Investment Lessons from the Comrades

What does conquering South Africa's most iconic ultra-marathon have in common with securing your financial freedom? As it turns out, just about everything.  

With the Comrades Marathon just days away, hosts Andrew Whitewood and Alec Riddle explore why crossing the finish line requires the exact same discipline, pacing, and mindset as navigating a long-term investment portfolio. Drawing from Alec’s experience running 21st in the 1980s and his two decades as an "Eye in the Sky" television commentator, the duo unpacks the psychological traps that derail both novice runners and everyday investors.  

In this episode, we discuss: 

The Team of Professionals: Why hitting milestones alone often leads to hitting a wall, and how a great financial planner acts as your ultimate race coach.  

The Bruce Fordyce Strategy: How the nine-time champion ignored high-speed "TV runners" seeking short-term fame to stick strictly to his targeted average pace.  

Lanes, Peers, and Snapshots: Why judging your portfolio by short-term market fluctuations is as deceptive as judging a runner’s form strictly while they sprint downhill on Cowies Hill or struggle up Fields Hill.  

Silencing the "Expo Noise": The danger of last-minute strategy changes—whether falling for FOMO at a pre-race expo or panicking into cash during market drops.  

The Behavior Gap: How missing just the 10 best days in the market over 20 years can erode half your wealth, and why grit at Polly Shortts saves your journey.  

Whether you are one of the 21,000 runners standing on the starting line this June 14th, or an investor building a robust plan for retirement, this episode is your guide to tuning out the noise and staying in your lane.  

Listener Note: Check our social media for exclusive reels featuring Comrades personalities sharing race-day tips and money wisdom!  

Enjoyed the show? Please like, share, and subscribe. Help us hit 1,000 subscribers, and we might just force Andrew to run a marathon qualifier!

Follow our personal accounts:@alecriddle @andrewwhitewood 
THE INFORMATION SHARED IN THIS PODCAST IS FOR INFORMATION PURPOSES ONLY AND DOES NOT CONSTITUTE FINANCIAL ADVICE IN ANY WAY OR FORM. IT IS IMPORTANT TO CONSULT A FINANCIAL PLANNER TO RECEIVE FINANCIAL ADVICE BEFORE ACTING ON ANY INFORMATION SHARED.

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Hey everyone, welcome to Top in the Riddle, a pop class that unpacks the financial puzzles shaping your future. I'm Andrew Whitewith, and together with Alec Riddle, we explore the ideas, behaviors, and strategies that help people make smarter financial decisions and wealth.

SPEAKER_00 0:24

Well, it's the big day on Sunday, the Comrades Marathon. What a fantastic event, and uh it's an event that's uh close to my heart. But you've always heard me in financial planning talk about crossing the finish line, uh, and that relates to financial planning. A lot of that has come from the lessons I've learned in the Comrades Marathon. And um, Andrew, Comrades Marathon, is it on your horizon?

SPEAKER_01 0:51

Absolutely no chance, Alec. Absolutely no chance at all. And there was a bit of banter um in the studio before this recording today. Uh, if we get to a thousand subscribers, I'll do the comrades. Alec, maybe I'll do a half marathon, but there's no chance I'm running 80-90 code.

SPEAKER_00 1:05

Maybe you can do a comrades qualify, which is a standard marathon. Come on, Andrew.

SPEAKER_01 1:09

You're asking a little bit too much, Alec. A little bit too much. So, Alec, from a financial planning point of view, and to all our listeners and viewers, I think it's it's a great topic, right? Um, build up to comrades is massive. Um, I think what we want to do from as a starting point is unpack your comrades' uh journey. I know that you competed in three comrades um or you completed, I believe, three. The first one that you completed, you uh ended uh 21st, um, which was a massive achievement. But if you think about financial planning and you think of the comrades, um, they've got a lot in common. And I think that's fundamentally important. And you rightly said from a financial planning point of view, we are seeking to assist people in helping them cross that finish line. The first finishing line being that like retirement finishing line, and then obviously make sure that their capital provides for their needs and goals, etc., throughout their financial planning and retirement journey. But back to the comrades, Alec. And I think for our listeners, viewers, and clients out there, we are gonna flip-flop a little bit between comrades. I'm gonna bring it back to financial planning and then throw the comrades back to you because, like we uh had just said a minute or two ago, I'm never gonna uh run or compete in the comrades. So, Alec, 14th of June, 21,000 people are gonna be on that starting line. It must be an amazing experience. Obviously, it's pitch black, the sun is about to rise. So, take us back to when did you compete? In the 80s?

