Adrienne

I love to run. I guess it started back in high school. Growing up where I did, in a small northern town where we rode the bus for an hour to get to a tiny regional high school, everybody was on every team. It’s how I ended up on the track-and-field team. Again, everybody did – I had no special skill or knack for it and I was never very fast, but I was, as I discovered, built for endurance. There’s something about putting one foot in front of the other for a few steps, and then a few blocks and then a few kilometres. You can get lost in the act of just moving forward, and work a lot of things out while you’re doing it, without even really knowing it.

For more than 20 years now, my dad and I have put that endurance to the test, entering half marathons, marathons and ultra marathons across North America. We save up, book ahead and visit places we’ve always wanted to see with the excuse of the race driving us to destinations like Chicago, Las Vegas, Washington D.C. and Cincinnati. We shoot for the top half in our respective age categories and normally make the mark. My mom comes along, acting as what she calls support staff, taking pictures and cheering us on. Unfortunately with the pandemic we’re not planning or booking ahead, or looking forward to any races right now. I guess, like everybody else, we’re in more of a holding pattern, running in circles.

That’s the thing about running. You don’t really need to go anywhere special to do it. Aside from a comfy pair of shoes, you can do it pretty much anywhere outdoors, even in the wake of COVID-19. This pandemic is testing all of us in different ways. It is an endurance test, and if you’re managing to put one foot in front of the other in whatever you’re doing, I say that’s a win.