My year of maintaining physical fitness and mental well-being during the COVID-19 pandemic. Plus the life juggling, missed goals and getting the news that nobody wanted to hear.
A good start to 2020
I began 2020 with high hopes for the year ahead. Getting back into challenge hillwalking, running, cycling and golf were all on my new year resolutions list.
At the start of 2020, I set myself a series of fitness objectives to achieve during the course of the year. These included walking a full circuit of the actual Mourne Wall in a single day, to run a sub-2-hour half-marathon, and to compete in the All-Ireland Hillwalking Championships. Going into 2020, I was happy with my level of fitness. None of these goals were beyond my reach. Failure was NOT an option.
Being a dad to two young boys, it can be hard to fit regular exercise into my daily routine. From my own personal experience, running has always proven itself to be the most effective activity for controlling asthma – a condition I’ve lived with for more than 30 years. Thankfully, running is also the most time-efficient way to stay fit. In my case, a half hour run round the block provides the same physical fitness benefits as a full day of strenuous hillwalking. For this reason, running has become my primary fitness activity during these busy last few years.
I wanted to do at least one decent hillwalk each month during 2020. The first of those took place in January as planned. The year was off to a good start.
Shortly after that, I joined the Parkrun movement by taking part in the local weekly event. By mid February 2020, my fitness had quickly reached a level where I could run comfortably for more than 6 miles without needing any stops or walk breaks along the way. Here are some running stats from 24th February – my longest run in 2020.
I felt confident enough to nominate myself for the longest leg of the Belfast Marathon when my work colleagues were setting up teams for the relay event. I also registered to take part in the Newry Half Marathon at the end of May. I was fitter than I had ever been in the last ten years.
The strangest of times
On the other side of the planet, stories were emerging of a new virus. COVID-19. The epicentre was Wuhan, a Chinese city I’d never heard of before. The case numbers there were going up. Then the first deaths were reported. Wuhan was locked down. It all seemed very distant from my life in Belfast.
Then the virus arrived in Europe. Italy first, where a lockdown was quickly put in place to contain it. New cases were confirmed in other European countries, including the UK and Ireland. At that point, as an asthmatic, I was starting to worry. What would happen if I caught the virus? The very thought of my airways closing up or lungs filling with fluids terrified me. The virus had no antidote. There was no magic cure, and my own medication would probably be useless if I got infected.
By mid-March, cases were on the rise in Northern Ireland. I was still office-based but making preparations for the inevitable shift towards home-working. This shift happened just before St. Patrick’s Day and went surprisingly smoothly. My wife’s work also moved home. Thankfully, the house we’d bought six years earlier allowed us to work in separate rooms. Our previous house would not have facilitated that.
When the schools all closed, our seven- and four-year-old sons’ educations also moved home. This put in place the biggest life juggling challenge I’ve ever faced. Seven- and four-year-olds need constant supervision. My wife and I also needed to carry out our jobs. While our children were awake, only one of us could be working at any time. This meant having to alternate between work and home-schooling / childcare throughout the day, swapping every couple of hours, with any shortfall being worked up in the evenings and at weekends. It was a tiring routine which left precious little time and energy for fitness activities.
With everyone being advised to stay local, I chose to stay well within a mile or two of my house, sticking to the local streets for walking and running. My wife had bought me a skipping rope for Christmas, so I added it to my fitness routine. I discovered that fifteen minutes of skipping provides a very decent workout, similar to a short run. It really works the calf muscles in particular, making it a very effective exercise for hillwalkers during lockdown. Quite therapeutic too.
We were so lucky with the weather during the Spring months. I’m not much of a gardener. My gardening skills are limited to things like lawnmowing, hedge trimming and heavy digging. The other gardening tasks are left to my wife’s more capable hands. Lockdown certainly brought the garden to my attention. We were spending much more of our outdoor time there and I couldn’t help but notice the abundance of flora and fauna living there or just passing through.
