Wednesday 22 April 2020

Running Round in Circles



One of my now very occasional contributions to this blog.

The beginning

On 20th March I ran up Latrigg before dinner, an exercise that I've indulged in dozens if not hundreds of times over the past five years or so. I lingered on the top and looked at the view over Keswick and towards the hills beyond and wondered how long it would be before I was here again. Although we had quite a major job on at our place in Keswick we had already decided to move back to Chester for the duration of what was going to come. Two days later we were home and a day after that the "lockdown" began.

Living

I'm sure it's different for everyone but I think Jan and I don't have anything to complain about. We've been retired well over a decade now and are used to spending time with each other. I went to the supermarket for the first couple of weeks but as we are in a notional "vulnerable" group we were able to get a more or less weekly delivery after that so shopping is reduced to very occasional visits to the village shop for anything we forget or run out of. I haven't driven a car for over three weeks now except to run an engine up to temperature and move tyres to a different place on the perimeter; I'm not sure that's really necessary these days but the engineer in me still won't let go. We've slipped into an easy existence, enjoying the simple things and getting round to a lot of jobs we should have done years ago. The beautiful weather has helped of course, the somewhat dreaded clearing of over thirty years worth of accumulated junk from the loft will have to wait for the rainy times which will inevitably come eventually. Plenty of activity on line in the evenings with friends or family. The weeks seem to have flown by so far.

I've cut down the amount of both mainstream news and social media that I absorb. Though there are inspiring stories in both, I just got a bit fed up with the continual search for blame and the number of press experts and armchair critics telling everyone what has been done wrong and how exactly we should be living our lives. It seems to me that we are where we are, everyone is doing their best, some heroically so, very few have anything other than the best motives. More encouragement and less criticism would be good. 

I wasn't sure what to do about exercise. Jan has never cared for going out alone so I resolved that we would go for a walk four times a week. The footpaths around our village are all on agricultural land with gates and stiles and occasional narrow chicane sections, and our canal towpath is also narrow, so we have resorted in general to the lanes, now almost completely free from traffic except the odd tractor or delivery van. We haven't got bored with them yet and our outings normally cover three or four miles. We meet people in the village and within maybe a half mile perimeter but once beyond it's remarkably quiet. I feel for the city dwellers forced to pick their way carefully through crowded parks. Folk around us all seem well tuned in and some sort of local etiquette is evolving on generally  who crosses to the other side of the road and when in most situations. We thought about driving the twenty minutes in either direction which would get us to the countryside we are more used to exercising in but so far have chosen not to. We're far from bored yet, and the word is that most of the car parks that access places such as the Sandstone Trail and the Clwyds are closed anyway.

Running

For my three days running I have again stuck to the local lanes. Not a new experience but one I haven't really engaged in for some years now, dealing with (a) asphalt, and (b) flat (a local run round here rarely adds up to more that two or three hundred feet of ascent, even if you work at it). But I'm conscious that unless I keep up some sort of diligent activity, when we do get to some degree of release from the current situation there is a real chance that I may not be able to pick up running meaningfully again at all. Easy to start again from scratch when you're fifty, less likely when heading towards the mid seventies.

The outings I have settled on and pursued for the last three or four weeks now are two steady runs on Monday and Friday at just within aerobic pace (MAF if you like but not as strictly controlled). Monday is normally twelve miles and Friday gradually inching up depending how I feel, last week's was something over fifteen, but I'll peg this one back a bit every fourth week for recovery. For the past two or three years I haven't done any faster stuff other than a fairly regular Saturday morning Parkrun, so on Wednesday's I've gone back to a session that I used to do in the past, a six mile loop into which I build a gradually increasing pyramid of intervals at a bit faster than 5k pace. So far I'm up to  3,4,4,3 (all in minutes, with a 3 minute jog between each); plenty of scope for improvement here! 

I pondered about how to deal with the lack of hills. I admire those who have the patience and bloody-mindedness to make continuous repetitive ascents of their house staircase, but it's not for me, I have too low a boredom threshold. In the end I went back to a device that I last used when I lived in the flatness of the Netherlands nearly twenty years ago. I had thrown it away, so I built another  -  an 8" high step. There are still some step videos around on the net if you look around a bit, I settled on one that I had used in the past which gives a 45 minute mostly aerobic workout with 620 feet of climb (I had to watch it through with counter in hand to establish that figure!). So I do that on two of my "non-running" days. On a third, I set a quiet metronome to establish a rhythm, find a good TV programme to watch and simply step up and down for a while. At current pace I can generate a thousand feet an hour, so last week's session was an hour and a half for fifteen hundred feet.

