pandemic fallout – Page 9 – Cast Iron Dreams

2021-04-042021-04-04

Virtual Race Season, Take Two. Maybe.

Sunday Runday, and on our morning ten kilometer trail run everyone seem to want to talk racing season.

Except there is no racing season.

Twenty-twenty-one is a racing write off.

Or… it would be if it wasn’t for virtual races.

Virtual racing. Oh, those virtual races. And why?

Last year as the pandemic picked up its pace, another one of those little oh-yeah-and-that-too inconveniences was the cancellation of a bunch of running races. I was registered to run at least four big races, including the 2020 Chicago Marathon.

None of them happened.

Well, none of them happened as planned.

Over the course of the summer, as the clock ticked onward, each race in turn became a virtual race instead of a real one. No, we can’t bring five thousand athletes together on a crowded street, so, here’s what we’re gonna do instead…

Keep the spirit. Run the distance. Submit your time. Get a shirt and a medal in the mail. Virtual racing was the consolation prize for a lost season.

And I too ran a few virtual runs. A trio of half marathons. A few ten-k socially distant weekend excuses to meet up with my friends and celebrate… something. I don’t know exactly what or why, but hanging onto something seemed important.

Winter came and went.

Then the emails started appearing…

“Such and such is going virtual this year.”

“Join us for a virtual race.”

“We can’t run together but we can race virtually!”

The dissonance rings in my heart something like this: I want to race and support the races but I’m finding it tough to reconcile another season of pretending. I want to be motivated to train for long races, but paying a hundred dollars or often more to run through my own neighbourhood and get a t-shirt and a medal through the mail doesn’t seem like the way. Not this year. I want back that feeling of participating but I’m done settling for participating from afar. And I would rather delay bigger gratification for a while if the only other option is a virtual one.

On our morning ten kilometer trail run everyone seem to want to talk racing season because a bunch of them have been signing up for local and international virtual races. I’m going to keep running with them, but unless something dramatically changes I think my next race season will be 2022.

2021-03-232023-01-09

Local Adventures: Social Distancing at Spray Lakes

International travel is still something that hasn’t quite come back to normal, but fortunately we happen to live in a province of Canada that has it’s share of tourist destinations.

We’re spending some more there time over spring break returning to the spot where we took our first local pandemic weekend getaway back in July of 2020.

for whatever one photo is worth:

We had gone for a drive.

Kananaskis Provincial Park is a sprawling mountain nature preserve on the eastern edge of the Rocky Mountains, touching the foothills and playing peekaboo with the city of Calgary just a few twists of the highway away.

There are thousands of kilometers of hiking trails wending their way through bear country and hundreds of lakes, rivers, streams, waterfalls and spectacular mountain scenes speckle the landscape.

You can see a respectable sampling of it by driving for a bit, then hiking for a while, then driving some more. Our ultimate goal was to drive the full loop around the hundred and fifty kilometers (give or take) back to our hotel. The route led past a number of stops, from a trailhead for a full morning strenuous hike to a couple spots where we could step out of the car for a few photos and snack at a nearby picnic table.

Sparrowhawk Day Use Area fell into the latter category.

A small ten-car parking lot was virtually empty as we pulled off the gravel road. A five minute wander down to the shores of the Spray Lake Reservoir led us passing by an eerily quiet assortment of empty picnic tables and cold campfire pits. On a summer day like this in any other year there would have been cars lined up along the road for lack of parking, and dozens of motor-less recreational boats exploring the lake. The din of families enjoying this place would have hidden the absolute stillness with which we were instead greeted.

We walked along the shore for a while The kid skipped some stones into the still water. A canoe, far across the water, almost tracing the distant shore, was the only human movement besides us.

I took some photos of the lake, and this one too, looking North towards where the dam sits, up past the bend and at the foot of those faraway mountains. The water almost like glass in the late morning calm.

The ultimate in socially distanced places where no one else seemed to even exist.

2021-03-132022-03-09 episode 72

Pi Day, Eve

We spent the evening making pies.

Tomorrow is March 14th.

It’s one of those “we celebrate the day because it’s funny“ kinda days.

The third month.

The fourteenth day.

3-14

3.14

Pi.

Pi day.

Last year I bought a pie on my way back to my office after lunch. It was March 13th. I got called into a meeting fifteen minutes later and didn’t go home until almost 9pm that night having been drafted to the emergency communications team reacting to COVID-19.

I ate a cold piece of pie late the next day after another 16 hour work day, stressed, deflated, and shell-shocked from the pandemic hitting our little city full force.

I went a bit overboard on this baked pie.

I used the 12 inch frying pan as a pie plate.

Two cans of store-bought pie filling.

It’s so big.

The kid helped, and in fact she did most of the work.

This year’s pie is going to be so much better than last year.

2021-03-102021-03-10

Holy Molar!

I didn’t get much chance to focus on writing anything better than a short personal update for today.

Anyone who has been reading my posts regularly might know that blogging, cooking, and enjoying the outdoors is a stress-relief valve for me…. though apparently not enough of one.

According to my dentist I’ve been grinding my teeth.

“Are you stressed about anything?” she asked.

Hmm. Let me think… while I adjust this facemask and re-sanitize my hands for the sixth time today nearly a full year into a global pandemic.

It wouldn’t have been such a big deal, but all that stress grinding meant that I cracked a filling and needed two hours of emergency dental work yesterday morning after an ivory chunk clinked into the sink basin Sunday evening.

I slept a lot yesterday and went to bed early. My face hurts. My newly capped tooth and my morning coffee did not get along at all. Zing!

I think a nature walk is in order.