Eliud Kipchoge is the current world record holder of the marathon world record.
He recorded a time of 2 hours 1 minute and 39 seconds at the Berlin Marathon in Sept-2018.
If he had to run a 100-meter dash at this speed it would take him 17.34 seconds.
The current world record for the 100-meter dash is 9.58 seconds.
Almost like half of the time at which Kipchoge will finish it as the speed at which he ran the full marathon.
Why am I sharing all this?
How does it make any sense at all?
Sublinear Models
According to the Kleiber law, any animal with a body mass of 150 g will have a basic metabolic rate that is approximately 7.6 times greater than that of an animal with a body mass of 10 g, i.e., metabolic activity of a small organism is, relative to its body size, much higher
If you look at it from standpoint of the concept of sublinear scaling in physics, ultimately things, companies, animal sizes stop growing and start dying.
Scaling is a deceptively simple way to think about cities and urban growth. Developed by Geoffrey West, Denise Pumain, Luis Bettencourt and others, the idea is that the kind of universal scaling laws that are observed in the natural world also apply to cities.
Biological scaling laws are common — larger creatures live longer, consume more energy and so on — but these links get weaker as organisms get bigger.
So, it is easier to run very fast in a 100-meter dash than it is in a marathon.
The perfect analogy is how teams are now making scores of over 250 in a 20 over cricket match.
Well, it is easier to play and score at a rapid rate for a shorter period than it is for a longer period of time.
Longer the Game-Different the skills
Investing is a longer game.
You can’t keep hitting sixes every other ball when you have to do it over a 50 over game.
You are bound to make a mistake.
Why is “Rick Guerin” not as famous as Warren Buffet.
Of-course, you are now wondering-who is Rick Guerin.
He is the 3rd partner of Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger who decided to leave the partnership.
When asked about him, Warren Buffett’s response is- Rick was just as smart as us, but he was in a hurry. And so actually what happened — some of this is public — was that in the ’73, ’74 downturn, Rick was levered with margin loans. And the stock market went down almost 70% in those two years, and so he got margin calls out the yin-yang, and he sold his Berkshire stock to Warren. Warren actually said, I bought Rick’s Berkshire stock at under $40 a piece, and so Rick was forced to sell shares at … $40 apiece because he was levered. And then Warren went a step further. He said that if you’re even a slightly above-average investor who spends less than they earn, over a lifetime, you cannot help but get rich if you are patient. ”
Know the Game that you are Playing
If you are trying to run a 100-meter dash when you are participating in a marathon, the outcome wouldn’t be pretty and once you have grasped this, everything else will fall in place eventually.
Investing is a marathon, prepare your body (mind, in this case) to run the 2 hour plus that you will need to get to the finish line.
If 100-meter dash is what attracts you, this is not the game for you.
Happy Investing-Stay the Course
Irreverentinvestor.com 