Personally, I got over it pretty quickly. I use races as a fun motivator and as a test of my fitness. I like to finish as high as I can in my age group so I am competitive but I do not stress about it too much. I am in this for the long haul. Racing helps me stay fit but overall health is my goal. If I have to modify how I get there due to circumstances beyond my control, I am intrinsically motivated enough to keep moving.
Here is the list of events that I was planning to do.
| Date | Race | Location |
After resigning myself to the fact that I would not be racing, I started to alter my training schedule a little bit. Ever since the November, 2019 RVA Marathon, I had decided that I wanted to focus more energy on strength training and core work. In fact, I had started going to Pilates and Barre classes before the Ys and gyms all closed. As it turns out, all of these things could be done remotely with online classes. I dove in and started doing more pilates, more yoga, and some online barre classes. I also started my own regimen of weight lifting, push ups, pull-ups, and core work. I continued to run and bike but my volume went down a bit. As I get older, this kind of exercise is even more important so my pivot to more of these kinds of workouts was something I have wanted to do for a while.
As I mentioned, I did not stop running and biking. In fact, in addition to adding more core and strength training, I joined the Ironman Virtual Club and started doing the Ironman Virtual Race Series. So far there have been 5 events and I have completed them all. Below you can see the events the events that I completed starting in early April.
As you can see, I have been doing plenty of biking and running. This coming weekend is Ironman Virtual Race #6 and I am signed up for that one as well. The running and biking in addition to all the other exercises has kept me fit through this crisis. Plus I am eating way less and drinking a great deal more water than I used to. Together all of these things have led me to lose 5-6 pounds. That is less weight to carry out there on the run course. Also my fat percentage has dropped about 1 to 1.5 percent as measured by my scale. So I am getting stronger and staying fit. I really can't complain too much about anything since my health is good an I am continuing to work full time from home as my job in IT allows me to do everything remotely. In fact, I really don't ever need to go back into the office. I am sure I will have to one day. But until then I am enjoying the extra sleep and my new routine. I get stir crazy sometimes but writing and doing other creative things helps. I have some projects other than exercising to work on including converting an old laptop to a Linux webserver to host my John Rosen website and some other things.
Thanks for reading. Stay safe. Stay home.