I also planted some beech nuts in a pot to see what would happen. It was really quite exciting to eventually see four little trees sprouting.
It was also a time to discover my own local area. I had been living in south Belfast on and off since 1996 and moved to my current home in 2013. But I hadn’t really done much local exploring. In the past I was drawn more to the uplands and coast. Apart from the local highlights, I had overlooked many nice little hidden gems that were easily walkable from my own front door. One big local discovery, for me at least, was Ned’s Meadow, part of the National Trust’s Minnowburn property. I visited it one day when the field was a spectacular display of giant daisies.
One of my Ned’s Meadow photos even made it onto the local BBC weather forecast.
Over the next few months, travel restrictions were increased and decreased a few times. Living in Northern Ireland, it was difficult at times to keep up with the local rules and guidance. As well as Stormont developments, the media was also reporting from London, Edinburgh and Cardiff. Add to this the developing situation in the Republic, it was a very confusing picture.
At the start of 2020, one of my goals was to do a moderate or challenging hillwalk every month. All I had managed in the first half of the year was one day in the Mournes back in January. The time and energy demanded by home-working, home-schooling and childcare required something to be sacrificed. Unfortunately, it was the time-hungry activity of hillwalking that had to be cut back. It wasn’t until July that I found a suitable time slot for my second hillwalk of the year – the Annalong Valley Horseshoe. In fact, it was to be my first challenging hillwalk in more than eight years.
Having not visited any proper hills in six months, I was surprised at how easy it was to complete the Annalong Valley Horseshoe, one of Ireland’s classic circular hillwalks. Completing that challenging route, which included seven of Northern Ireland’s thirteen highest mountain summits, with minimal hill training beforehand, proved that my challenge hillwalking fitness hadn’t abandoned me during the eight-year break.
Apart from a week-long holiday in Galway in mid-August, my family and I had stayed exclusively in Northern Ireland, mostly south Antrim and north Down. Even during times of eased restrictions, we chose to live in near-lockdown conditions, staying within south Belfast for more than 95% of the time. Just because you CAN do something or go somewhere, doesn’t mean that you MUST. While others pushed all the way to their permitted boundaries, we kept our movements to the absolute minimum.
The constant juggling of home-working, home-schooling and childcare continued right through until the end of August when the schools reopened for the new term.
COVID-19, up close and personal
On 16th October, I developed a persistent tickly cough. I didn’t think much of it at the time. I’d had a cold for a few days prior, and it’s not uncommon for me to develop a cough during the course of a cold. On the morning of the 18th, I had a high temperature. The whole family got tested for COVID-19 that same morning. The next day, my wife and sons’ test results all came back negative. Mine came back positive. This was a massive shock to me, my family, and the people around us. I had been so strict all year about protecting myself from getting infected. I’d kept well away from people, used hand sanitiser, wore masks, stayed local. But somehow, I still managed to get infected.
I was told to self-isolate for 10 days from the day of my first symptoms. That meant I only had 7 days left to do. The rest of the family had to do 2 full weeks from the day we’d got tested. During that time, we never left the house. Friends dropped off supplies at our front door to help us through. I wore a mask any time I needed to be in the same room as my family. It seemed like half of my time was spent washing my hands. I washed them before I touched a surface and again afterwards, determined not to infect anyone else. By the time our self-isolation was over, my knuckles were cracked and stinging, but no-one else in my family got infected.
For the next six or seven weeks, my energy levels dropped significantly and suddenly. I was constantly tired despite getting more sleep and rest than I had done for years. I was having headaches and various other pains throughout my body. Nothing could hold my concentration for more than a few minutes at a time, not even my job. Recovery was slow, and my doctor suspected I had Long Covid. By then it was December, and I had already accepted that it would be 2021 before I could even consider going for a hillwalk or a run. Lowland walking was the best I could do in the short term.
