It was the week of Saint Patrick’s Day that everything started shutting down. That meant that I was 11 weeks into my 18-week Pittsburgh ½ marathon training program. On Saint Patrick’s Day, I received the email from P3R, the company that coordinates the marathon, saying they were canceling the marathon because of this damn virus. I kind of knew that was coming, but was hoping everything would be OK by then. It wasn’t super disappointing; I’ve run the Pittsburgh ½ marathon 7 times already so it wasn’t a big deal to skip this one. I did feel bad for the folks who were training for this for the first time. But, runners are resilient and there will be races again. I’ve been running for close to 10 years and I couldn’t get my head around not training and keeping with my running schedule. So I continued to train for a ½ marathon. Running really is a part of my life, a big part, and I just couldn’t give it up just because someone cancelled the race. I went about it as normal. I did my hill run on Monday, my mid-week long run on Wednesday, weighted vest on Thursday and long run on Sunday.
Something that I was doing a little differently this session, before the virus, was doing my long run in different locations, like the Montour trail, Harmony and Zelienople (which is my new favorite place to run), North Boundary Park and the neighborhood across the street from it, Canterberry neighborhood, Fox Run neighborhood, and Cranberry Park.
What’s fun about running in the apocalypse is that there were pretty much no cars on the street. So, I decided my thing would be running in the middle of normally busy roads, which I did, all the time. It was fun; you don’t get to do that every day.
The Cranberry Golf Course opened their golf cart pathways to runners and walkers during the quarantine. That was cool! It’s not every day that you can go for a run or take a walk on a golf course. It’s so pretty there. It was a bit hilly, but that was OK. Not too many people were there when I went to run. I ran there three times and it was fun all three times.
Early on in the quarantine while I was frantically making masks, I had a friend and my dad and step-mom ask for masks. Coincidentally, they live about 7 minutes apart from each other and near the Montour Trail. I decided that I would run my long run on the Montour Trail that Sunday and then afterward drop off the masks to everyone. At around 6 am I got
up, ate my muffin, warmed up, and hopped in the car. To get to the Montour Trail, I had to take route 79, the main highway from my house into the city. I used to drive this road everyday for 3 years to get to work and it’s always jam packed with cars. But not that day. That Sunday morning, I was the only car on it for the entire trip. It was so weird. It was eerie and reminded me of The Walking Dead. I’ve never seen anything like it before and it was really easy to zoom down the empty road. I made it to the trail and ran my 10 miles. Around mile 8, I texted everyone to see if they were awake and let them know I was stopping by soon. Everyone was awake, so I swung by my friend’s house and dropped her masks off. Then stopped by my dad’s house and dropped off their masks. He was working in a high risk place that coming week so I was glad I could get him the masks he needed. Ellie, my step-mom, also gave me some fabric to use to make masks, in case I ran out.
As the time came closer to when I was going to run my solo 13.1, J and I talked about making it an event with our family coming out to see me run. I wasn’t very big on the idea, I just wanted to run 13.1 miles and go home. This is a perspective thing. While training for full marathons, I run 13+ miles all the time. 13 miles isn’t that big of deal for me anymore. So I didn’t want to make it a big deal for anyone else. But J thought otherwise. He kept
asking me when I wanted to run my 13.1 and where and we should make a map of the route. I kept putting it off because I was just going to go somewhere on a Sunday morning, run, come home, shower and go about my day. We finally made a plan on Thursday, April 23rd for me to run that Saturday, April 25th, but we didn’t make a route until Friday night. I was busy making masks that Friday and just kept putting off making up the route. While I was making masks, J was making my bib number. It was cute, he got a piece of paper and our permanent ink markers and made me bib complete with number, my name, and date of the run.
