COVID-19 Changed My Relationship With Running For the Better

Everyone in the running community has had their lives affected in some shape or form. Some people have had their Olympic dreams put on hold, others have had the opportunity of completing their first organised marathon stripped from them. Myself included. Others, however, have discovered running as a result of the COVID-19 outbreak. The numbers suggest that there’s more of us running recreationally than ever before (please see below for the report). You wouldn’t expect any positives to come from a global pandemic, but I have realised over the past 5 months that this path we have all been forced onto has shone a new light on running and the impact it has on our lives: for the better.

With the Edinburgh Marathon being cancelled, I was forced to find a new purpose with running. Since November, my life revolved around four concisely mapped out running sessions per week — food to fuel them, always having the kit to perform them in before or after work, and scheduling your social life (or what’s left of it) around having an ideal amount of sleep to run the next day. But, we’ve had the need for structure and periodisation ripped away from the majority of us.

So what do we do?

We’ve been forced to think about what aspects of running we actually enjoy. We were stuck indoors for such a long period of time, that when we were able to go outside, exercise needed to be streamlined to our own vision of fun. Otherwise, we’d struggle once we had to go back inside again. This isn’t something you would necessarily think about if you were training for a specific event. You more than likely had to complete at least one session that you didn’t want to. But why?

For the event.

Not for you.

When I was training for Edinburgh, I realised that I’m going to have to get used to running on relatively flat, concrete courses. Why would I train on my local trails when I’m going to have to run 26.2 miles with the majority on concrete. Because that’s what I was frequently running on, I began to assume that was what I enjoyed the most. Which I do to some degree because you learn to like your surroundings. But what I didn’t know is that there were miles worth of looping trails that gave a completely different experience.

So when the time came to head out for my first run since lockdown; I thought to myself: “What do I want to do?”. I really didn’t know, but I thought I may as well keep my base levels of fitness up and explore the areas that I haven’t touched yet. What I didn’t realise is that these new routes would become my favorites, since I began running again in 2017.

As I started to discover more and more off-road routes, I actually started to run more times per week than when I was training (for obvious furlough-related reasons). Then when I would return home, I would just look on my maps where I wanted to explore next. I wouldn’t even look at my pace per mile or if I had ranked higher on a local segment; which sounds ridiculous. That was an essential part of my previous post-run routine: to see if I was going to reach my target time for Edinburgh. That was all that mattered, regardless if I had fun or not.

It was after a month of lockdown running that I started to see what direct effect these runs were having on my ability to stay sane in lockdown. The runs were bringing me a sense of freedom, excitement, and fun; things which were incredibly hard to come by, especially from March onwards. I found that I was waking up in the morning with a sense of purpose and that working via Zoom became strangely enjoyable. Who’d have thought it?

The freedom that was taken from us and put on hold for the next few months was beginning to slowly come back into my life. Even though something I had been working really hard for had also been stripped from me, I actually became happier than when I was training. Running didn’t become something I needed to do. It was something I just wanted to do, for the sake of doing it. I even ended up running a quicker 5km and 10km time on the trails than I ever did on the road.

So how exactly did this new sense of fun put me onto a new path within running?

Well firstly, it has made me realise that I do actually still want to complete the Edinburgh Marathon. Whenever that may be. Even though the training behind it wasn’t always fun, it’s still a goal. To achieve a goal, there’s always a little bit of dirty work that needs to be done so that you’re as prepared as you can be. Which is something that I’m more than willing to do. The new found love of running has made me realise that it truly is a goal that matters to me.

Secondly, I’ve had my eyes opened to how adventurous running can be. I thought trail running was something I’d never be interested in, especially given my history in sprinting. I thought whatever was the smoothest and most predictable surface was the best to run on and that you needed to go out at set times to get the best conditions to get the most out of your training. Nope. Throw your trainers on, go explore a new trail, go as far as you like, and take as long as you want to do it. Heck, throw a rucksack on too if you want, make a day of it. I am definitely going to enter a few organised trail races as soon as I can, back home in Wales.

Last but not least, I’ve realised that running can be anything you want it to be. Prior to this pandemic, it was something that needed to be done X number of times per week, at a particular speed and tempo, to be in good shape for one event. That didn’t mean that I don’t enjoy some aspects of training and aiming for a particular goal. But exploring different aspects of long-distance running has shown me that it doesn’t need to become a tax on my social life and freedom. I have made a lot of friends whilst trotting along my new off-road routes (whilst socially distanced of course); which have been part of the reason that running is now directly associated with my social life. I get to see my friends and go and see new places with them. Running is no longer keeping me from seeing my friends — it’s the reason that I’m getting to see so much of them!

Lockdown has changed all of our lives, for better or for worse. Even though these new aspects of our lives couldn’t have been forced upon us in worse circumstances, I am grateful for the places I’ve seen and the faces I have met as a result of them. I cannot wait to eventually get to run the Edinburgh Marathon. But in the meantime, I’m going to keep exploring on/off-road and keep reminding myself that running is NOT a chore. You just need to make the most of it in the best way YOU see fit.

I hope you’re all keeping safe and are finding a way to keep on running.

Resources:

https://www.runnersworld.com/uk/news/a32361543/garmin-report-uk-ockdown/