Thankfully, 2020 was ending with some good news. COVID-19 vaccines were ready, and on the way. Unfortunately, some non-experts have taken to social media to discourage people from getting vaccinated. I had my doubts about the speed in which the vaccines were developed, but the following Twitter thread by Ireland’s Deputy Chief Medical Officer has reassured me. It’s a bit long, but really is worth a read.
My personal health decisions will be based on scientific advice from qualified medical experts rather than the conspiracy theories being circulated by non-experts. I don’t want a repeat of 2020. For that reason, I will be taking the vaccine as soon as my turn comes around.
Since my infection, I have grown increasingly disappointed in the COVID-deniers and those who dispute what the authorities and media are telling us. Some deniers compare the virus to the flu. I remember one non-expert on Twitter playing down the seriousness of COVID-19 by pointing out that the flu kills 600,000 people globally every year. That was back in the Spring, when the global death toll from COVID-19 was about 30,000. It is now more than 1.8 million! And that’s with local and international travel restrictions and guidelines having been in place for much of 2020. I dread to think what that figure would look like now if the world had just carried on as normal. 10 times higher? 100 times? 1,000? Thankfully, we’ll never know how much worse it could have been.
Unfortunately, we have to share our beautiful planet with conspiracy theorists and those of an it-won’t-happen-to-me attitude. My advice is to follow the guidelines and obey the restrictions. Stay local, wear a mask, maintain 2 metre physical distance, and get the vaccine. If we can all do this in the short term, the sooner normality will return. If we don’t, 2021 will be just a repeat of 2020, and none of us want that.
Despite being asthmatic, I have always been a fit and healthy person who enjoys an active lifestyle. COVID-19 has had a major impact on what I can physically do, and I now have a metaphorical mountain climb ahead of me just to get back to where I was a year ago. Trust me, you don’t want this virus. Even if you are fit and healthy, it could affect you just as it has me. I consider myself lucky from having read about fitter, healthier, younger, more active people who have fared much worse than me. Do yourself – and everyone – a big favour. Stay local, wear a mask, maintain 2 metre physical distance, and get the vaccine as soon as you possibly can. Let’s not drag this crisis out any longer than it needs to. Let’s get back to some sort of normality.
Looking ahead to 2021
I go into 2021 in a positive mood, hoping for a more normal year. The goals I didn’t achieve in 2020, I now carry over into 2021. These still include walking a full circuit of the actual Mourne Wall in a single day, to run a sub-2-hour half-marathon, and to compete in the All-Ireland Hillwalking Championships. I also hope to reintroduce walking into my daily routine by taking part in the new #WalkEveryDay2021 initiative. My fitness has dropped to an all-time low, a fraction of what it was twelve months ago, so my challenges are massively greater this time.
Lessons learned
When it comes to my own personal goals, I have learned two important lessons over the last year.
Firstly, failure IS an option and an acceptable outcome. In the past, I had a tendency to put myself under pressure to achieve my goals. This year, 2021, that pressure is definitely gone. Having dealt with a wide variety of unforeseen and unwelcome challenges in 2020, I now look forward to living every moment of 2021, not just the moments of achievement. This is my new positive approach to life, my new year resolution.
Secondly, the body and mind benefit more overall from a diverse range of recreational activities than from a single specialist activity, at least they do in my case. This isn’t so much a new lesson learned, but rather a positive confirmation of what I already knew. 2020 also highlighted that focusing exclusively on one specialist activity increases the risk of being affected by restrictions like those imposed to control the COVID-19. I noticed some hillwalkers getting particularly frustrated this year with travel restrictions. I recall having similar frustrations during the foot and mouth disease crisis in 2001 when the uplands were out of bounds. However, I never once felt inconvenienced in any way by COVID-19 restrictions. The reason? Hillwalking was my only recreational activity in 2001, whereas I now have a range of interesting activities to choose from. Variety definitely is the spice of life. It also minimises the risk of getting bored and is good for mental health.
Finally, I would like to take this opportunity to wish you happiness, health, peace and prosperity in what will hopefully be a more normal new year.
Kieron Gribbon 