SPEAKER_00 2:37

First one was 1988.

SPEAKER_01 2:39

Were you born? No, uh yes, I was two years old. I was just about. So, Alec, just take us through some of your personal experiences.

Alec's personal marathon experience

SPEAKER_01 2:46

That first run. And I think let's just start at base camp, right? Because you needed, I assume, to have some professionals at 1987, 1988, a long time ago, but surely you needed a coach, you needed a plan, etc. And then we'll take the steps through the journey.

SPEAKER_00 3:02

Probably the biggest mistake I did make was not to surround myself with a team of professionals. I tried to do it myself. Um, I think I could have done a lot better if I'd have tapped into the knowledge that was out there, although it was limited at that time. So I relied on a book called The Law of Running by Professor Tim Noakes, and I read up on that and and so forth, and I put my own program together. Uh didn't do enough mileage, probably averaged 100 kilometres a week. Uh got to the comrades and uh yeah, ran beautifully for 75 kilometers and then cramp struck. And then it was a case of you know, persevere, let's get to that finish line, let's get the medal. And I think that's the important lesson of the comrades marathon. Um, but yeah, it was I went back twice after that with the hope of doing better. Um the the second time I went, I was leading the Ultraman. Uh I blew at Pine Town. Unfortunately, that was an uprun, so it was a long way to go when you've blown. Um actually finished with my sister-in-law Nadine Harrison. She happened to win the comrades that year for the ladies. So it was about seven hours, and then the following year uh got blown away by Frida Von Amerva. We were together at 75Ks in 13th and 14th position. I thought, okay, cheers, Frifth, I'm going for gold now. And two K's later I was cramping the last uh 13Ks took me two hours. So yeah, it's tough. But fortunately, I finished all three, it was great. So many lessons learned, not only running the comrades, but coaching people in the comrades. Um, and also doing television commentary for more than 20 of these comrades, either on the back of a motorbike, in the studio, um, also known as Eye in the Sky from talking from the helicopter, it was great. But um, yeah, let's relate some of those

Lessons applied to financial planning

SPEAKER_00 4:50

lessons back to to financial planning.

SPEAKER_01 4:52

Yeah, Alec, I totally agree. And thank you for that intro. I think first and foremost, from a financial planning point of view, we firmly believe that you need a plan. Okay. And in order to have a plan, you need to partner with a professional, right? So that's the starting point, that's the foundation. And we've spoken in previous podcasts about the four key numbers, the way we do integrated wealth planning, the way we can model scenarios, etc. So fundamentally important in relating the two stories or the two journeys is that starting point, you need a plan. In order to have a plan, in our opinion, you need to have a coach, you need to have a financial planner. And I know in a lot of the conversations, and Alec, obviously, I did my articles under you about 15 years ago, we always spoke about the Bruce Fordyce analogy, right? And Bruce is, I think he's won the Comrades nine times off the top of my head. Um, he did phenomenally well. I can remember growing up, right? My mum and my dad were watching the Comrades Marathon on SABC back in the day, got up there, uh, obviously that hadn't watched the start, but my old man had watched the start, and there Bruce a Kay was not necessarily in the lead at that point in time, Alec. Um he was like 11th, 12th, or maybe 20th and 30th. And at that point in time, I didn't really understand why he's 20th or 30th, but he had won the comrades like seven times already, Alec. So once again, I'm gonna throw that back into your court from a comrade's point of view, and we'll unpack it, bring it back to financial planning. But to me, it was kind of strange, right? Bruce would be there in the pack, um, he wasn't the most built person, built like a runner, no disrespect, but he was in the pack, right? And you had these TV, call them TV runners out front, Mr. Price runners, whoever they were sponsored by, and the TV was focusing and the cameramen were focusing on them. But then at the end of the day, Bruce would win the comrades. And that if you just unpack that for us in a little bit of detail.

