sunday runday

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My Winter Runs Need to Get a Grip

Sunday Run Day and for the first time in two months I took part in a group run with a small cohort of friends.

Our locality has been on pandemic-related lockdown since late November, and all my runs have been solo. But COVID-related hospitalizations have been down. New case numbers have been declining. And the doctors say we can ease gently away from some of the stricter restrictions… like avoiding all non-essential personal contact. In other words, we can run together again.

A pair of traction footwear strap-ons rest in fresh snow.

Of course, it also happens to be that we are in the middle of winter. In the middle of a cold snap. In the middle of temperatures averaging minus twenty and offering up moderate quantities of snow.

Over a series of early morning text messages we pushed our usual eight-thirty meetup time by a couple hours to tempt the sun’s generosity. Also, given that it’s been months since we’ve seen each other in person, it was decided that a location more interesting than the regular high school parking lot was on the table for debate.

Luckily I never take my grips out of the backseat of my truck in the winter, and when we converged in a river valley parking lot to engage the single-track snow-bound trails therein I easily added some necessary traction to my street sneakers.

Three people run down a snowy wilderness trail.

Some winters I splurge and buy myself winter trainers. They are extra grippy and have a bit more insulation. It makes it necessary to get out into the rough for longer, colder runs for a season or two … y’know, to justify the cost.

But in a pinch, a pair of, wrap-on traction grips will substitute.

We ran.

Into the trails.

Across a bridge.

Into a meadow.

Up and down, left and right.

Between towering poplar dusted with snow.

Eight kilometers later, twisting and turning through trail packed by a hundred other feets and a few dozen fat-bike tires, threaded between fresh knee-deep snow, we had logged the first group run of 2021.

I missed those.

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Maybe It’s Cold Outside?

It’s Sunday Runday, and I’m going to stay in and ride the stationary bike.

I woke up and looked at the temperature as I was letting the dog out at 6am. It was twenty degrees below zero with a brisk wind.

Also, it snowed. Snowed lightly covering up the layer of glassy ice covering a double-digit percentage of the sidewalks.

And… whimper, whine, whimper…

The truth of it is I wouldn’t have run today anyhow. Injury happens. It happened to me. And even little blips, like when you slip and slide on the ice (but don’t fall) and crank a muscle in your lower back and no matter how much you stretch it and work it there is a angry little knot there that is going to take a solid week to go away before you can stand up one hundred percent straight again. Oh, and don’t muck with back injuries.

It’s Sunday Runday, and it’s my double-excuse day.

Too cold.

Too injured.

Too much of an opportunity to get on the bike and do some low impact cross-training instead of running outdoors in the ice and snow and wind and cold.

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Recalling Quarantine Ultra

I hadn’t forgotten about it. At the time it was just a goofy online race. But I was there.

This morning I was flipping through the digital pages of the December 2020 issue of Outdoor magazine. A sentence on an article titled “Unprecedented” caught my eye.

Something something backyard quarantine ultra something something.

Sunday Runday, and I was reminded of a chilly Saturday morning in early April 2020. I logged into a zoom meeting on my iPad. I laced up my shoes, pulled on my mitts and running toque, and swiped through screen after screen after screen of thumbnail video feeds from around the world.

The Quarantine Backyard Ultra was the idea of someone in Calgary, a few hundred kilometers south of where I live. It was this Alberta thing, we’d invited the world, and a bunch of my running crew signed up. Along with about 2,400 other runners.

Sure. I’d thought. A nice way to do something, anything, now that we were a couple weeks into a fresh pandemic lockdown.

We’d figured we were quarantine veterans then. Little did we know that nine months later I’d be sitting here, pondering yet another solo run on a Sunday morning, and thinking nostalgically back on the early days of social isolation.

I quit after a mere two laps. About fourteen kilometers of running. Not because I couldn’t have done a third, but because the Kid had made pancakes for me and they were steaming hot and ready to eat when I’d finished my second lap. Had I known how big this thing would be, I would have pushed for three or four laps I think.

Days later — yes, really days — a small subset of runners were still clocking laps. One lap every hour on the hour. I would log into the feed to watch for a bit, but livesteaming a stranger racing on a treadmill is only actually interesting in the abstract sense. The winner logged 63 laps and four hundred and some kilometers.

Nine months later I’m reading about this race in a magazine. I’ve heard it’s been written about all over the place. It was a thing.

The Quarantine Backyard Ultra sparked imaginations because of many things; the notion of it, the lengths some people went to push themselves, and the sheer goofiness of running a race around your own neighbourhood with a video conference as a finish line. But it also gave people a bit of hope. That’s what I got out of it, at least.

Posted on episode 10

Single Track Somebody

Sunday Runday.

Still locked into my solo routine from an abundance of pandemic lockdown caution, I veered from my planned course yesterday. I left the house thinking of a simple suburban streets run, my typical get-er-done route. Instead, I turned ninety-degrees at the trail access, and trotted into the river valley to tackle a stretch of weaving single track.

I lamented last Sunday at the frustration of solo training. Friends who I usually spend multiple hours with every week, exploring local wilderness and who would have followed me (or vice versa) into a sketchy, frosty route through the wooded miles, are also sticking closer to home and training alone.

Yet I had some company on my single track trek.

A pair of fatbikers appeared and then followed a few dozen meters behind me at and into the trailhead.

The choppy snow was grippy enough for my modest pace, up and down and weaving through the forested valley terrain. We call this type running rollercoasters because its never flat, never straight, and never for the feint-of-heart. My pace always reflects on conditions and how I’m feeling.

But for a pair of fatbikes, I guess, it meant ride just slightly faster than a slow guy in sneakers. They paced me and crept closer and closer up behind, calling out some hellos and convo about the conditions, until about halfway along the kilometer-long route I felt it wise to pull left and let them pass.

Then I kept pace with them for the last three hundred meters, give or take, until we dodged back into the nearby neighbourhood.

In short, training alone is lonely, but temporary training friends are never in short supply if you know where to look.