Pandemic offers time for reflection – and many miles

London’s endurance athletes have had to adjust their routines during the pandemic without competitions. But Chris Balestrini keeps on running – and running.

The COVID-19 pandemic is a marathon that we suddenly found ourselves running – admittedly one where race officials keep moving the finish line farther and farther away. For many, every task is monumental.

Chris Balestrini’s advice is to just keep moving forward.

“Whatever it might be in life that you want to accomplish, the hardest part is starting,” he says. “Once you get that inertia of the activity then it’s a lot easier to continue. It’s almost harder to stop at that point. Just get out the door when you’re really not feeling it. That's kind of like a trick that I play on myself.”

Balestrini is among dozens of elite endurance athletes in London wrestling with how to physically and mentally approach training and competition after a year of virtual uncertainty. Like the rest of the world, he has been on hold – waiting to get started.

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Last year was nearly a complete standstill for competitive runners. Of the six major marathons, only Tokyo and London were held in 2020, and they included only a hyper-limited field of elites.

The fate of the 2021 races remains equally uncertain. If the calendar holds – and that is a huge if – then Berlin would be the first major event on September 26. Sometime before that, the World Championships and Tokyo Olympics should take place.

Should. That’s the key word, Balestrini says.

Other sports are opening up. While major running events have yet to return, professional sports like baseball, basketball, and football are figuring out ways to play, be it with aggressive testing or bubbles for the players. All have been limiting – or even eliminating – fans in the stands to add further control.

However, none of these sports have been playing during a pandemic with the number of participants or size of crowds that come with a major racing event.

“With running, especially with marathon running and road racing, the whole draw is the big spectacle,” said Balestrini. “The Boston Marathon will have 30,000 people in it. New York is even bigger than that and will have 40,000. People realized pretty quickly that wasn’t going to happen anymore and nothing remotely close to that was going to surface for a while. So people just started looking for ways to stay motivated until the next big thing comes up that we can race.”

Pre-pandemic, Balestrini ran the Really Chilly Half Marathon in Burlington, Ont. That was March 4, 2020. The world shut down less than two weeks later.

“Everything went silent. The big thing everyone was worried about was the unknown,” said the London native, currently pursuing his MD/PhD in Neurobiology.

Would small, in-person events continue? Could time trials be certified within club events? What about Olympic qualifying?

“We were left scrambling.”

Despite the off-and-on nature of the year (mainly off), Balestrini remained just as active.

Locally, he continued his training as a member of the Backroads Bandits, a group of elite Canadian runners who call London home. In October 2020, he ran the Fastest Fun Marathon in Waterloo, a 10- person, 10-finisher event. In one of the few Canadian road racing events of the year, Balestrini posted a time of 2:17:05. It was a personal best in the event.

(For the record, his personal bests stand among the elite in Canada: 14:14 in the 5,000m; 29:22 in the 10,000m; 1:05:30 in the half marathon; and 2:17:05 in the marathon. All of those he’s accomplished in the last two years.)

Balestrini worries a bit about the fate of the sport if 2021 stalls more events yet again. “If you go through two years of not having events, which is maybe reasonable to say, having no income for major events could put the industry under,” he said. “Some probably wouldn’t survive.”

Although, there are glimmers of hope. Virtual events helped buoy many organizations. The sport has also seen an explosion in popularity.

“There are a lot of new runners coming into the sport,” the Londoner said. “It seems like with gyms closing, and with restricted access to different sports in general, people are turning to the bike paths and turning to the roads. That’s great to see. We’re seeing a little running boom. It’s going to be great for the sport.”

Until then, Balestrini weathers the uncertainty like all of us.

He has days where he doesn’t want to go. Not as many as normal humans, but he does. There are days where he wants to watch Netflix and eat Chicago mix on the couch.

But his key is just getting out. For Balestrini, it might be getting that first mile in. For you, it might be reading the first pages of that book, or eating that first healthy lunch, or getting that first email sent.

He sets small, short-term goals. Want to excel at a certain workout two weeks from now? Make that the goal. Focus the energy on that.

“The pandemic requires you to be honest with yourself about how you’re motivated and what you like to do,” he said. “Some people like to go out, run easy, and log lots of miles. Just put the headphones in and forget about the world for a bit. If that’s motivating for you, then don’t try to force yourself into something like faster, shorter workouts. You are just going to lose a little bit of motivation, and then that’s it. It’s a steep cliff. Once you lose that (motivation) in the pandemic era, it is hard to bring it back quickly.”

When honest with himself, Balestrini likes to run hills, long loops, and gravel roads. That led him to a cabin in Barry’s Bay in Madawaska Valley in December. The region’s isolated terrain was perfect.

“I just shut my mind off and ran over 200k in the week. It wasn’t the most ideal thing if a race was coming up in February. In normal times, I would want to be sharpening. But I came back so refreshed from getting out and experiencing that.”

His goal for the unknown year ahead is to stay healthy. Seems simple enough. But it’s the key to everything he does. In the last two years, he has clocked more than 16,000k – an average of more than a half marathon a day.

A known “over-racer,” Balestrini packed his 2019 race schedule – three marathons, eight half marathons, a 15K, four 10Ks, and six 5Ks. Give or take a few. If you said that to another national level runner, they would call it a recipe for injury.

Even for an elite runner, that is a wild amount – and he knows it.

“The distance community and endurance athletes, in general, just like to suffer,” he said. “It’s a masochistic sport. I don’t know if I would train as hard if there were no events ever, but I would still go out there and push myself on a weekly basis even if there were no races or gratification at the end. It’s just kind of a personality thing more than anything.

“It’s probably a good thing for me to pump the brakes a bit on racing. You’re going to see some people really shine through and thrive in this environment and, ultimately, I just hope I’m one of those people.”

Balestrini keeps putting in the day-in-day-out work in advance of the world opening up – looking to run 200k until early spring. Although his schedule is open, his drive remains.

“Honestly, I try not to be a competitive person outside of sport. I like to be more collaborative,” he said. “But there’s something to sport – it doesn’t matter what it is, it

could be who slides down the hill the fastest or anything – but there’s something that just gets me going. It just fires me up. There’s a competitive edge. Regardless of if times were kept or if medals were given out, I would still go as hard as I can for as long as I can. It’s just kind of something innate.”

The 29-year-old is an athlete in his prime. He admits the frustrations of the freeze on the highest levels of competition. But there are also benefits to this time as well, he said.

“With this time off, with everything settled down and no racing for anyone, these times are when you’re going to see the biggest jumps in your performance. If you can find a way to stoke the fires and get motivated, this is a perfect period where you can just consistently run.”

No trying to peak for a race. No losing days to recovery. Just running.

“To get better, to get more consistency over time, not racing as much is probably a good thing, especially a good thing for me.”