SPEAKER_00 6:37

Yeah, so I think the first important thing is you know, Bruce was a young Vitzi student who uh dabbled in comrades, and um you know, he did fantastically well by the the layman's book um in his first one, but then he decided to get serious

Surround yourself with experts

SPEAKER_00 6:52

and he surrounded himself with a team of professionals. You know, I think he had uh advice from from people like Tim Nokes and and and many others, and he was surrounded by great athletes, Mark Plykees, Bernard Rose, uh, and many others. So with this team, they developed a strategy or a plan that as you would call it in financial planning. And the strategy was to win the comrades' marathon, you're gonna have to run such and such a pace. So let's say that pace is three minutes thirty per kilometer. In financial planning parlance, we would say you might need inflation plus four. Your average return over time. Average return over time. So what happens? The gun goes, and you see all of these people hurtle off at a massive speed, much faster than three minutes thirty per kilometer. Some of them got an adrenaline rush, some are looking for 30 seconds 30 seconds of TV fame, and others are paid for advertising boards. They're getting a thousand Rand for every kilometer they can lead the race. So they will run until it's over. Okay, and um Bruce would ignore that. He he would stay in his lane. What is his target? Ignore those people. But then you also had the Mark Pages of this ward or the Jose Charlie's or the Bob Delamots, who were his big rivals, some would go off fast, some

Stick to your pace

SPEAKER_00 8:13

would track him behind. Would he worry about the person who's up the road or the person who's slightly behind? No, he wouldn't, because he had his plan and it was devised by professionals, and he stuck to that plan. So think of financial planning, and perhaps you can just relate that with you explain to clients.

SPEAKER_01 8:30

Yeah, so Alec, when you say sticking to your lane from a financial planning point of view and a performance point of view, we speak about call it your peers or your peer group. So if you think about it, a lot of people probably listening to the podcast, viewers, clients are invested in call it balanced funds in South Africa. Uh, that sits in a specific peer group. Okay, and a lot of the time what happens out there is we can also speak about snapshots, but from a lane point of view, all our clients know, for example, they need inflation plus four to five or two to three or inflation plus four, for example. We are not really worried or at all worried about what those other 250 funds are doing in the balanced fund peer group space. Okay. Yes, we need to make sure that the solution that we are using from a financial uh financial planning point of view is robust, um, it's aligned with your financial plan, it's doing what it needs to do. But at the end of the day, there could be a certain fund like that runner, okay, that's giving you 30%. When, for example, our fund is only giving 20%, okay? But there's also funds out there that could be giving 10% when our fund is giving 20%.

SPEAKER_00 9:37

Can I just come in there? So you might be getting 20%, another fund getting 30%, but the other fund that's getting 30% is taking on more risk. That could be the Mr. Price runner who's running for the thousand rand per kilometer. He is not going to finish in the goals, and that's why Bruce will be conserving. And a fund manager might be taking a slightly more conservative approach in the fund and maybe having a bit more exposure to fixed interest as an example.

SPEAKER_01 10:02

Yeah, totally agree. Alec, and the key point, and and snapshots are fundamentally important. So I'm going to start with snapshots, is that you've got to focus, and we spoke about this a couple of minutes ago, is your average return over time. The key thing to understand, and that's for example, relating it back to when I woke up as a lie to you, turn on the TV or my old man's watching the TV and I sit next to him. And Bruce seems like he's behind the eight-ball, but that is a specific snapshot. The same thing applies when you are investing, when you are focusing on the long term, 40-50 years. You need to obtain that average return over time, once again, inflation plus four, for example. But from a snapshot point of view, you could have a phenomenal year, once again, bringing it back to your peers in your lane, a 30, a 40%, a 50%. But then the key thing from an investment point of view and relating it back to the balance fund spaces, you could also experience a negative 10, a negative 15 or 20. I think that's the key difference with regards to the way we do financial planning. The Bruce Fordyce analogy from an investor education point of view, Alec, is that we set those correct expectations, okay, relating it back to Bruce Fordas. We don't focus on those snapshots. We don't focus on when Andrew woke up at Hop Off 6 and Bruce Fordas was in the pack. So, Alec, from a snapshot point of view. So we've spoken a bit about the lanes and the peers from a comrade's point of view, but highlight now more from a comrade's point of view and relate those snapshots.

