it is the person.
During her final lap on Friday Jasmin Paris was the last person out on the course, having to run while barely able to walk, with no-one there to guide her. When it comes to our finances, none of us need be in the same position.
Have a great Easter weekend.
At this stage I am at risk of becoming nothing more than a shill for Mr Housel’s work, but do yourself a favour and pick it up.
Unless you are a client, in which case a copy will be winging its way to you at some stage.