To the surpirse of few, the 2020 Victoria Marathon was cancelled earlier this week. I now have no race plans.
With every large public gathering of any kind suspended for the beyond-foreseeable future, I don’t foresee organized races happening again anytime soon… certainly not in 2020, and possibly not anytime early in 2021. Even seeing a race held in the spring or early summer of 2021 would be a bit of a surprise.
If you’re of the mindset that you’re looking forward to races resuming this fall or next spring, you probably need to change your mindset, and (if your life revolves around group workouts and/or training for races) probably need to re-evaluate your life and goals going forward. Life has irreparably changed, at least in the foreseeable future and relative beyond.
If the old reality is going to come back and stay, it likely won’t be back to stay for at least another year. Even if everything re-opens, chances of a 2nd spike in coronavirus cases forcing another lockdown by the fall or winter are very high.
And no, I don’t believe it matters how much or how little we are locked down in the present. A 2nd wave is probably going to happen even if we had handled everything perfectly. So don’t hand-wring about people going back outside or to other public places now. If anything, getting some exercise and sunlight is better for their health and immunity than staying inside.
Now, all of that said, this worlwide lockdown hasn’t really bothered me much at all. I’ve briefly mentioned adjustments I’ve made, and that the closure of almost everything has calmed down and simplified my life a great deal.
There’s no fear of missing out, because nobody’s able to do anything right now. Everyone and I are in the same situation, regardless of economic or cultural status.
I had already shut down all training for a few weeks in April, and had just began ramping my running back up when I found out Victoria was cancelled. Now that there’s no need to train for a race, I can now finally focus on training in some way other than running.
After my CPT training, I knew I wanted to spend some quality time strength training. Strength training is a lot harder to do when you’re running a lot, so I wanted to work on it when I had a long break from run training. And now, with no need to seriously run this year, I now have plenty of time to focus on it.
My work schedule also shifted to more of an afternoon/evening swing shift, and my days off are now during the weekdays. It’s a slight bummer on the running front, only because this would have made a running schedule so much easier, but now there’s no races to train for.
However, the schedule is still great for strength training as well as being a much more relaxing schedule. I can sleep in as needed every day (though I still get up early; habits die hard after 20+ years of early rising).
Also, my weight finally began to consistently slim down. Of course, I cut my calorie consumption quite a bit once we went into lockdown, since obviously there’s little opportunity to move around. I’ve intermittent fasted almost every day. Without having to balance the calorie needs of run training, I’ve been easily able to consistently maintain a calorie deficit. And my weight, having plateaued around 178-180 with about 20-21% bodyfat, is finally down to about 170-171 at 18-19% bodyfat after a consistent downward trend.
I want to diet down to at least 15% bodyfat (it’s actually best to diet down to a good target weight with basic daily activity, before beginning a serious exercise plan) before beginning a 12-16 week bodyweight or weight training program.
I don’t want to “cheat up” through a “body-recomposition”, aka seriously adding muscle while trying to burn fat and lose the weight. I find it can actually dissuade some stubborn fat from burning off (note my prior training stagnating fat loss), and the dietary balance you need to strike to avoid muscle catabolization or excess fat retention/gain is too delicate to be worth the trouble right now.
I also want to get my weight as reasonably light as possible because it’ll be easier on my organs long-term to build muscle mass from a fundamentally lighter body weight… and currently without the continuous hormonal stress of running a boatload of miles every week.
My projected goal is to get to around 165 lbs before trying to seriously add any muscle, if I even want to. I’ll have started on a stabilization -centered fitness plan before this point, so any mass-building strength training will be a function of naturally progressing from stabilization training anyway.
This 4/6/2020 post seems quaint. “It will be weeks, possibly months, before we can resume what we previously knew as normal activity,” is particularly cute. “Weeks, possibly months.”
Obviously, with gyms closed and scalpers having bought up all the free weights on the open market, I’m probably not doing any serious weight lifting unless gyms happen to re-open. Even then, if a 2nd wave requires a lockdown, I would lose that gym access again. Depending on how robust of a bodyweight/home program I can develop, I might even give up my gym membership entirely if things break right.
The plan is to devise and develop a suitable, progressive bodyweight workout routine that will sufficiently challenge my muscles and produce growth and/or athletic improvement.
It’s probably best for the long term either way that my long term goal be to develop a gym-free routine, since my long term focus is on being an endurance runner and coaching endurance runners (… should road races resume being a thing in our future society). Plus, many people don’t ever have access to a gym for various fundamental reasons, and a safe sustainable no-equipment-required exercise program would be helpful to countless people.
Meanwhile, I’m working out some adjustments to my current living situation that, once final, will free me up immensely and allow me to start work on some of these ideas. Until then, I’m waiting along with everyone else.