The Menage of Lockdown

The passing of another week of lockdown and our local lockdown has been reinstated indefinitely. We missed being one of the Local Government Areas (LGA's) released from lockdown by one case and about one day which reveals something about the arbitrariness of these measures. I try not to comment on lockdowns and Covid in this blog as it is a divisive subject the "truth" of which grows more opaque by the day, but instead focus on being thankful that within our LGA we can mountain bike, bush walk, trail run, rock climb, boulder, swim, surf, and kayak.

I had to look back at my training log to see what I actually did this week as lockdown weeks blend into one long menage of blandness. One Sunday I ran up to Mogo trig on the single track. Now that I think about it, I remember watching rain sweeping up the coast from the hills to the south which was my queue to run home as I had only a thin shirt with me. Monday, I walked along to my beach side bouldering spot and spent a couple of hours there. Tuesday was another long run, this time from Durras south. I had initially intended to run down to North Head but I have done that many times so after visiting a few of the beaches I ran instead up to Pine Knob on old forest trails. There are no pines but Murramarang National Park has lovely spotted gum and burrawang forests and it was really quiet. I met only one other fellow riding his mountain bike around the tracks.

Route endurance on my home wall on Wednesday for a solid pump, and then I biked up to the forest and lapped Burnt Offerings and the Dam Loop. Our mountain bike trails are looked after by anonymous trail fairies and get well used by local walkers, runners and bikers. Thursday I walked the rock platforms, finger boarded and strength trained. My log seems to indicate that at this advanced age I need about four days to fully recover between strength workouts. I don't think any youth fully appreciates how much your training has to shift as you age to accommodate extended recovery. Endurance, as long as you don't have aerobic deficiency syndrome, is easy to bang out day after day but strength and power, hard (whatever that means to you) rock climbing just takes longer to recover from.

Friday was the day after we got our second dose of the Covid vaccine and, predictably, we both felt pretty ordinary. I was going to run up to Round Hill lookout and down to the cemetery (mostly single track) but settled for walking instead. I made it, but the rest of the day was much more sedentary. I don't do illness well as I am never sick. It is almost a decade since I last had even a mild virus. And, here we are at Saturday. It is a glorious sunny day and a good day for a beach walk.