SPEAKER_00 11:25

I'm going to use an example of Cowie's Hill and Fields Hill. But before we do, there's 21,000 runners who are out there, some of them have been listening to this podcast. Let's just take them through, you know, you mentioned the start and so forth. And what's very important for the novice runner is not to get carried away. You will have heard the national anthem. You will have heard chariots of fire. Believe me, you've got goose flesh. I'm sitting here getting goose flesh now. I can relive it. I'm never going to experience that feeling.

SPEAKER_01 11:52

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 11:53

You you you and you're so excited and you just want to go. And if you start too fast in those first three, four, five kilometers, your race is destroyed. You have to be disciplined. You have to stick to whatever your expectation is. Remember, the first real hill is a cowies hill. But there's Tallgate. There's 45th Cutting. There's Westville. All these little hills that can be a kilometer or two kilometers long. Anyway, then we get to Cowies Hill. Uh Bruce has crested Cowies Hill, probably in, as you say, not in the top ten, probably even 50th or 60th. And he's running down Cowies Hill and TV cameras, because they have a static camera at Cowies Hill, they pick up Bruce Fordyce. Now there's a rookie TV commentator. I want you to imagine this. There's a rookie TV commentator in the chair. It's not Kearn Walker, one of the experienced commentators, right? It's a rookie, and he says, Wow, Fordyce is running so fast he's going to break the record. He's looking at a snapshot. Because he's running downhill, he's got the benefit of gravity, he's not running through the required pace of 330, he's running 310. Now he runs next minute, you run through to Lynn's and you say, Come check, Bruce is going to break the record. By the time Lynn has gone to the bathroom, washed the sleep out of her eyes, he's run through Pinetown. He's now running up Fields Hill. There's a different rookie commentator in the seats, probably Tondo. And Tondo says, you know what, there's no chance of a record here because um Bruce needs to run 330, he's running four minutes or four thirty. Who's right or wrong? When you look at a snapshot, you can never be right. So you have to look at the longer term. Now the truth the proof in the pudding is that the longer Bruce was on the course, the closer he got to his required average. But there were times when he was more than a minute out of that required average.

SPEAKER_01 13:46

So how close was he to his average? So obviously going back to basically seconds. Seconds. So at the end of the year, at the end he was seconds. He was within seconds of his targeted average.

SPEAKER_00 14:01

At the end.

SPEAKER_01 14:01

At the end, yes, yes.

SPEAKER_00 14:02

But at times he was horribly behind, and at times he was nicely ahead. But the point of the matter is also he rarely ran at 330 kilometer per kilometer. Of course, yeah. It was just quicker faster or slower on the flats, maybe 330. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 14:17

And that now, Alex, uh, we've touched on snapshots, focusing um uh sticking in in your lane or to your lane, your peer group, etc. Once again, back to financial planning. Now, right, there's all this build-up, there's this noise. Okay, now we're sitting Wednesday, the 10th of June, 14th of June. People are jeepers, the the blood must already be pumping, I would think, Alec. Okay, and there's this build-up. There's already a lot of noise around the comrades. Expo. Expo. So if I relate that back to financial planning, there's always so much noise. Okay, it could be from a pure just day-to-day point of view with regards to what's going on in South Africa, if we look at what's happening overseas. But the key thing is we sit down with our clients once again. We the press professional, we are the financial planner. Okay, you've got to plan, okay. But the key thing

Ignore the noise

SPEAKER_01 15:06

is to stick to your lane, focus on your long-term required return over time. But there's always noise. But a lot of our clients that have been with us for 10, 15, 20 years know that you've almost got to ignore that noise. Because the thing is, if you get caught up in that noise and those emotions from a financial planning point of view, at the end of the day, you can probably erode an immense amount of value. So, once again, back to the comrades, the build-up. Wednesday, the 10th of June. What is Thursday? What is Friday? What does Saturday look like? Right? In my mind, you've got to focus on your plan. If you've got a coach, go back to your diary, your notes. You've got to not parrot fashion, learn those notes, but stick to your lane, stick to your plan. But what is that noise factor like at the comrades, Eric?

