Running in the New Normal

For most of her life, Alicia Anderson hated running. She remembers being forced to run in high-school gym class and despising it. When she graduated, she never imagined she would run again. But then the covid- 19 pandemic happened, and almost everything changed – including her feelings about running.

Before the pandemic, Anderson, who lives in Dalmeny, Sask., stayed active by playing volleyball and lifting weights in the gym. Neither was an option when indoor facilities closed in March to curb the spread of the coronavirus. For the next month or so, Anderson, 31, didn’t exercise much, and by the end of April, she was so desperate to be active that she decided to run, even though she didn’t expect to enjoy it. “Honestly, it was because it was free. I could just get up and go,” she says. “It was something that I already had the supplies to do. I had a pair of runners and a pair of headphones and I started from there.”

Anderson set herself a goal: to run 100 kilometres in May. The first runs were as tough mentally as they were physically, and she had to force herself to keep going. But on May 16, something changed: she left her house to run 10 kilometres – her longest run yet – and, when her watch beeped at the end, she was so happy she burst into tears. “I was 10 kilometres north of town, there was a cow in a field, and I just remember thinking, this is awesome. There’s no other thing I could do that would lead me to this spot at this time with this amount of endorphins and I just felt incredible,” she recalls. “That runner’s high is definitely something to strive for.”

Anderson exceeded her goal of 100 kilometres in May and kept running even after her gym re-opened and she returned to weightlifting. She’s found a sense of community through a running Facebook group and hopes to join some of her new running friends at a race when such events resume. She is already looking into what cold weather gear she needs to add to her wardrobe so she can continue running through Saskatchewan’s frigid winter.

Anderson is part of what some are calling the next running boom – a movement fuelled by people who turned to running or got back into the sport during the pandemic, when running was one of the few outlets available for people to stay active and busy and to let off steam. Even as gyms, pools and other fitness centres across Canada closed in March, public health officials told Canadians they could – and even should – go outside and exercise, as long as they were healthy and abiding by physical distancing rules. Running became the activity of choice for many.

Jeremy Deere, who owns Strides Running in Calgary, says that as soon as lockdowns were imposed in late March he started getting calls from people who wanted to start running and were looking for advice. The calls came from “a real mix” of society including older adults, young parents, people whose gyms had closed and people who had never been active before, but were looking for something to do. “It was people who just needed to get out of the house for their mental health,” Deere says.

Deere always advised new runners to build mileage gradually so they could stay healthy and injury free – key factors to them becoming lifelong runners. And he believes many who turned to the sport in the spring stuck with it even as lockdowns lifted. He now sees an “unbelievable” number of runners and walkers streaming past his house every day on what used to be a quiet street. “We would never, ever have seen this many in a normal time,” he says.

New runners are entering the sport at an exciting time. covid- 19 has been a catalyst for lifelong runners to rediscover their love of running. It is also pushing leaders in the sport to reimagine the future of racing on the road and track. Melissa Paauwe, founder and coach of Calgary’s We Run the World Coaching, said that when the pandemic hit she feared her business would not survive. With so much uncertainty around jobs and finances, would people still want to invest in running, particularly with no races on the horizon? The answer, she found, was a resounding yes. Rather than shrinking, We Run the World grew. Most of Paauwe’s existing clients told her they needed her more than ever and new runners signed up. Paauwe quit her day job, turned her attention to coaching full time and hired an assistant coach. “I realized how many people need and want guidance for running,” Paauwe says.

Paauwe believes one of the reasons people were so keen to run during the pandemic was for a sense of community, something she says can still be found in a virtual environment. Before the pandemic, Paauwe hosted weekly track nights for her athletes in the Calgary area. When covid- 19 restrictions made that impossible, she and her athletes stayed connected, kept each other accountable and cheered each other on through strength classes on Zoom and a WhatsApp group chat. “We were still getting that connection without seeing everybody in person,” Paauwe says.

Catrinel Popescu was one of those runners. At the beginning of the year, Popescu had planned to race the Calgary half-marathon in the spring and the Berlin Marathon in the fall. The 34-year-old Calgary resident was training six days a week and feeling like she was just going through the motions. “I’d lost some of that excitement and that love of why I run,” she recalls. When her races were cancelled, she felt a sense of relief. Her training schedule didn’t change much during the pandemic – she still ran six days a week – but her mindset was different. “Something about everything being put on pause allowed me to shift the way I thought about running,” she says. “I was able to let go of the expectations around training and goal times, A goals and B goals and really just get back to why I run in the first place.”

Though many of Popescu’s teammates took part in virtual races and time trials through the spring and summer, Popescu initially had little interest in joining them. She didn’t think she would be able to push herself without the high-energy race environment and fellow racers to keep her accountable. When she finally decided to run a 5k time trial this summer, she was shocked to hit her goal time. She did a 10k time trial not long after, and exceeded her expectations again. Popescu says that when she is eventually able to toe the startline at an in-person race, she will do so with more confidence than she has in the past. “If I could do it in a virtual environment with no one, no aid station, no cheer squad on the sideline and no big finish line, I can 100 per cent do it in a real race,” she says.

