Looking For The Helpers

Exercising in open-air, sparsely-populated places seems to be one of the safest activities amid the pandemic. That’s why I’m surprised Chicago has closed down and obstructed running trails near the lake. While the Belmont Harbor trail no longer has trampled fences, the lakefront one still does. And I noticed that was problematic for one runner who said they were stuck.

Especially for directionally-challenged runners like myself, I’ve always followed the breadcrumbs approach to routes: follow the same way back as you went. That has served me in foreign trails, even travelling, from San Francisco’s bay-front trail to the Las Vegas strip to Missouri’s MKT Trail to the Praire Path, in Illinois, to DC to the UK to Australia and New Zealand. Yet that rule is no longer true on the lakefront trail in Chicago. When police or park officials open and close fences, the game of whack-a-mole becomes problematic for slightly-adventurous and -law-abiding citizens. It also becomes dangerous

For example, on Saturday, I was heading from the harbor trail to the lakefront one that runners have been using. Yet, at this spot, the trail was closed with a fairly sturdy and tall fence. A runner was trying to get home after a long run who said she’d gone through the fence on her way out. Now, coming back, stuck.

Since I wanted to get over the fence, I briefly tried leaning on it and going around. Also, I looked into stepping over the divider you’ll see in the map link above. Yet it was too tall. Another runner and I instead brainstormed lifting the fence up. The runner who was wearing an AIDs awareness marathon shimmied like a soldier in bootcamp under the surprisingly sharp fence. Then offered to help me get through.

I passed. But the interaction was one of the nicest and affirming experiences in our new trail. Amid the chaotic country, state and city health response, three runners helped each other out. Meant a lot. This interaction is what I really wanted when I signed up for the in-person marathon training.

A physical and emotional health I’ve been using How We Feel featured a quotation from Mister Rogers:

When I was a boy and I would see scary things in the news, my mother would say to me, “Look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping.”

Speed Days

Last post, I suggested using the track for better interval training. Yet the interval training came on a day with intermittent donwnpours. So I thought of just finding spots on the trail and stopping the run. This worked wonderfully and even felt more natural. It helped that the trail was empty on a rainy day.

May look forward to doing this again. Although the track still looks fun!

Felt good to have a solid pace for an albeit short distances (400m).

One qualm with the Nike app is it doesn’t have laps. The native workout app does. May try that and import the run into Nike Running Club. I remember talking with another runner about this issue with NRC.

Benchmark Run

This was an odd experience. I’ve removed some of the target paces from NRC because they’re so slow and they don’t display after the run (why would you want to compare lol?). But the benchmark’s goal is to seemingly adjust these (we’ll see). To explain, the benchmark had three segments — warm-up, sprint, cool-down. It wasn’t necessarily all-out but it was high-effort for three minutes. That was fun.

Will be interested in the programmatic response and if my target paces go faster.

It was comforting to hear coaching amid my run. My partner laughed at the American-ness and seriousness of it. But I liked it.

Healthy Support Habits

Again, I fell prey to not foam rolling and strengthening on harder days (Monday and Tuesday). Yet overall my hips have felt stronger. On the long-run, I felt minor pain on top of my knee — not side or back like before. On Saturday, after a harder hip and leg cross-training day on Friday, the foam roll felt amazing. Will continue this.

Going to increase stretching to twice a day. Felt good to do anyway twice and keeps blood-flow and flexibility mid-workday.

Minor Gripe

Been seeing a ton of loading state for the ‘My Coach’ part of the NRC club app. Kind of frustrating.