On Sunday 23rd February, I did the Hemel 17 miler on my own – no sister, no John. My sister had returned to Canada and John sustained a knee injury during the ParkRun in January. The arrival of our club chair Alan at the start line to send me off meant so much to me. Thank you, Alan !
I have signed up to run the Milton Keynes Marathon on Sunday 3rd May and this Hemel trilogy is my preparation for the Marathon. Due to the strong wind and the extremely muddy towpath, the organiser changed the route for the first 3 miles. Instead of running on the towpath for 3 miles, we ran on the roads parallel to the towpath. I did find it easier to run on the pavement than the towpath even though it took 4 miles to reach near the 3-mile mark of the original route. The rest of the route is the same as we ran on the country lanes with mostly tarmac surface. We still needed to avoid some very big puddles though. The last half mile we were back to the towpath and I only realised how muddy it was. Fortunately, I had already stopped my watch because I had finished the 17 miles well before I reached the towpath. I just took it easy to skip around the puddles until I reached the official finish signage. I finished the 17 miles in 3:10’05” (average pace: 11’11”) in a very windy and rainy condition and a hilly course. Just 2 months ago in December 2019 when I was lying in bed suffering from a severe chest infection, I would never have imaged I could finish the Hemel 17 miler 2 months later.
After the Hemel 17 miler, I had been so busy at work with a very important assignment and have not been able to get around to write my report until now. Wow, what a dramatic 3 weeks filled with the Coronavirus pandemic global outbreak. It started in China in January, then Asia in February and now Europe and US. After losing more than 3,000 lives in China, China’s death rate has gone down a lot in the past week. On the other hand, Italy has already lost nearly 2,000 lives since its outbreak only from the beginning of March followed by Iran over 700 and Spain nearly 300. Although the death tolls in the UK still remains low with 35 so far, the confirmed case in the UK is now nearly 1,400 at the time of this report written on Sunday evening 15th March. If the UK runs the same trend as Italy or Spain, it is projected UK would also lose more than a thousand of lives in the next couple of weeks unless drastic measures are in place to stop the spread of the COVID-19 virus. Some of the drastic measures include the ban of events with large crowd of people such as sports events, concerts, cinemas, theatres due to the highly contagious rate of the virus via airborne.
London Marathon has been postponed from Sunday 26th April to 4th October. Other high-profile marathons in the UK and Europe such as Paris, Barcelona, Manchester have already been postponed. Even the tough event like the Marathon de Sable has been cancelled too. The Hemel 20 miler which is an event for the preparation of Marathons taking place in April and May has also been cancelled. The Milton Keynes Marathon has not been cancelled yet. It is still 7 weeks away. Let’s see!
I have been so looking forward to watching the Tokyo 2020 Olympics this year but am worried it might get cancelled but this would seem the costs and losses at the moment are too much for anyone to contemplate of a cancellation at this time – 4 months before the Olympics. If the flight bans remain by July and athletes and spectators can’t fly to Japan, then that might sort of stopping it from happening anyway. This will definitely be a major disaster to the host country Japan
At work, we have been asked by HR to work from home and only conduct meetings via conference calls and Skype. I have been working from home since last Monday and will continue to work from home until further notice. There are pros and cons by working from home. The pros are the time and money saved in commuting to the office. The cons are the lack of face-to-face discussions with colleagues and customers. I really don’t know where we, the humanity, are heading to in terms of the fight against the Coronavirus COVID-19. We must stay strong and positive.
