Saturday’s social distance = 43km

My new motto: At a distance. For a distance. As I was writing my weekly running column for the Poughkeepsie Journal this morning, that’s the phrase that kept coming to my head. I was writing about my buddy David Osterhoudt (Davey O!), who celebrated his 43^rd birthday on Saturday morning by running 43 kilometers. For those keeping score at home, 43km is 26.719 miles – a little longer than the standard marathon distance of 42.195 kilometers (26.2188 miles). His original idea was 43 miles for 43 years, and he wanted me to do it with him. I was very reluctant, because that’s a long way to go in my broken-down, washed-up condition -- not to mention my pandemic “training” consists mostly of brisk walking and almost no running. By myself, of course, with just podcasts and music as my company. He persisted and then convinced me by settling on 43km. That, I can do, without trashing my whole day – and, really, what else do we have going on?

Davey O grew up in Staatsburg, a historic village within the Town of Hyde Park. Readers of this fancy blog probably know Staatsburg village as the sleepy burg we drive through on the way to our Mills Hills workout during cross country season. Older readers remember it as “Ogden Mills Estate.” Its official name is now the “Staatsburgh State Historic Site.” Dave O’s idea was to run from one historic 1700s-era mile marker -- right in the middle of the village, across the street from his dad Odie’s house, which served as our “run headquarters” -- north to the next one, a mile up the road, about a half-mile past the historic site. Back and forth, back and forth. He knew I would go for that sort of tedium.

I’m pretty slow, so I started a lot earlier than he did; got in 8 miles before his truck appeared in Odie’s driveway. He caught up to me (not that difficult to do, at my snail’s pace), we ran together – at a very acceptable social distance, opposite sides of the wide road – for about five minutes before he took off at his very respectable running pace. I shuffled along at a 5 miles per hour jog/walk for the whole morning, listening to podcasts and music. He lapped me several times and we saw each other a bunch of times – always at the opposite sides of the road, as we always ran against traffic. The timing was good. After 13 out-and-backs, we had to tack on the extra distance to get to the 43km total. We finished around the same time midday – he in a very respectable 3:49:25 (8:35 pace), me at a very slow 5:20:27. His family was there as he finished. Several members of his immediate family he hadn’t seen in several weeks!

So yeah. We cannot run in groups anymore for the time being. We SHOULD not run in groups anymore. Most rail trails, parks, etc., are too congested with runners for any sort of group runs, even solo runs. But an old, wide country road with just a few of us – two of his other running buddies came and paced him for parts of his run – for a few hours? That’s doable. For now. For a distance. At a distance.