Merry COVID-mas

 This is likely to be my last post of this strange, stressful, frustrating year.

It won't be...mist.

For the first time in my professional life, I'm part of a company that shuts down from Christmas Eve 'til after new year's, and I can't wait to have some proper downtime in which to relax. It's been a bit of a stressful couple of weeks.

I've taken my moments of peace wherever I could find them.

Last Monday - December 7th - Tank was informed that there had been a confirmed positive Covid case in the warehouse. Since it was his closest work associate, we were both concerned, and he commenced self-isolation as soon as he returned home that evening. We booked a test for him, but couldn't get an appointment until Wednesday afternoon; they wouldn't test me at all, since I'd had no direct contact with the positive case.

The way ahead seemed dark.

The upside was this gave us some time for Tank to call CRA in an attempt to get his account unlocked, as we'd both been subject to fraudulent CERB claims back in July and he has no way of sitting on hold for more than an hour during the times that our government deigns to provide service to its citizens. He'd need his account to claim the new Canada Recovery Sickness Benefit so he could have some income while he was isolating.

It also meant I got some company on my afternoon lunch runs!

Tank was called Friday morning to confirm our fears: he'd tested positive for Covid, and since we'd both been experiencing some cold-like symptoms, I booked in to have myself tested on Saturday. I also had to inform my employer that I had potentially been infected when I last visited the office on Friday, December the 4th. Definitely not good times!

It also meant I needed to isolate as well, so an unpleasantly rainy afternoon became an opportunity for a trail run as I didn't expect many people to be out.

Resolving the issues with CRA took many calls and probably a full work day's total time on hold, and I continued to do my job full-time from home as I tried to help Tank resolve the issues. Bafflingly enough, my test came back negative - I'd been warned by the public health nurses at the test site that a false negative was a possibility, and to isolate according to the schedule given to Tank regardless of the result. Since he was to remain quarantined until the end of Thursday, December 17th, we ordered in some groceries to supplement what I had stocked in the freezer, and hunkered in at home.

Save for a bit of trail time, making sure I stayed well away from anyone but the trees.

Fortunately, we both seem to have had mild cases (assuming mine is even Covid); just some throat soreness, a runny nose, and some fatigue. I've dropped back to bare minimum distance for the most part, but continue to run once daily from Monday to Thursday and twice each Saturdays and Sundays.

Even discovering some beautiful new places.

Our symptoms seem to be fading, Tank has now been cleared to return to work on Monday, and we seem to have his affairs mostly in order with the government, so hopefully some peace can return to our lives in time for the holiday season so close at hand. It's been wonderful being spoiled with fresh-brewed coffee in the mornings; having company during the day and on runs; and getting a helping hand with a few things around the house...but I also value having un-distracted time to do my work, some of which requires intense concentration.

In running and in life, sometimes you just need a solo mission.

So it seems we've gone in for the full pandemic experience, just as the light of vaccine approvals appears to dawn on the horizon. Hopefully within a few months this will all just be the stuff of memory, letting us trade our masks for race bibs and gather to celebrate with our friends and family.

I truly wish you all the best as 2020 draws to a close - may you be filled with joy and festive spirit, surrounded by love and care, and stay happy and healthy all through the new year!

Be safe out there, and I'll see you in 2021!

Going beyond

 So last week I went off about how awesome timed races are, despite a few disadvantages.

One of which I'm going to explore a little more deeply.

A friend recently posed the question to me: if you have a certain goal you'd like to reach in a timed race, and you achieve that goal with time to spare, is it considered quitting if you don't keep going?

If you feel like I'm gonna go off into the weeds here, you may very well be right.

Obviously we all have our own ideas about what constitutes an "acceptable" outcome for a race, so what follows are just my own opinions. There's no use in getting bent out of shape about what some idiot on the internet thinks, and I guarantee I will be just as friendly and goofy toward you as I've always been even if you vehemently disagree with me. 

That said, I think there are only three situations in which it's acceptable to stop while there's still time on the clock:

Let's pick our way through them, shall we?

1. You are gravely injured or it is otherwise medically inadvisable to continue.

This one really ought to go without saying, but I am exactly the kind of knob who will just carry on regardless. See: multiple Horror Hill 6-hours, and definitely the inaugural Tally in the Valley 12-hour night race. I definitely don't advocate for people to continue running when they could do long-term damage - I'm just too dumb to stop. Follow the example of other people who are way brighter (and more talented) than I will ever be, and shut'er down if things go fruit-shaped. No shade here.

Darkness here, but no shade.

