pandemic fallout – Page 10

2021-03-072021-03-07

#RunClub : New Season, New Plans

Sunday Runday, and for my #RunClub approaching spring is usually a time of ramping up our training, distances, and intensities for all those summer races.

By mid-March of 2020 we were swimming in a kind of moving goalpost of uncertainty. Races were being cancelled without much warning. There was always a sense of… well, we’ll see how things look in a month or so.

As mid-March of 2021 approaches, nearly a year into the local reaction to the global pandemic, our uncertainty is a lingering aftershock of the past twelve months… mixed with hopeful optimism… sprinkled with a dash of we’re all kinda used to this now, right?

Last summer our “coffee club with a running problem” moved our weekly meetings to the parking lot of the recreation center (closed to general access) where we had been meeting to run for nearly a decade.

A club that was usually twenty to thirty members strong, accustomed to weekly Sunday morning takeovers of the local café, found itself instead quietly gathering in lawn chairs over asphalt drinking take-out coffees near the bumpers of our vehicles while we observed social distancing rules.

Then winter hit.

….and the deep, dark, cold lockdown happened.

Me out there running solo was a thing for at least three months. Coffees were virtual, hugging a mug at home and staring into the familiar glow of my iPad for a visit via screen. It’s only been in the last couple weeks that the weather has cracked through the zero degree barrier and made resuming the coffee club meetings in the local parking lot a real possibility.

Which is the noteworthy thing about today, I guess.

This Sunday last year was normal: races being planned, training being sorted, coffees being shared in close company.

Next Sunday last year was when all that normal-ness shattered.

We sat in our lawn chairs in the parking lot this morning after a ten klick run, wrapped in blankets and huddled in hoodies, sipping take-out coffees. It felt normal… which is the strangest part, because it still is so not normal.

A new season of not normal.

And I don’t know how to plan for that.

2021-02-142021-02-15

Spreadsheets & Footfalls

Sunday Runday, and I’ve been hiding in my basement from the brutal cold, focussing on cross-training which is never a replacement for actually getting out on the trails.

Not in quality of workout nor in the enjoyment of the effort.

Runners on a trail with thick green foliage.

I’ve also been reflecting on the last year of pandemic lockdown and realizing that I’ve let a few things slip. I used to be particularly diligent in how I recorded and tracked my fitness. Used to be, being the operative words.

Last year, for example, I completely neglected using the tracking tools I’d built for myself over the last decade. Before using Strava as a tracking crutch, I was meticulous in how I tracked and recorded my runs. I had built and refined a simple but useful goal-based spreadsheet for time and distance that calculated a few other factors in keeping myself on track. How much did I run. How did it compare. How much did I need to focus to catch up or get on track with an annual distance goal… that sort of thing.

I also made it available to others for a few years in a row on my previous website:

Make Your Own Copy of the 2021 Run Tracking Log

So, since I’ve started using it again and I’ve put in the effort of updating it for 2021, please make a copy and use it. It’s mostly simple, but I’ve always preached that in running (or life in general) information and data are powerful allies.

Spreadsheets can be for more than business and budgets.

They help track goals and progress.

They highlight gaps and changes in routine.

They offer insight into trends in your training.

And they provide an ongoing overview of what can be accomplished by day after day after day of hard work which is motivational and can often give that extra nudge towards improvement.

I’m neither fast nor competitive, but that also means I don’t have the benefit of a coach or endless access to resources that could improve my training. I’m just a guy who likes to get out on the trails, but that doesn’t mean it’s none of it is worth tracking. It’s worth it to me, and a spreadsheet is a simple and low-cost way to track it all.

2021-02-022021-02-09

Snowshoes on a Frozen Suburban Creek

After a bitterly cold week the sun broke through the chill for a few hours on a recent Saturday afternoon. I met with some friends to explore a local creek, frozen and snowy, on a pair of trusty snowshoes.

Three people snowshoe down a snowy frozen creek.

Adventure journal.

I live in a winter city.

It is cold, bitterly cold, freeze your cheeks frostbite cold for at least three months of the year. Nearly a million people live here. While not all of them savour the dark, chilly winters, most everyone embraces the hard reality of the climate. A hardy few revel in the snow and cold, and seek adventures unique to our northern location.

In this winter city, I live in a suburban neighbourhood framed on three sides by preserved wilderness. Incredibly, the city has made an active planning effort to avoid development (apart from trails and bridges) of the river valley (to my west and north) and the twisting feeder creek bed (to the east).

This means that I can access a vast ribbon of natural area on foot in fifteen. Alternatively, by driving for a mere few minutes I can find a place to park and step in.

Three people snowshoeing under a large fallen tree.

As the local pandemic restrictions loosened over the last week, I met some of my running crew for a snowy hike in the aforementioned creek bed.

We wore snowshoes.

Admittedly, these were unneccessary for ninety percent of the hike.

Yet there seemed to be something more interesting about story called “Going Snowshoeing on a Frozen Creek” than a tale merely titled “Winter Hiking!”

The Whitemud Creek feeds into the North Saskatchewan River to the north. This is a broad, shallow river that flows east across multiple Canadian provinces and eventually drains into the Hudson’s Bay, whereas the feeder creek is a half dozen meters wide at best. Though I’ve never actually tested it I would guess I could stand in the centre in springtime and not get my shirt wet.

The creek is frozen nearly solid by January each year, or at least solid enough to safely walk atop it. Thus, after a fresh fall of snow the creek makes for a smooth, flat course, and one boxed in on each side by an alternating combination steep banks as high as twenty or thirty meters, natural boreal forest, and a single track trail that paces through the woods that we often run in spring, summer or fall.

Three people standing on a frozen creek.

By far the best part of the two hour, seven kilometer hike was time spent with three friends. I had not seen in any of them in person for over two months. Over the holidays we video chatted, texted, and shared pictures and stories. This is not the same as walking beside someone through the snow, even if they are wearing a pandemic mask.

The ice crackled underfoot.

We climbed like giddy kids under and around multiple fallen trees that had not yet been cleared away by municipal maintenance crews.

We skidded across patches of bare ice on snowshoes meant for trudging through deep snow.

The sun warmed the air with a loving apricity as we paused for breath, or conversation, or just to take in the simple natural views. Even the clean, crisp air of a suburban creek bed was a brilliant change from the hour spent hunkered down in our houses simultaneously avoiding the cold and a contagious virus.

A winter city adventure, and a local travel adventure for a strange, frustrating year.

I don’t think I could have traded it for a better way to spend a Saturday afternoon.

2021-01-312021-02-09

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.