My local run club started up again this week. There were several rules around participation including a twenty-person total cap, we would be broken into smaller groups for the run, and we would be required to wear a face covering when in close proximity to others. I was on the fence on whether to go but ultimately I put my name on list and showed up.
Doing things that were once considered standard or casual can be a bit bewildering these days. In the past couple of weeks, I\u2019ve gotten my hair cut and had the oil changed in my car. In both scenarios, the other people and I were wearing masks but besides the visible evidence of how these appointments were different than before, there\u2019s a mental tax to stepping out into something \u201cnormal\u201d when our circumstances clearly are not. My haircut was a little disappointing but I sure didn\u2019t want to sit in the chair longer than I had to so I left with the thought that I\u2019ve got a few good hats and my hair will grow out. Poor or sound judgement? Hard to say, but clearly a pandemic will affect your thinking.
Yet, once I\u2019ve done something normal in the new not-so-normal way, it\u2019s also interesting how much better I usually feel overall. It\u2019s one reason I decided to go to run club. We were going to meet outside, there wouldn\u2019t be any snacks or beverages afterwards, and there certainly wouldn\u2019t be the usual high-fives and fist-bumps, but it would be similar to the Wednesday evenings we all enjoyed up until mid-March.
We all arrived, stood several feet apart from each other in a very large circle, then headed out for the trail. Being on a trail was an adjustment and as my standard routes these days are mostly flat, there were a couple of hills on the route that were not as much fun as they might have been several months ago. It was the first time I\u2019d run in the late afternoon or evening since March. I thought I\u2019d consumed enough fluids ahead of time but it was in the low nineties and a couple of miles in, I cramped up a little. Fortunately this occurred around the time the course was flattening out so it didn\u2019t impact me too much.
At first, running near others requires some getting used to, yet it seemed to be a similar feeling for all of us. A little ways in, at least for me, it started to feel like one of our old Wednesdays, albeit with masks and staying further apart. In spite of no snacks, beverages, or presentation from a product rep after the run was completed, we all sat around in the grass for a little while, enjoying the chance to meet in person again and do something that resembled normal.
Even though we\u2019ve found plenty of ways to connect online, I\u2019m not sure what being more confined to our homes and physically away from people will do to our individual and collective psyche. As we continue to figure out how to grapple with this crisis, perhaps we\u2019ll gradually find small, social-distancing-responsible ways to at least echo what we once felt as normal and enjoy connecting in-person with our friends and colleagues. (From a purely running standpoint, it may also take some adjustments, whether it be for course types we\u2019re rusty on, or times of day we\u2019re running, or other factors.) It\u2019s a pleasant change from the past several months and if we can continue with it, maybe we\u2019ll be a little closer to what we enjoyed even if we have to wait a little longer for this situation to ease.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
My local run club started up again this week. There were several rules around participation including a twenty-person total cap, we would be broken into smaller groups for the run, and we would be required to wear a face covering when in close proximity to others. I was on the fence on whether to go … <\/p>\n