So with three running days totalling 30-35 miles and three step days which added to the modest height gains on the runs get into the 3000-3500ft area, I'm hoping that's enough to keep me somewhere near in shape. I do miss the hills though, and I've had to buy a new pair of road shoes - the first shoes I've bought that weren't on a substantial discount for many years, justified on the grounds that no cash is currently going on petrol!


What happens next?

There is a lot of speculation now about "when the lockdown is released" but looked at logically I can't see that we are in any different place now in terms of actually combatting the Corona virus than when this all began. We have bought time and prevented the fatalities from being higher, but risk of infection spread are exactly the same. The game won't change until

(a) Sufficient numbers of the population have had the virus to significantly lower the risk of others catching it. This isn't going to happen anytime soon; the current measures, for all the right reasons, are actually preventing this.

(b) A vaccine becomes available, effective and in large quantities. Consensus of informed opinion seems to be that this won't happen this year.

(c) Drugs are discovered that can reduce the fatalities arising from serious infection to "acceptable" levels. Information on this one is sparse, but the fact that no-one seems to be championing it at present  suggests that even if feasible it is some way off.

Without one one of these, it seems to me that any form of easing of restrictions will still involve social distancing rules, maybe in addition to use of masks, etc when the various knowledgeable authorities can agree on effectiveness and in what situations.

So I'm afraid a return to the world as we knew it is some way off.


The future of events.

I'm sure any active runner will by now have had their plans for this year completely disrupted. I was fortunate to complete two races, the Brecon to Cardiff and the Millenium Way, and am prepared to believe that they may be the only ones I will be able to look back on for the year.

Events I was due to run already confirmed as cancelled or postponed are Hardmoors 55 (March), Highland Fling (April) and Lakeland 100 (July).  I have several others up to the end of August which I think will inevitably go the same way.

I'm going to stray into the area of prediction now which is of course dangerous, but sometimes our own ideas are all we have to work on to allow us to plan what we will do until whatever happens happens. Here is how I think things MAY shake out:

1. In a few weeks time I think the restrictions on what we can do will be eased. The economy will have to get back into some sort of increased activity, but there will be rigid social distancing attached. So I think our license to travel to and enjoy the outdoors will be returned. But it will be policed and if abused will be removed again.

2. It is a real step up from allowing people to enjoy an area while distancing themselves from others, to staging events whose purpose is to bring people together to achieve a common goal.

3. However, the style of event and overall numbers involved may have some bearing. Events like the Lakeland 50/100 which involves many hundreds of people camping in close proximity, travelling on packed buses to a mass start then occupying trails which will be crowded for several hours afterwards will not be feasible until social distancing measures are finished, next year at the earliest. But you could maybe see lower-key races involving much lower numbers in low population areas being more possible.

4. Even if some styles of event are deemed possible, they will face the following difficulties:

(i) Sorting out what measures are necessary to make them acceptably safe, and getting those agreed with stakeholders will take some time, so I can't see anything going ahead until the autumn at the very earliest.

(ii) Insurance for the organisers may be impossible.  They will not be able to guarantee that the duty of care measures they put in place will prevent infection. Whether this will be got round by some sort of specific disclaimer I wouldn't speculate.

(iii) Organisers will face two competing lobbies of opinion. One group will argue that such events are beneficial to the health of the competitors and the economy of the local area, the other group that it is irresponsible to risk increased infection rates ("putting lives at risk") by staging events that bring people together. You can see this debate becoming more public than is normal in ultra-running circles.

Faced with these, it would be understandable for potential organisers to stay out of the game until things become more certain (if they can survive that long, remember that while some organisations are competent and committed groups of amateurs, for others it is their livelihood at stake).

Personally, I have mentally written off the rest of 2020, and if anything does happen later in the year it will be a welcome bonus.

Until then I think we just have to stay as fit as we can and recognise that at times there are more important things than going out to play in the hills.

Keep safe while you're running in circles.



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