Things were different then; all is different now. I tried to explain somehow.
Pearl Jam – “Hard to Imagine”
We just reached the first anniversary of living through the COVID-19 pandemic and, like everyone else, I’m taking time to pause and reflect on the past year. In some ways my life now is indistinguishable from The Before Time, as I had already been working my full-time job remotely for several years prior to March 2020. I’ve also been fortunate to maintain that employment during this tumultuous year, though I had colleagues who fell victim to furloughs and eventual layoffs. That increased my workload and ate into my precious free time, so I had to shuffle my priorities. As a result, I spent much less time running these past 12 months.
Ryan the Runner in March 2021 is radically different than his March 2020 counterpart. As 2020 began, I was still riding high from completing my second marathon, and I began plotting a course leading to another one in the fall. I felt incredibly fit and brimming with optimism. By year’s end that fitness had vanished and my confidence waned, as the idea of running more than three or four miles seemed like something I’d done in another lifetime.
I had grand ambitions for 2020, and I was taking steps during the first few months to achieve my goals, not knowing that a dangerous virus was equally determined, rapidly working its way around to globe and poised to upend everyone’s plans. My first step was to maintain a modest mileage base through the winter months. I joined a community Facebook group challenging members to move at least one mile per day, which motivated me to get outside when nothing else would. My wife, similarly on a kick to keep moving through the winter months, picked up a second-hand treadmill so we could jog in the basement when the frostiness outside proved too much. The New Hampshire winter was relatively mild, though, so I found myself on the road more often than not.
In January I also resolved to join a running club. After a tiny bit of research I joined Millennium Running out of Bedford. One of the perks of membership was the weekly workout on the indoor track at the Hampshire Dome in Milford. It was a great chance to run in someplace other than my wooded neighborhood and commit to a training routine during the winter months.
I didn’t know it at the time, but the Thursday night workouts would prove to be one of the highlights of my year. In what soon became unthinkable, I joined a few dozen other runners under the bright fluorescent lights and recirculated air of the dome, and we ran laps and laps and laps on the track while two or three soccer matches – with teams comprised of either teenagers or middle-aged men – played out on the artificial turf bounded by the track. We’d warm up by jogging for a few laps, run through a quick series of exercises (high knees, skips, etc.), listen as the coaches explained the night’s workout plan, and then set to work. The workouts were largely about interval training, and I was thriving by both learning from runners with more experience than me and running alongside other people. The workouts could be as challenging as one wanted to make them – “getting comfortable with being uncomfortable,” as one of the coaches put it – and I challenged myself every Thursday night to make myself feel like the two-hour round-trip to the dome and back home had been worth the time.
After a month of consistent weekly workouts I was yielding some promising results. Looking at my Garmin and Strava data I could see my pace getting faster on the usual routes from my house. And with the mild winter and my consistency in getting outside I was maintaining a nice average of weekly miles, peaking in mid-February when in one week I covered 30 miles, a feat I’m sure I had never achieved in winter. I felt great, devoid of aches, pains, or injuries, and I was boundlessly optimistic about what the spring, summer, and fall held in store. I registered for June’s Old Port Half Marathon with the goal of trying to set a new personal record, and soon thereafter I began researching fall marathons as I enjoyed my morning coffee. It was early March.
Everything seemed to come to an abrupt halt on the mesmerizing night of March 11, when we collided head on with the grim reality that the world was changing. That was the night that, within the span of a couple of hours, the president locked down international travel, the National Basketball Association postponed the season indefinitely after a member of the Utah Jazz tested positive for COVID-19 right before a tip-off with the Oklahoma City Thunder, and American treasure Tom Hanks announced he’d contracted the virus.
Clearly workouts at the dome were no longer going to happen, and the prospects of participating in various races and other public events scheduled for summer and fall immediately dimmed. In the early days of the pandemic there was a need to remain optimistic and cheerful, to maintain the ability to look forward to things even though epidemiologists and medical professionals politely tried not to laugh in our faces as we spoke of things returning to normal by late spring or early summer. In this new reality I began spending more time on my computer out of necessity; the downsizing at my company increased the burden on those still collecting a paycheck, and I could no longer escape my virtual workplace at five o’clock to head outside for a run. The new economic anxieties fostered by the shutdown in March added a pressure (imagined or not) to exceed professional expectations, just to demonstrate that I was a valuable and necessary.
So things changed for me as they did for everyone else. I continued to get outside for runs when I could, but my motivation had diminished. What was I working toward if races were canceled for the foreseeable future? For a time I kept lacing up the shoes, and on May 31 I even made sure to squeeze in a three-mile run so I could say I’d run a nice, even 350 miles during the first five months of the year. That turned out to be my final hurrah for running in 2020; in the remaining seven months of the year I ran an underwhelming 50 miles.
I’m happy to report that I didn’t allow the pandemic to turn me into a total slug. I embraced the raceless year as an opportunity to focus on strength training and cardio programs in my basement. Instead of pounding the pavement I pumped some weights and did some high intensity interval training, cycling through Beachbody programs like LIIFT4, Six Weeks of the Work, and Muscle Burns Fat. But the sudden shift in activities and goals invited introspection. Had I been running for the wrong reasons? Was I driven solely by the carrot dangling from the end of the stick, chasing only the race day and not enjoying the journey leading to the destination? Did I ever genuinely enjoy it? Was I ever going to do it regularly again?
I answered my questions one day in the fall when I went running for the first time in a couple of months. I set out without earbuds or expectations; I wanted to enjoy the sunny day, the vibrant New England autumn foliage, and breathe in the season’s crisp air. The first mile was slow and unsensational, and my legs protested at having to relearn some long-forgotten task. Things started to feel better during the second mile, and as I neared the third I remembered what I’d been missing. I had missed the rhythm of striding down the road, missed looking behind to admire how much ground I had covered, missed being alone with my thoughts and puzzling over things while my mind reached a different cognitive state due to my increased blood flow, missed the challenge of climbing hills and the satisfaction of conquering them as I reached the crest and eased down the backside. Quite simply, I had forgotten how important running can be for my mental health and general well-being.
2020 was a year of loss. People lost lives, loved ones, income, savings – the list is long. But whether or not you were directly affected by the actual coronavirus, you lost your sense of normalcy. I needed to get some distance from the whole situation to realize the pandemic impacted my lifestyle significantly.
We’ve turned the calendar to 2021 and things are remarkably different. The vaccine is here, and there’s reason to be optimistic even if things will still feel abnormal for a while longer. In 2019 I wrote about how I sought redemption for my lackluster finish in my first marathon the year before. I didn’t have a theme for 2020 – I think everyone was just looking to get by as best they could. In 2021 I’m going to reclaim my sense of normalcy and hit the road more often. I’ve made good on the vow to myself so far, as I’ve already logged more miles during the first quarter of this year than I did in the latter half of last year. There might even be a marathon to gear up for this fall (fingers crossed). I’ll see you out on the road, or wherever it is you try to reclaim your own sense of normalcy.
Here’s to a better year for us all.
Ryan Considers 