We’ve learned something about ourselves after a week or two in isolation:
Runners handle boredom about as gracefully as Ariana Grande (which isn’t saying much)
With the Tokyo Olympic Games postponed to a date beyond 2020 but not later than summer 2021, athletes could use this time to take a break from rigorous training. Key word: could.
That’s not what happened. The first week featured a wave of fitness-flexing Strava posts.
Even Generation Xers almost got into it.
The second week, once social distancing guidelines tightened, was characterized by balcony marathons, multi-sport sampling and impromptu solo 100-milers. Yeah, shit got weird.
And boredom doesn’t stop - so here is The I’m Bored Top 5 for you to read, as you wait for safer days outdoors.
The I’m Bored Top 5
1- 🇫🇷French Man runs marathon on 23-foot long balcony, is not even sore
Elisha Nochomovitz is a week removed from his shack wacky indoor quarantine marathon. Here, he tells Alex of The XC the story of his run, how he had not originally planned to complete a full marathon, and why he might do it again.
2- 🇨🇦Geneviève Lalonde samples new sports
2016 Olympian and Canadian 3,000m steeplechase record holder Geneviève Lalonde could not be bothered to run on her balcony, but that is not to say she didn’t trot around her house. With more than a year to prepare for the Tokyo Games, the 28-year-old explored new, uhm, talents.
Although watching Lalonde gracefully dunk a basketball inside a lampshade might remind one of WNBA superstar Kia Nurse, we think her dribbling can still use a bit of work.
3- 🇦🇺Genevieve Gregson (Lacaze) is fit, makes up her own race
Who else but Geneviève Lalonde’s Australian analog to come in at number three?
And fine, the race was not completely made up. The Tan is a historic 3.87 km loop in Melbourne, and the previous course record of 11:57 was held by 2008 1,500m Olympian Sarah Jamieson.
Gregson, a 30-year-old 3,000m steeplechaser broke the mark by three seconds last week, barely a day after the Olympics announced its postponement.
4- 🇺🇸Florida Man - wait for it - runs 100 miles to raise funds
Probably Nochomovitz’ main challenger for the Cabin Fever Award.
David Kilgore from Palm Bay ran 100 miles and raised more than $10,000 for America’s fight against the coronavirus. With the money, he plans to buy gift cards from struggling local specialty shops in New York City, and then give those gift cards to the city’s frontline medical workers. As NYC has become the epicentre of the COVID19 in the US and arguably the world, those 100 miles could not have come at a better time.
According to ESPN, Kilgore runs for the New York Athletic Club and holds a personal best of 2:27:59 from last year’s New York City Marathon.
5 - 🇺🇸Tuliamuk gets social
Aliphine Tuliamuk showed she was in the shape of her life by decidedly winning the US marathon trials last month, and now has to wait an indefinite amount of time to test that fitness against the rest of the world. So you’d think the NAZ Elite athlete would be busy pouting about the Olympic postponement to videochat with her teammates. Yet, she has been checking in on each of them, to make sure they are staying on top of their game while in isolation.
Maybe she had nothing better to do. But a nice gesture, nonetheless.
🇨🇦Elites in British Columbia are burying Strava Segments
Luc Bruchet took advantage of a bleak racing schedule to break the most storied course record around his neighbourhood.
The 2016 Olympian clocked a time of 23:22 in a training run on the Palmer 5 mile loop, in Vancouver’s Stanley Park. The route, which has become a sought-after Strava segment, has attracted fast runners of the last few generations, like Bruchet’s coach Richard Lee.
“Rich did text me right before warm up with ‘take a run at it’ and to wish me luck,” said Bruchet, who had been building fitness for the Olympic trials 5,000m.
Coach Lee had an inkling that Bruchet could claim the segment. He points out, however, that if Strava existed in the 1970s, the course record might have been harder to claim.
“There was a series of races in Stanley Park called The Palmer Five Mile, 10 Mile, and 4x3 mile relay,” said Lee. “I believe they were racing these courses since the late 1970’s and the roads of Stanley Park haven’t changed.”
Lee, a competitive runner in the 1980s, saw Olympians Paul Williams, Paul McCloy and Art Boileau race through the loop. He thinks McCloy still has the fastest training run around it - the Newfoundland native would have completed the loop in 23:10, wearing an early version of the Nike Pegasus, no less.
Decades after McCloy’s run, 2012 Olympic marathoner Dylan Wykes created the Strava segment and named it after the coach.
“Not sure why Dylan attached my name to it,” said Lee, “but the ‘famous’ part is probably because of the numerous long winded tales I’ve recounted about the courses/races in the ‘80s.”
The naming might have something to do with how Lee’s daughter Kirsten, who was seventh at the 2019 Canadian cross-country championship, still has the fastest time by a woman for the course - 28:00.
Kirsten Lee on a training run
Bruchet’s next Strava target
“We have a 3 mile loop that we use a lot for Mile2Marathon (group practices) that I’m definitely eyeing,” says the 29-year-old. “It’s M2M Bigger Australia Loop. (Canadian marathoner) Blair Morgan actually went for it recently.”
Morgan beat fellow Vancouverite Rob Watson’s three-year-old course record by nearly 40 seconds. The constant segment leapfrogging among elites helps keeps training interesting. “We actually have a little Vancouver Strava racing Facebook group going on,” said Bruchet. “It keeps it fun and motivating when races might not be going down for sometime.”