With Stage 4 Lockdown (aka Lockdown 2.1) in Victoria, each person is only allowed one hour of exercise outdoors per day. This restriction prevents runners from clocking up long runs. So on Saturday, I ran a 100 miler indoors at home, up and down a hallway, around a couch. Apart from a bit of fun, I wanted to achieve two things with this little effort:
(1) to raise awareness about the vulnerable members of our community, and the sacrifice that our frontliners – doctors and nurses – have been making in this ongoing struggle with COVID-19. Life is hard going for almost everyone at this moment, but for these people, it is probably ten times as hard.
(2) to make a statement that the one-hour outdoor exercise limit in Victoria should not affect our capability to stay fit and healthy. It is important and responsible to act for the good of the community, yet life needs to go on. We just need to be a bit more creative and willing to try different ways.
This is a list of COVID-19 hospital appeals across different states in Australia:
https://www.mycause.com.au/events/coronavirusappeal
Our family is supporting Austin Health close to home:
https://donate.mycause.com.au/cause/227013
Upon completion of this 100-miler (record on Strava), I finished the 1,000km across the state of Tennessee (The Great Virtual Race Across Tennessee 1,000km #gvrat1000).
This was my response to Lazarus Lake at the finish:
haha ta laz
i’ve always enjoyed your poetics
free of theatrics
as genuine as they comea simple buckle for this turtle from down under please
not that us lot have a choice
being so far away from canada
or where medals melt away like snowballs in floridai’ve run the last hundred miles non-stop
around the couch, up and down the hallway
to the edge of the cherokee forest
just so i can see mount rogers past hundred daysi’ll heartily accept my lot as a rat
the blind bats can enjoy their return to memphis
this turtle has enjoyed the cultural tour of tennessee
there’s been so much to smell and seebut it’s time to get pissed with the buzzard
a snappy one though mind yea
‘coz i need to run a thousand klicks home
all the way from sydney