Popescu is not the only runner finding success outside of in-person races. Small track and field events have taken place throughout the United States this summer (in some cases, to give professional athletes opportunities to meet sponsors’ contractual obligations, which often include competition quotas). The Bowerman Track Club in Portland has been perhaps the best example of how athletes don’t need world-class events to produce world-class results. In a series of intra-squad meets this summer, Mohammed Ahmed shattered his own Canadian 5,000-metre record and became the 10th-fastest 5,000-metre runner of all time. Shelby Houlihan broke her own American record in the 5,000 metres. And the Bowerman Track Club’s female 4 x 1,500m relay team also broke the world record for that event.

But that success doesn’t mean races are dead – far from it, says Canada Running Series race director Alan Brookes. “The human connection is what keeps a lot of people motivated, keeps us going in life. So for real live racing, I think people will be super keen [for it to return],” he says. “I think there will be a big surge back to racing.”

When road races do come back, they won’t look the same as they did before the pandemic, at least not at first. Brookes says that, as with everything coming back online after lockdown, the return to normalcy will be gradual.

Charlotte Brookes, the Canada Running Series event director, says that when mass participation races are held again, they could involve race kits being mailed out instead of picked up at crowded race expos, volunteers wearing masks and runners carrying their own water bottles. That last point is something Brookes is particularly excited about. Disposable cups are a big source of waste at races, but race organizers have long believed people would not want to participate in events where they had to carry their own bottles. “Now I think we have a huge opportunity to move forward on projects we were afraid to move forward on before and shift the way people actually look at events and how they operate,” Brookes says.

Virtual races – which dominated the 2020 racing calendar – will not be going anywhere, even once in-person racing resumes, they say. Virtual races provide an opportunity for more people to be part of prestigious events and can be good options for new runners who might be apprehensive about racing. “By offering virtual, you offer an opportunity for people to select that option if they can’t or maybe don’t feel ready or comfortable for in-person,” she says. “It’s a really accessible way to see what this running thing is all about.”

Also, virtual races present unique opportunities for organizers. When Brookes and her team were looking at ways to make the 2020 Scotiabank Toronto Waterfront Marathon an engaging virtual experience, they thought about all the elements they’d wanted to add to the race before, but had never been able to get permits for. These include offering a 10k race and allowing people to run as many distances as they want over the course of a number of days. “There are some options that virtual allows – during covid or not,” she says.

Matthew Rosetti, the co-founder of the Brooklyn Running Company in New York City, which hosts the Brooklyn Mile, says having to put on a virtual event this year instead of an in-person race forced organizers to get creative. He and his crew didn’t want to offer an event without “some form of hook,” so they partnered with the online platform vdot O2, which provides scores based on running times and allows running performances to be compared across different distances. Race participants signed up for free vdot O2 accounts and raced the mile with prize money awarded based on age-graded vdot scores. Rosetti said the new format was so popular with participants – particularly the 40-plus crowd – that organizers plan to offer the same virtual format alongside the in-person event in the future.

“Only in this crazy new world would something as awesome as that have happened,” Rosetti says. “I do believe event organizers should all be viewing this as a long-term opportunity. There is much pain in the near term, particularly for large-format race organizers – that I do realize, but this moment should be viewed as a way to widen the scope of our sport and reimagine it in a way that makes it more sustainable and popular over time.”

As for how many races will survive the pandemic, both Alan Brookes and Charlotte Brookes say it depends on how long bans on large gatherings continue. Big races, which can bring in income by putting on attractive virtual events, and small local races with low overhead costs may be best able to weather a long suspension of races, while medium-sized events might not be able to survive one or two years without in-person events. Charlotte says runners can help support their local races by signing up for virtual events.

On the track side, Canadian 3,000-metre steeplechase record holder Matt Hughes says he hopes the success of the Bowerman Track Club’s intra-squad events shows the value of organizing small meets – something he hopes becomes more common after the pandemic. “It doesn’t have to be a seven-hour meet. It can be a meet that only lasts 30 minutes and only has two events and you can still have a lot of success,” he says. “You can just go into a local track and if it’s carefully planned, you can have a very high-quality race.” Having more, smaller events could be particularly beneficial if travel bans continue.

Though many runners have discovered they don’t need races to run, race and perform, they are nevertheless looking forward to gathering for in-person events again – and say they will have a new appreciation for races when that does happen.

“I will actually enjoy it so much more,” says Popescu, the Calgary runner who had been relieved to have her 2020 races cancelled. “I certainly took the race environment for granted, because we didn’t know any different. I think I’ll come out of this really favouring and enjoying that race environment so much more.”

Andrea Hill is a marathon runner and acting managing editor of the Saskatoon Star Phoenix newspaper