2. It's not possible to complete another reasonable unit of distance before time elapses.

This only really applies in the last hour or so of a long race. If partial laps don't count and you don't figure you'll be able to complete another full one, I'm not going to fault you for deciding against a fool's errand. Same goes if you don't think you can make it to the next checkpoint on a course; I've come through the start/finish with ~20mins to make 2km, and known there was no way I'd actually get it done in time for it to count. Even if partial laps count and you might have time to make the next checkpoint, if it'll put you far from the finish area I am 100% fine with saying "screw it" and stopping somewhere convenient; I'm sure I could have make another kilometer (which would have counted) at Sunburn Solstice last year, but then I'd just have had to limp my worn-out, possibly-broken-foot'ed way that whole kilometer back again, and after 15hrs of pretty much constant forward motion that was a hearty nope.

The river might keep flowin', but I wasn't goin'

3. You're using it as a training run and continuing might jeopardize your goal race.

This one might sort of seem like it overlaps with having a goal distance and stopping once you've achieved it, but the mentality is different: if you go into (let's say) a 12-hour race thinking you hope you can run 50mi before the time elapses, that - to me, anyway - is distinct from going into a 12-hour race with the idea that you'll run for 8 hours or 40mi and then call it a day because you have a 100km race in 6 weeks and this is your long training run. I have seen friends do almost exactly that: run precisely 4 hours out of a 6-hour because that's what their training plan calls for, or stop after a prescribed number of laps. I partly include this as a legitimate reason because I don't think I'd ever personally have the discipline to stop myself if there was still time left on the clock.

I'm really just a bit of a puppy dog at heart, and will run as long as I'm able.

The whole concept of setting a goal for a non-distance-specific race can be dicey: once you have made it to your goal, the motivation to continue (particularly if you've pushed hard, or for many hours, or both) can be tough to maintain. It's something that has been highlighted recently with the explosion in popularity of backyard-style ultras: 2018 winner of Big's Backyard Ultra (the grandaddy of them all) Guillame Calmettes is reported as saying "You should never set a goal for yourself at this race. Because if you do, when you hit that goal, you feel successful and stop." That's obviously a problem in a last-man-standing event, but also applies to timed racing. 

My take on the whole thing is that achieving your goal is awesome, but if there's still time remaining on the clock and you're reasonably able to continue, why wouldn't you go for it to see how much you're really capable of accomplishing? You registered for an event that takes place over a set number of hours, so why not take advantage of the time you've been given, even if you just end up walking it in? 

You might get to appreciate the scenery a little more, as well as giving your body a welcome cool-down.

Perhaps that's just my own version of self-flagellation: I don't permit myself to end my day until I've done the thing I set out to do. Or perhaps it's something to do with the practice of setting A, B, and C goals for races that started back in my triathlon years; the C goal might be just "finish upright without hurting myself", the B goal might be "finish faster than last year", and the A goal might be "finish under 2 hours if all goes right"...but there's always the possibility that I surprise myself, and if I'm 2mins away from running through the finish and it's only been 1h50m, I'm definitely not going to drop to a walk and try to run the clock out to 1h59m before crossing the line! So the A+ goal is always out there, and since most of my endurance sport career has been an attempt to find out what I'm capable of, I will never shy away from the opportunity to surpass my own expectations and aspirations. Goals should be set to help you push yourself along; they shouldn't hold you back from discovering your true limits.

But then again, what do I know?

I'm just some idiot on the internet.
(With amazing taste in coffee, as evidenced by my snazzy new hat. 
Go try some of Monigram's magic for yourself!
They don't sponsor me or anything - they're just awesome!)

Really, though, just get out there and have fun - as long as you're not hurting anyone else, I'll cheer you on just the same for setting a goal and going for it!

Got the time?

 ..tickin' in your head?

The link above has nothing to do with this post, but I'll never not throw it out there it if given half a chance.

Apart from a few notable exceptions, there are basically two race formats: the most common is a set distance, like a 5k, 10k, marathon (42.2k), 50k, 50 mile, or 100 mile. The idea with those is to cover the set distance in the shortest possible elapsed time, assuming that's your jam - there's almost always a clock of some kind, though, and some recording of how quickly (or not) you did the thing. 

For the record, I've never been quick, and quite enjoy taking my time to absorb the scenery while "racing".

The other common race format is timed races: you run around a (typically fairly short) course for a set amount of time, seeing how much distance you can cover in the allowed timespan. Great examples include Horror Trail, Frosty Trail, and Stride Inside (with 1hr, 3hr & 6hr options); Tally in the Valley (with 6hr, 12hr day or night, and 24hr options); and Sunburn Solstice, which was a fascinating format in which the times were all based on the period from sunrise to sunset on the longest day of the year (full-, half-, quarter- or eighth-solstice, with the full being 15hrs23mins starting at sunrise at 5:39am and the other events joining in as the day progressed).

You can probably guess which event I chose at Sunburn Solstice.

There are actually a few advantages to the timed format for racing, particularly if you're having a rough day. While distance-based races require that you either make it to the finish line or take a DNF, a friend of mine once insightfully pointed out it's basically impossible to DNF in a timed race: whenever you stop, that's your distance covered. If you stop hours before the event is officially over you're unlikely to place highly, but you'll still be recorded as a finisher.