We finally decided on starting at the Cranberry park dog park running through the park, down the road, through the neighborhoods, back up the road, down one of main roads to Graham Park, through Graham Park and back to Cranberry Park. Cool, we had a plan. J then was frantically texting our families with the plans, times, and the route. That morning, I got up and did my normal Saturday morning routine and got ready to go run. J was unusually excited to go and do this and I wasn’t sure why at the time. He kept talking about the route and where he was going to meet me with my water bottle. We drove over to Cranberry Park and on the way, we saw his parents in their car. I thought it was odd that they were up so early, but thought maybe they were going to one of the parks for a day trip. We got to the dog park, I hopped out of the car, waited for him to drive away, set my watch and
Runkeeper, took my traditional picture of the starting line, and started running. I made it to the first neighborhood and J met me there with water. He pulled up ahead and I saw a car that looked like my mom’s cars pull into the side street. I ran up the hill to realize that it was my mom’s car and both her and my step-dad Ed were there with signs and what we call the Pittsburgh Pot, cheering me on. (Side note, the Pittsburgh Pot is an old pot and wooden spoon that Ed brings to all my marathons and bangs on it to cheer. It’s really loud) I couldn’t believe it, they were there! It was now making sense to me why J was more excited about this ½ marathon than I was. I stopped to take a picture of them and went along running. A few houses down from where they were was my sister-in-law Meagan and niece Mia. They also had signs and were cheering for me. Again, I stopped to take a picture and headed down the street. Further down the neighborhood were my in-laws, Ken and Karen, both with signs and cheering for me. Again, I stopped to take a photo and continued running. I ran to the next neighborhood and everyone got in their cars and followed me down the road, cheering for me. J even told the lady that was walking what was going on and she cheered for me as I ran past.
After the neighborhoods, I ran down near the construction site of a new development they are building which was a nice stretch of road. Very flat and of course, no cars. From that road I could see the municipal center and I thought I saw everyone’s car parked there. I kept running and turned onto the main road in Cranberry, which I thought would be scary, but it wasn’t. The shoulder was big and again, not a lot of cars. I turned down the road where the municipal center was and there was my whole family in the grassy
area right outside of the building, all standing 6 feet apart from each other. I snapped a couple pictures from across the street and then headed over to say hi to them. They all had their signs and were all wearing masks. In hindsight, they all looked like protesters that were not happy about having to wear masks and were trying to make a statement outside the building. No one said anything to them. After snapping a couple of photos there, I continued down the road, which was a lot busier than the rest of the roads. There were some parts that had sidewalks, but towards the end, it got a little tricky. There was no shoulder and I ran in the grass and weeds. There’s an underpass for the highway, which is really narrow. Cars seemed like they were flying 100 miles an hour under it. After a bunch of cars came through it, I saw it was safe and ran really fast under it. Ahh, safety. There were sidewalks from here on out to the park. I ran about another half mile into Graham Park and my mom and Ed were waiting for me and cheering along with a couple other strangers. I stopped to talk to them for a few minutes and
started running through the park. Meagan and Mia met me at the next parking lot, and they biked along with me. It was really nice to have some company. I felt like an elite runner with the bikers next to me. That’ll probably never happen in a race, if we ever get back to having races. We all moved along though the park until we got the pond where J, Ken, and Karen were waiting with signs and more cheering. We all waved and went down to the end of the park. At the end of the park, there’s a giant hill. I always run up it and that day was no exception. We all headed back to the front of the park and random strangers were cheering for me because J kept telling everyone he saw that I was running a ½ marathon and they should cheer for me. It was pretty cool. We made it back to the pond and saw J, Ken, and Karen again and they all hopped in their cars and we all met at the front entrance of the park.
The original plan was for me to run back up near the municipal center and then to Cranberry park. I wasn’t looking forward to running back up the really busy road, so I decided that I would just run the rest of the 13.1 in Graham park. I didn’t have that many more miles to go and it felt safer that way. Ken decided he wanted to ride a bike along with me, so I started running, and both Ken and Meagan biked along with me. We took the back path this time, and again, it was nice to have people with me. At this point, I was about 11 miles into the run. Once we got to the last parking lot, we all turned around and headed back to the entrance. When we got back to the beginning, my mom and Ed were
standing in the parking lot with a ribbon for me to run through. That was pretty cool, and something that will most likely never happen to me in a race. Everyone congratulated me and J gave me my medal. He made a medal for me out of an old CD he drew on and hockey skate lace for the ribbon. Mia gave me a little badge that said "You did it"! It was all extremely sweet and heartwarming. Everyone had a blast! It gave everyone something to look forward to and something to do that day. Everything was still shut down, so no one was doing anything. After the run, we all went back to our house and Ken ordered carry out from a local Italian restaurant. We all sat in the driveway, 6 feet apart and hung out for the rest of the afternoon. It was a great day for everyone!
Thanks for reading this segment of my “This Damn Virus” story. Catch up on past segments here and come back next Wednesday for the next one!
Comments