Going the Extra Mile
Recently my sister completed the Loskop ultra-marathon after months of gruelling training and grit determination. I know for one the hours of dedication taken to reach such a tremendous feat. On occasion I would go for an early morning jog for moral support but quite surprisingly learnt more about the power of my mind than I had expected.
Recently my sister completed the Loskop ultra-marathon after months of gruelling training and grit determination. I know for one the hours of dedication taken to reach such a tremendous feat. On occasion I would go for an early morning jog for moral support but quite surprisingly learnt more about the power of my mind than I had expected.
As with anything in life, when we start something new we often head into it with much vigour. My first jog around the block was quite an eventful one. My sister kept teasing that I wouldn’t be able to clear 5km in 30 minutes. Determined to prove her wrong I set about my quest, only to be stopped by my pure exhaustion on the 3km mark.
Defeated and deflated I conceded that my fitness levels were not what they were once before, but I was dead set on figuring out the science of running and how a person were able to push their body through many kilometres of tarmac.
If you’ve ever watched the Comrade’s Marathon you’ll know the admiration you have for the guy who crosses the line in under 6 hours. To put that into context that’s roughly 15 km/h non-stop for 6 hours. I couldn’t clear 3km in 15 minutes let alone run 15km in one hour. But take note that we always benchmark ourselves against the best. We don’t really pay attention to the other thousands of runners who complete the same race just in a longer time.
When you run distance you not going start the race running at a pace of 100 metre sprinter. I guarantee you won’t have any energy left for the next 10km. Slow and steady wins the race.
These were the first lessons my sister taught me on our first jogging expedition. We started small distances so I could gain my fitness then slowly started progressing 1 km at a time. I reached 5 km within a month and only managed 42 minutes, but it didn’t matter to me, I was proud of the fact that I was able to complete the distance without being exhausted.
These were the first lessons my sister taught me on our first jogging expedition. We started small distances so I could gain my fitness then slowly started progressing 1 km at a time. I reached 5 km within a month and only managed 42 minutes, but it didn’t matter to me, I was proud of the fact that I was able to complete the distance without being exhausted.
After a few months of doing it over and over again I decide to get adventurous and try for distance longer than 5km. This is where you learn the most about running. We would run a 8 km route but I quickly noticed that the route wasn’t so straightforward as the 5 km one I had been training in. The elevation you run on begins to change at certain points and you would need to adjust for that.
You would have slightly inclined straights but you needed to preserve your energy because there were long uphills requiring you to use your thigh muscles more than your calves to power yourself forward. You'd reach the end of the uphill and would need to slow yourself down so that you don’t overspend your energy and be able to reach the finish line.
I remember when my sister got her race map and she began planning for the race; she knew what she was going to be up against and planned accordingly. In the weeks leading up to the race she focused on the areas of her running she felt would be needed.
Take a good example of the public holidays we’ve just had over the last 3 weeks. The lack of volumes together with the stop and start motions made it extremely difficult to trade with not much direction. It gets to a point when you feel frustrated and eventually force the trade.
Now imagine that scenario in a 50 km race, you hit the 25 km mark and you just about feel fed up and decide the rest of the way you’ll just run your heart and soul out and it’ll get you to the end. Unfortunately it will be short lived. If you fail to plan, you are planning to fail.
Most of us start trading with the idea of finishing the comrade’s marathon in gold medal positions. I’m sure most of you will agree that would be a great achievement but in reality it’s not attainable. The game of trading is not about how rich you get quickly but more so accumulating over a longer period of time.
The truth is most traders never make it to the finish line, they’ve either spent all their energy or they just couldn’t master the realities of a changing market. If you want to make it to be a consistent trader, you have to plan your race, know every bend and uphill you going to face and lastly having the control to keep your mind in check because without it that finish line just gets further and further away.
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