No matter how early (or late) in the day.

The short loops also mean you have frequent access to not only an aid station but generally your own gear - if you're someone like me who has food allergies or just strong preferences about your on-course nutrition and hydration, or you need to change up shoes or clothing, it can be really nice to see all your kit anywhere from every couple of minutes to once per hour. It definitely can mean carrying less, and less weight to transport around a course basically always translates to faster running if you're pushing yourself.

Particularly if there's a lot of uphill on the loop.

There's also the camaraderie that comes with short-loop races - even quite small differences in pace can lead to you passing or being passed many times over the length of the event, which is a fabulous opportunity to offer or receive a friendly word from fellow runners. This is one of the huge reasons I'm such a fan of the format - it's like a big party with a bit of exercise involved.

We may have different ideas of what constitutes a party - or a pleasant chance to go run.

Timed races also have their disadvantages, too. Some people find them mentally difficult because they get bored easily with the scenery, in which case I absolutely recommend avoiding any indoor track races. Ok, I actually recommend avoiding indoor tracks at all until this pandemic business is history, but you know what I mean. At 8km, the now-defunct Dirty Girls race has about the longest course I've personally done for a timed race (it was the site of my first 12-hour back in 2016), while at 2km the Frosty Trail course is the shortest of the outdoor loops I've seen, though I do know that there are multiple timed races (like That Dam Hill and Three Days at the Fair) that use a 1 mile path. If you're at it for more than an hour, you're going to cover the same ground a fair number of times, and not everyone likes the sensation of running around in circles. I've been asked how I manage not to get bored, and my answer is pretty simple: even if the loop is technically the same each time, I won't perceive it in the same way. Outdoors, the light and temperature will change with the passing hours. Indoors, my own points of focus will change: something may start to hurt, or cease to be troublesome, or I may be hungry or thirsty or tired or energetic depending on the moment. 

It's a bit like a river: it is born anew every moment, as the same water never flows past twice.

Those same short loops can be a bit demoralizing at times, particularly in the later hours of an indoor track race. The only indoor tracks on which I've run are both under 250m in length, and you pass the clock with each lap. When you're hurting and see 4:27:36 and know you've got just over an hour and a half to go, it can be tough to put in another lap and still have over mins 'til the sweet release of the finishing horn.

Assuming you make it that far.

For some people, the constant proximity to the finish area may lead them to stop early if they're starting to tire or hurt - folks who might have no trouble pushing themselves to a distant finish may find the temptation of their crew, car, and/or home a little too alluring when they see their exit every few minutes. 

It can also be a good thing if a medical issue crops up, though.

That same constant access to your own food, drink, and gear can also cause trouble if you're pushing for maximum performance: it can take discipline to keep your stops as minimal as possible, as it's easy to waste a great deal of precious time if you're picking up nutrition too often (hint: pockets are good - use them!) or tend to dawdle over refilling or changing clothing. Stopping every 2.5km over the course of 6 hours (versus every 5-8km between aid stations at your average race) can cost you several minutes, and is seldom necessary...but oh, so tempting if your stuff is right there.

Speaking of discipline, your own ability to push yourself becomes a larger factor in timed races than it necessarily does in distance-based events, as there's no bar set for achievement. It can be all too easy to fall into the trap of lazing your way along to run the clock out, particularly if it's a rough day and you're just hanging on. It can begin to feel like there's nothing to be gained by working hard; you won't be done any more quickly, so why not just walk a bunch, or spend a half-hour chatting it up with the aid station volunteers? 

Of course, only you can decide whether or not that constitutes a problem. For me personally, though, I have a tendency to measure my success in a race by the effort I put in - I'm not quick enough to win awards in most races, but I know whether or not I've given it an honest go, and I'd be disappointed in myself if I gave in too much to the allure of sandbagging just to kill time.

Completely unrelated image of someone's Christmas decorations - don't they look pretty in the snow?

Despite the disadvantages seemingly outweighing the advantages, I'm a huge proponent of racing for time, and would seriously suggest it to anyone looking to dip their toe into the world of ultras, or just pushing their limits to run further than they have before. The short loops allow you plenty of bail-out opportunities if you truly need them, and the sense of community among runners is always at its best when you are given so many chances for interaction along the way.

It's like the antithesis of all the socially distanced events this year.
Speaking of which, I finally caught Sputnik on Saturday the 28th of November!

For those who balk at the idea due to their expectations of boredom with a short loop, or the required mental toughness to run in circles for hours, I'd say that your very hesitations should be considered enticements to give it a try. No better way to build mental resilience than to confront something that makes you balk head-on, and I guarantee the strategies you'll develop to cope with the unique challenges of a timed event will serve you well in many areas of life both on and off a race course.

So which do you prefer - time or distance? If you've never done a time-based race, do you think you'd try one? Let me know in the comments below!