Marathon and Trading

Received from Michele.

In life, one can find strange coincidences.

On March 9th, DJ was at its minimum in 2009 and the weekend before, I literally fell at my minimum too.

During one of my usual weekend climb, I fell.

Lucky I was held by my partner, and I only badly hit my foot against the rock and sprained my ankle, breaking also a bone.

Otherwise it could have been much worse.

Ironically, the name of the route was ‘Delirium’, such as what the market was going through?!

I had to wear a cast for 35 days and walk with crutches.

After taking the cast away, I made a point to recover as fast as possible to go back to climbing.

Another similar accident happened to me some years ago and during my forced stop with the cast on, I focused on climbing training in all possible ways hanging myself everywhere.

This time I approached it in a different way. I mentally took a break from climbing and focused on something else.

I set a goal to motivate myself: to run a half marathon within 6 months.

I have always run, but just for fun and never on long distances. However it sounded like an achievable goal.

Swimming helped from day one, as I used it as aerobic training.

It took some time to get back to walk without crutches, then I started to do long walks, going to work by foot, and cycling.

Things were proceeding quite well, as the market was doing.

In June I started running but after one week my knee swelled and I had to stop. Was I going back in my preparation? Probably I neglected my muscles when I had crutches.

I should have done some exercises for my leg even with the cast on.

In June also the market declined.

In July I spent my holidays in the mountain, walking a lot and as fast as I could uphill and downhill to train myself to long distances, also mentally.

For sure that helped and I kept improving, same as the market.

In August I finally was able to run again and slowly I increased distances, preparing for the September rally.

Finally, at the end of September I ran my first half marathon, with a good time for a 42 year old newbie at least according to my more experienced colleagues.

Who knows if that is the end of the rally …

I just hope that my life stops being correlated to the market, otherwise I will use it as a trading signal …



Michele