Social Distance Running

Social distancing is the phrase du jour for just about every day now. And of course, COVID-19 is still the topic of conversation no matter where you go, running or not, these days. On this day, a day that I had been considering doing a 50K race that wound up canceled like the rest of them...

I wake up before the 3:30 AM alarm. My new Garmin 45 device tells me that 5 hours and 1 minute was not enough sleep. I knew that, thank you.

Good thing the coffee is ready. I need every ounce of those three large mugs. Today for a change I add some pumpkin and cinnamon. The 'Cutie' brand mandarins will also provide some energy for the ordeal to come.

By 4:40 AM, I'm packed, bundled up, and ready to run. Into the car, I go for the ride down to the Medina Square. There probably won't be much traffic.

There wasn't. It's 5:00 AM as Andy and Michelle Wolff and I begin our run from the Square. The Square, by the way, is pretty quiet as well. It usually is at this early hour. But more so these days. The same goes for the traffic along the run itself.

The temperature is in the mid-twenties, about forty degrees cooler than this time yesterday. The wind is bracing. And I didn't expect the snow. There isn't much, but there's definitely some.

I run with these folks all the time and we know each other well. Even so, I wonder if we ought to be keeping our distance from each other during the run itself. I decide to just stuff that thought into the back of my mind.

After about nine miles and an hour and a half, we're back at the Square. Andy and Michelle are done, but I would like to do more. A few more were supposed to join us at 6:30, but there's no one around.  I finally see Audrie Roush and Rouger, her dog, but no one else. So now with a new running partner, I take off from the Square once more.

This time we run the Medina Half Marathon course, or at least most of it, forward. Andy, Michelle and I had done it backward. One would think that after running this course a couple dozen times, doing it forward and backward, and even doing it as part of the race itself, that I'd know it by now. One would be wrong. Okay, I do know parts of it. But other parts still manage to baffle me. Not that that takes much these days.

The Garmin 45 tells me that I am running at about 9:45 pace. This is good for a long run these days. Especially after last week's debacle. The best part is that it's been pretty steady.

Audrie, Rouger, and I finish with another nine, and I'm happy to be able to call it a solid long run. Glad to have it done.

To complete 50K, I'd have had to do another 13. Oops. Should have quit thinking about the run whilst I was ahead.