26.2 Ways to Run

I think racing the way we're used to is gone forever. There! I've said it. No more long queues at the portaloos before the start. No more corrals with 1,000 runners touching, shaking hands, and wishing each other luck. No more post-race hugs and tears, not unless you're part of the same household. So let's reverse engineer a race and see if we can come up with a picture Social distancing So, there are 10,000 of us converging into one spot in the city. How can you make sure we all observe social distancing? That's a bit of an issue unless we're running in the desert or high in the mountains where there are acres to spare.  The queueing system We start by creating an orderly queue. In fact, we create many orderly queues around the access area to prevent overcrowding. First of all, the zone must be cordoned off for the queue system to work. Otherwise, everybody does what everybody does when there's no system in place: we invade the zone. So, all ru...

The Coronavirus pandemic has forced us to add new roles to our lives (teacher, cook, cleaner, entertainer, dog walker, you get the idea) and re-evaluate what performance means under those circumstances. In my previous post , I compared the current situation to training for a marathon and being asked to run an Ironman instead. It's doable but don't expect high performance in every discipline. How does that pan out to running? Let's face it, at the moment, there are many variables outside our control and we have to find the way to make the most of the opportunities we have, whether it is running-related or life in general. Identify the constraints I was reaching the end of the training cycle for the Paris marathon when the announcement of the cancellation came (that is 4 weeks before the race). I remember that Sunday I ran the Bohermeen half marathon as my last pre-marathon race. One day I had a race obejctive in mind, the next day I had no race and tons of disappoinmen...