The Warmup
Running a fever How the novel coronavirus was both a boon and a blow to the running world in the first quarter of 2020
In early February 2020, the Western running media understood the novel coronavirus as a problem centred in China, which gave rise to entertaining stories like the quarantined ultrarunner Pan Shancu running 50k in his apartment without benefit of a treadmill. Then came the announcement that the Tokyo Marathon was cancelling its mass participation race on February 29 and would host only a couple of hundred elite runners and wheelchair racers. Canadian runners realized things were more serious than we thought, but other than for those of us who were planning to race in Tokyo, our own running habits were not yet affected.
Rupp and Tuliamuk win U.S. Olympic Marathon Trials
The U.S. Olympic Marathon Trials took place on a windy day in Atlanta, just hours after the truncated Tokyo Marathon, with more than 700 runners jammed together on the start line, the concept of social distancing not yet on our radar.
Galen Rupp scored the victory in a dramatic comeback from injury and surgery in 2018–2019, finishing in 2:09:20. The unsponsored (and relatively unknown) Jake Riley made his first Olympic team in snagging second place, and 43-year-old Abdi Abdirahman became the oldest American to qualify for the Olympic marathon with his third-place finish. (The top three men and women were bound for Tokyo, irrespective of their times.)
All three men raced in the new Nike Air Zoom Alphaf ly Next%, which had sparked a furor with its barely-legal, 39.5 mm foam stack, embedded carbon fibre midsole plate and outsole air pods when it was unveiled on February 5. The Alphaf ly appeared five days after the Jan. 31 announcement of World Athletics’ new shoe rules limiting stack height to 40 mm.
In a stunning upset of almost all the expected top performers in the women’s race, Kenyan-born Aliphine Tuliamuk of t he Fl a gst a f f-based Northern Arizona Elite squad took t he win i n 2:27:23 , second-place finisher Molly Seidel became the first American woman to qualify for the Olympic marathon in her debut, and Kenyan-American Sally Kipyego rounded out the podium. 2018 Boston Marathon champion Des Linden finished a heartbreaking fourth, 11 seconds behind Kipyego, and none of the other favourites (Molly Huddle, Sara Hall, Jordan Hasay, Emily Sisson) finished in the top 25.
Like dominoes, they fall
After the excitement of the U.S. Trials subsided, things went back to normal, but various European marathons started canceling and postponing race dates as coronavirus fears mounted. The Boston and London Marathon postponements on March 13 represented a turning point, with covid- 19 now upending the running world. Less than two weeks later, many Western nations would be in lockdown, with millions of businesses closed, almost all races either cancelled or postponed (including the Tokyo Olympics, after the Canadian Olympic Committee’s bold stand in refusing to send a team). An interesting by-product of self-isolation, quarantine and lockdown: more people than ever were exercising outdoors, with many taking up running for the first time.
By Sunday, March 15, terms like “self-isolate” and “social distancing” were suddenly part of a new, coronavirus-infused lexicon, though the message that it was no longer OK to run in groups took a while to get through. The next day it was announced that the Barkley Marathons–surely, of all races, the most immune to events in the outside world?–would not run. Life as we knew it had clearly changed, and no one knew for how long.
But there are reasons for optimism: China is slowly recovering, and experts are cautiously optimistic we may be able to let up with the social distancing by fall–a good thing, considering the fall calendar is now crowded with races, with four out of five Abbott World Marathon Majors taking place between Sept. 14 and Nov. 1. And The ioc has said that anyone already qualified for Tokyo 2020 will get to keep their spot, which means Canadians Dayna Pidhoresky and Trevor Hof bauer won’t have to requalify for the Olympic marathon.
When and if life returns to normal, running freely, whether outdoors or at the gym, alone or with others, will be an activity we cherish more than ever.