Run Your Own Race: Investing as Marathon Training

This past Saturday, I completed a marathon for the first time. Specifically, I ran the CNO Financial Group Indianapolis Monumental Marathon.

As I was training for the event—long runs provide plenty of time to think, especially at my pace—some of the similarities between prepping for a marathon and investing became apparent. While both are very different activities, the framework for how one approaches either is not.

The goal of a marathon is to run 26.2 miles. The race date is the time for when the goal will be reached. The duration of the goal is dependent on how fast you expect to run. A common maximum time limit for marathons is six hours, though some have more generous cutoffs. Most marathon training programs call for four to six months of preparation. The cost is the entry fee plus any associated travel and, obviously, gear (running shoes, hydration packs, etc.). These parameters drive all other decisions.

The investing equivalent would be a goal with an estimated time for being reached, an estimated spending duration and an estimated cost. Establish these parameters and all your other decisions will be easier.

Running a marathon requires a certain of level of physical health. I personally sought medical approval from my orthopedic surgeon (who is also a runner) before starting my marathon training because I severely fractured my arm in April. I started training by walking (my arm wasn’t too keen about running at first) and very gradually introduced running into my workouts. As a percentage of pre-race training time and mileage, it’s a good bet that my allocation to walking was at the high end of the nearly 4,000 people who also finished the full marathon.

What everyone else was doing had no bearing on me. The same applies to investing. Just because your relative, neighbor or friend can withstand a lot of portfolio volatility doesn’t mean you can. Your investing time frames, willingness to cope with downturns and dependence on portfolio withdrawals may be very different than those of everyone else. The allocation strategy you can stick with is always better than the one you can’t.

How I trained was also a personal decision. I opted for the marathon training program included in The New York Times’ “How to Start Running” guide (with a few small modifications). It fit my time frame of 20 weeks well enough and was appropriate for where I was at as a runner. It was also a program I could follow without having to adjust my work schedule. The guide listed the mileage for each run, but I chose what each workout was like (lots of intervals in my case).

An investing analogy is whether one handpicks securities, uses mutual funds and exchange-traded funds (ETFs) or works with a financial planner or adviser. An individual investor may prefer control over selecting their own securities. Some individual investors prefer mutual funds or ETFs. Others work with financial planners or advisers. It’s a matter of personal preference and constraints.

Selecting investments—be it stocks, bonds, mutual funds or ETFs—requires due diligence, discipline and a repeatable process. While running does not require digging through financial statements or prospectuses, having a defined repeatable process makes a huge difference. I monitored my heart rate and always made sure I stayed hydrated and ate during longer runs. (I’m not sure I want to know how many Clif Bars I’ve eaten over the past few months.) I also had a preset structure for each workout.

There is also, of course, monitoring. This is a key part of any goals-driven process. I constantly wrote on the training plan to track my progress as you can see here. I was also very conscious about listening to my body and making adjustments as necessary (more cross-training for my hips and more stretching of my IT bands). For investing, it’s about making sure your allocation stays close enough to your target at the portfolio level and ensuring that none of your investments are meeting your sell rules. Monitoring also involves knowing when you are offtrack from achieving your running or investing goals and being prepared to make adjustments as necessary—adjustments that may require making changes to your goals.

If I were to sum up everything into a few words of advice, it would be: Have a written plan, follow it and run your own race. How the thousands of people who were with me at the starting line on Saturday morning were going to run the marathon had no bearing on me. I ran the race in the manner I had trained myself to do. I took confidence in knowing that I was disciplined and followed a good plan. Investing is no different. Your goals, tolerance for risk, preferences and investing style are personal. Build a plan based on them, follow the plan, invest in a manner that is right for you and take confidence in doing so.