SPEAKER_00 15:50

Yeah, there's a lot of noise. You know, you're traveling to the comrades. So, first of all, you're not sleeping in your own bed and you've got a bit of travel, and then you've got the expo. The important thing is to try and stay off your legs as much as possible, the last 24-48 hours. You don't want to be walking around an expo for four or five hours looking for the best bargain. You also don't want to be getting uh, you know, we spoke about these marketers who try and get a share of your wallet, they'll be trying to sell you the latest new shoe, the one that just ran sub two at the London Marathon. Do not change. You know, if you're gonna change, change now. Do not change last minute. Also, nutrition. Now there's a special on nutrition. You know, if you use 226s, stick to two two sixes. If you use 32 GI, stick to it. Don't now go and buy something new because it's on special, it might not agree with your stomach. So these are all outside factors. Think about it in our financial planning world. You're at a brian, somebody says, Oh. Um well, not right now, but in the past. Bitcoin, you know, is up 50% or 100%. And then you think you've got this FOMO, maybe I should be getting some Bitcoin. Well, it's not part of your plan, don't worry about it. Okay. Then the other uh part of noise is you're running, and the crowd support at the Comrades Marathon is next level. When you run up Werters Hill past Kersney College, that whole school is out there, it's a tradition.

SPEAKER_01 17:16

So all the borders and stuff are out there.

SPEAKER_00 17:18

And the day boys, everybody will be there. Every Kersney pupil will be there with their families and whatever. It's massive. And uh and not just there, Valley of the Thousand Hills. I can remember you know being in the helicopter, and because we were the helicopter and basically at the front of the race, we were the warning signal to the villagers in the Valley of the Thousand Hills, and you saw the kids coming out of their huts and running up the hills kilometers to get to the top, and there's these little uh schools, farm schools, and whatever, and it's you know, I I'm I'm still getting the goose flesh. It's crazy to see, you know, all of that. And what happens is if you've got a strategy, if you are aiming for a nine-hour or eleven hour, if you've got a strategy, and that strategy might be I'm going to run two kilometers, I'm gonna walk 500 meters. Just because the Kersney boys are there or the crowds there, don't think to yourself, oh well I'm not gonna walk now. You know, because pride is taking over, you will destroy your race. So stick to your plan, don't get excited. Now we spoke about the real noise. Let's go to the real noise. Let's say advance, we've now gone through Cowies Hill, Fields Hill. That is a real monster. Buertos Hill in Changa, right? We've gone through Camperdown, Harrison Flats, etc. And we're now coming to poly shorts. Everybody's heard about poly shorts. They used to have running shorts named after poly shorts. Okay. You know, it is the smallest of those five hills, but it is the biggest in a person's mind. So what happens is you've got this noise factor that you've got uh your glycogen depleted, you're dehydrated, your muscles are fatigued, you're cramping. The crowd on poly shorts is absent. They're at the top of poly shorts, but you've got to get there to experience them. So most people pull out at poly shorts because of all the noise. Now let's relate that back to to finance. So there's geopolitical events, there's uh market crashes, there's the the currency factor, and you know, people go to a bride and somebody's saying, Oh, what's the RANG going to do? What's this going to do? And there's all this noise, and people tend to panic. And if they have not uh been through a proper investor education or had uh appropriate expectations set, they might panic and then might change course. So, I mean, I can remember um during COVID, how many people, when the market dropped 30%, pulled their money out of funds. Obviously, it didn't happen in our field, but we know from a CISA, the stats, pulled money out of funds to put into cash. Now, once you go into cash, you locked into call it six or seven percent for the year. You've just experienced maybe a 10, 20, 30 percent drop, depending on how aggressively you were invested. Okay. And what happened? The markets rebounded and got one of the best runs in the markets was missed out on. So there's a stat, the SP 500, over 20 years. If you invest $10,000 and you stay committed for the full 20 years, you would have got 9.5% per annum. Average growth, and you'd have $63,000. If you just missed the best 10 days out of 20 years, you would have eroded half of your wealth.

