The Etiquette of Exercise

I haven't been too enthusiastic about the many "virtual" events going on at the moment, mostly a lot of running around in circles it seemed to me, but then the proposal from the West Highland Way Race team caught my imagination. I have to declare an interest here though, I've done the "real" version a few times over the years and while I've had a couple of summers' rest from it recently I always intended to go back for one or two more. I did have a bit of a dream that I could make the 2021 race my 100th ultra but that won't happen now as even if I could catch up the events I've missed this year, next year's event will be full to overflowing with entrants deferring from this year. So the "virtual" version, timed to finish at the cut-off time of the actual event, and divided into three legs to mimic real places on the course looked like a worthwhile enterprise to somehow stay in touch with the WHW atmosphere.

In the virtual gig you have 9,5 days in total to run the 95 miles of the course, and my first thought was to do just that, 10 miles a day. Even at my pedestrian pace a sub-20 hour total would be on, a time I could never have dreamed of on the actual course (my personal best "for real" was 22 hours 23 minutes when I was a lad of not quite 65). I'm sure we will see some cracking performances though as every entrant plays their own particular game, devised to meet their individual preferences and restrictions. But I'm pretty lucky, I don't have any work to go to or other promises to keep so I decided it would be fairer to the course to try and recreate as much of the WHW experience as I could. So I divided the course into eleven sections based on well-known official and unofficial checkpoints and determined to construct a course that I could run to replicate as far as possible the distance, elevation gain and style of running represented in each of these sections.  This would be an interesting exercise in itself, but the first question to be answered was where to do it.

With no restrictions I could reach a perfect area on the Clwydian Hills, about a twenty minute drive from Chester.  This range which rises to just above the 1700ft contour and is traversed by the Offa's Dyke path has long, undulating jeeptracks, 1000ft climbs, sections of rugged, bouldery path and calm woodland trails, in fact everything that you get on the West Highland Way. The only problem is that it is in Wales, and Wales is closed.

I'm happy not to go to Wales if that's what the Welsh government wants, but it prompted me to look at the government guidance on travelling for exercise in Wales, Scotland and England just to see what it actually said. Up until now I had only seen bulletins from the various police forces, supposedly knowledgeable items in the national press and of course all the pronouncements of the social media experts. If you look at their official websites, the Welsh government advises that you exercise as close as possible to home, ideally starting and finishing from home without driving. The Scottish government advises that you exercise within your local area, adding that a distance a distance of five miles could be considered as being within your locality. The English government says you can drive as far as you like to exercise so long as you return home on the same day. Oh dear, however have we got to here? Apart from this I was amazed at the sheer length of the advice documents on what seems to me to be a fairly simple business.

Personally, I have three rules which I stick to as my approach to dealing with the current situation:

1. Stay 6 feet away from everyone except for incidents of a few seconds (paying a bill for example).

2. Wash hands as soon as possible after touching a surface that could have been used by others.

3. Stay aware at all times to remember to apply rules 1 and 2. (I could have said stay alert instead of aware but apparently this is a word that people in England don't understand and get confused by).

Now if I had to go to work or negotiate more challenging situations I might have to introduce another rule or two, but for going out for a run, going shopping and anything else I personally might need to do these three seem fine for me. If I keep to them, the risk that I will catch or pass on an infection is very low. Not zero, but very low.

But if you use this as a basis for working out some advice to give people, it's difficult to see how you could sensibly arrive at any of the governmental policies outlined above. If you ignore the spirit and play by the "rules", the English policy allows people to make long car journeys, coming back tired after long days out with all the potential for greater demands on motoring and even emergency services, while the Welsh and Scottish ones constrain people to exercise in their crowded parks and suburbs rather than letting them go a bit further afield to find spaces where they could more easily keep their distance from others.  I guess I'll never understand politicians.

I could go to the Peak, North West Yorkshire or even the Lakes to find my "West Highland Way Route". I once climbed all the Wainwrights in a year without staying a single night in the Lakes, so it's completely feasible. But I think in the current climate just a bit of common sense is required; stressing the infrastructure of the country when you don't really need to seems a bit selfish somehow. So I'll go along to my other local playground at Delamere Forest and the Sandstone Trail, twenty minutes in the opposite direction from the Clwyds (but unfortunately with only maximum height gains of around 300ft), and work it out over there.

The etiquette of going for a run these days.