Blooming Lockdown

Well, that wasn't supposed to happen.

According to the training schedule forlornly stuck to the wall in front of me, I should be having a rest week, covering about thirty miles, having run sixty-odd last week and looking forward to the Tyne-Trail Ultra next week. But, what with one thing and another, all my training plans have gone right out of the window.

Starting the climb on my two-mile route

In the grand scheme of things, running isn't actually that important. In the midst of a world-shaking pandemic and untold personal tragedies, it is important to keep a sense of proportion. That being said, I find it helpful to put down my own thoughts on virtual paper and, who knows? they might help, or amuse others.

When the lockdown was imposed, I was just starting to build up my mileage in preparation for the Spine Flare race this summer. I wasn't doing as well as I'd like to have done, that's always the case. With the support of my physio, Iain, I had started to put in some serious miles without getting injured and I was experimenting with a variety of nutrition strategies to see me through the long days on the Spine. Then in mid-March, everything had to stop and over the next few weeks, all of the races I was planning to participate in were cancelled. My running just about ground to a halt. From fifty or sixty miles a week, I dropped down to five or ten. There are a few reasons for this:

• The fact that we are only allowed one period of exercise a day means that I had the choice of walking the dog with Sue or going for a run. Much of the time, this was a no-brainer, walking with Sue and Zaro was more important for me and my mental health than running on my own. After a few weeks, and as the weather warmed up, I realised that I could walk in my running kit and then when we got home, I could carry on and run for a while, having only gone out for one period of exercise. 
• I like running offroad. However, most of the long runs I can do around here involve paths that go through farmyards. If I were a farmer, I wouldn't want strangers running that close to my house and workplace at the best of times - less so now, so I really didn't want to go on any of my longer routes, even though the spring weather was so inviting.
• I can't maintain running long distances for long periods. Professional athletes talk about periodicity in training, building up for events and then allowing time for recovery. With no ultras on the horizon, it doesn't make sense to push really hard now.
• However, the real reason that I slowed down was that losing the goal of running in the Spine took all of the wind out of my sails, I just didn't care.

Slowly, but surely, I'm getting back to running. Over the last couple of weeks, I've really enjoyed a short, two-mile loop that I can run from the house. It includes over 500 foot climbing and a joyous galumph (see the video) back down the moor to the house. I'm generally not much of a one for timing myself and collecting Strava segments, but it's been fun to see my time improve for one climb up through the woods. I'm now the thirtieth fastest person on that climb - and the fastest person over sixty. 

Non-running related: I was delighted to discover the peak finder app, which identifies the hills that you can see. From the top of our moor (where the video was filmed), you can see a line of hills in the Yorkshire Dales. I had long wondered whether on particular peak was Ingleborough or Pen Y Ghent, well the app tells me that it is Ingleborough, but Pen Y Ghent is also visible. It's rather nice, at this point where the high hills are out of reach, to know that I can still see two of them on my little loop.

So what next? Well, the slight relaxation of lock-down means that I can start running a little more. I'm not planning on doing huge amounts, but it will be nice to get back to twenty or thirty miles a week. On Saturday, I'm planning an outing to my favourite trig-point. Avoiding running through farmyards, means that I'll have to face a 1,500 climb up roads, not my idea of fun, but it will be worth it to get onto the Pennine Way and to hear the curlews. I'm still well on course to hit 1,000 miles for the year, though I won't get there by June or July which was my original plan. 

Some people have been running extraordinary distances in their gardens, or by climbing their stairs. When I tried it, the look of incredulity on my neighbour's face each time I passed his end of the garden was enough to draw the experiment to an early and ignominious conclusion!

I've tentatively booked an ultra for February, so I'm going to be faced with trying to get fit for silly distances just as the weather gets foul again. I'm not entirely sure how I'll go about that, yet. I'm also wondering about entering a fifty miler in October. However, all plans are, for the moment tentative. I really hope that it is possible to hold the summer Spine race next year - I'd like to try it before I get too old. 

More importantly, I'd like to see my kids and grandkids again and we all have to stay safe and beat this virus. 

Socially distancing by standing in the beck to avoid a family on the footpath.