SPEAKER_01 20:40

Investment behavior gap. Well, the investor behaviour gap.

SPEAKER_00 20:43

And that's that's the the noise can derail people. So that's very important. The appropriate expectations, um,

Crossing the finish line

SPEAKER_00 20:50

and yeah, just realize and stick to your strategy because you know, coming back to crossing the finish line, you now get over poly shorts, and then you've still got six, seven, eight kilometres to go, and depending on it where the finish is, if it was at uh the the Peter Marisburg Oval or Scotsville Race Course and so forth, it's obviously a different distance every year. This year, very fortunate for the runners, just under 86 kilometers. So a nice little bonus for the runners this year. But as Coach Lindsay Parry would say, it's still over 50 miles. Okay. So what's very important here is that you're now heading towards the finish. It's tough. You just got to grit your teeth, you've got to persevere, you've got to get across that finish line to get the medal, to get the rewards. And to have done that, you had to have overcome all those hills we spoke about, all of the noise, all of the peer pressure, um, all of the pacing pressure, the cramps, missing the seconding table. So many things can go wrong in the comrades, just as so many things can go wrong in your financial planning journey, because you know, somebody stole your car and it wasn't insured. Well, now you need a couple hundred thousand to replace it. That could derail your plan.

SPEAKER_01 21:59

And let's bring it back to basics, Alex. So, like you run through that whole course now with regards to the comrades and the plan, etc. And let's just go back to financial planning. So, start, in our opinion, with a financial planner. Okay, ideally, a financial planner that holds the CFP trademark or is CFP accredited, and then you need to start developing a plan. Okay, but that plan needs to be robust. We've mentioned noise, we've mentioned snapshots, we've mentioned sticking to your lane, the key thing, focusing on your required return over time. Then you can plug, for example, local investing, offshore investing, different investment vehicles. Just a couple of weeks ago, we spoke to Bjorn from Just. We spoke about living annuities, life annuities. Things are evolving, just like things have evolved in the Comrades Marathon, right? If I we could go down another rabbit hole speaking about the equipment that you used back then, you mentioned the expo, right? So things are always evolving. The key thing for us is to have a holistic financial plan, a robust financial plan that, in our opinion, is going to help you achieve your goals, your lifestyle. And hopefully at the end of the end of the day, increase the likelihood of you getting across that finish line, Alec. I think the key thing is there's 21,000 runners that are going to be on the starting line waiting for that gun to go on the 14th of June, right? That sun is just going to be rising, Alec. And maybe the last minute or two, if you could just leave um our listeners, viewers, and a lot of runners out there, hopefully, just with a parting message and some motivational words, Alec.

SPEAKER_00 23:28

Yeah, absolutely. And we're going to get a few comrades' personalities to give uh their comrades tip and money tip through a few uh reels on social media. So watch out for those. You might have seen some already. But um, yeah, to all those people who are running the comrades, it is so special. 21,000 of you, many of you are novices. It is going to be the greatest day for many of you, especially if you get to the finish line. So, yeah, stick to your plan. Very, very important. Um, you know, persevere, etc. You know, I've been coaching, you know, two ladies, um, Tracy Campbell and Danae Cronyer. Uh, they're both going for uh a really good comrades. I wish them well together with the other 20,998. Um, I know Kion Walker is going to be in the commentary box, and uh yeah, it's gonna be a great day. And I'm so looking forward to, as I say, I commentated many years uh on the comrades marathon, and I just love sitting at home and watching this race, it's absolutely beautiful. It's part of my DNA. I was at Westville Boys High in 1974 and 75 when we stood on the side of the road watching Derek Price of Westwell Athletics Club win both of those comrades, and I remember saying to myself, one day. So, Andrew, don't say never.

SPEAKER_01 24:42

Thank you very much, Alec, and to all our listeners, viewers, and clients, please like like, subscribe, and please just enjoy the podcast. Thank you very much, everyone. Cheers.