Running in a time of Covid

Deserted London - peaceful sightseeing run 10 May 2020 📸hafi.run

Gosh, I can’t believe it has been a year since the start of the first lockdown. It has been a transformational year in many ways both negative and positive. It was awful seeing the devastating news stories from Italy and New York every night left me with a heavy heart and quite a sense of heightened anxiety. I realised pretty soon that I needed to deploy some coping mechanisms, as well as consuming less news, it was time to lace up.

We are pretty certain that the virus swept through our household of five, most scarily my three three year old daughter testing positive after being hospitalised for 3 days with Covid pneumonia. The rest of us all had one of the different symptoms but within two weeks, mercifully, we recovered free to enjoy our time together.

Having been unable to run and a little feverish for two weeks, I took baby steps in terms of getting back to running. Especially, as an hour of exercise or walking was all that we were allowed to do here in UK. I had no plan, no event to train for. Like a lot of you the event I was targeting, an autumn half marathon, had been postponed.

2020 was my highest mileage, well km in this chart! 📸hafi.run

So I just ran by feel, randomly deciding which route I would take, never really knowing what distance I would take. It was like playing sightseeing bingo, I would lace up and decide, say today I would make sure I would see Buckingham Palace or the Bank of England and head there. If legs felt good I would keep on going. What made it so pleasant was that the weather was magnificent with record sunshine in many parts of Europe from the last week of March to the end of May 2020. Apparently, in the UK only one summer in the last 48 years had more sun than last May. 

We all learnt to function differently, social and work interactions by Zoom, Skype gym classes, weights, treadmills and Peloton selling out. I just ran, ran more as you can see in the charts 2020 was far the most mileage I had done in any year. There was a point in May I was effectively doing a half marathon every few weeks. Just because.

Thank you healthcare workers 📸hafi.run 10 April 2020

The benefits of course were not only physical, but also mental wellbeing, social interaction - particularly here in the UK you can exercise with one other person. My weekly long run with a university friend has become one of the highlights of my week. Solo runs are sometimes mindful, sometimes cathartic working through any stresses, sometimes inspirational when things fall into place and you have that Aha moment. The most extraordinary thing was how quiet the city was, running into a deserted Leicester Square on 11am on a weekday, when normally you would only experience that before 7am. Of course the thrill is temporary and I cannot wait for in-person race to start again.

It has been great to see so many people, new to running out on the streets and the interest in running has escalated. I really do hope that the interest in running that pandemic has brought continues and continues to enrich our sport.

So last year was a PB in terms of distance and just keeping healthy and sane was a great achievement for us all. As we look forward to coming out of lockdown and hopefully in person events restarting, I will be looking at sharpening my pace.

As we look forward to improving weather and the loosening of lockdown restrictions, here’s wishing you a glorious spring & summer season of running and the best of health. So lace up, get out there!