Our athletes –
current and former – are certainly familiar with the world-class running over
in New Paltz and the New Paltz area of Ulster County. Minnewaska, which is
about 15 minutes outside of the village, during preseason XC; Wallkill Valley Rail
Trail for memorable and vitally important workouts throughout the late summer
and fall. There are many other trails and preserves on which you can run for
miles and miles and miles. In fact, Rock The Ridge is a 50-mile race that was
supposed to be this weekend and that was, of course, postponed till later in
the year.
It’s no surprise,
then, that the New Paltz area is a haven for national-caliber runners of all
ages. I’ve pointed out to our men and women, numerous times, some of the age-group
champion athletes who have trained on the rail trail around the same time as
us. Jason “Jay” Friedman is among the many great runners in the New Paltz area.
Jay is a national-caliber trail and ultra guy -- a blogger, a podcaster and a
coach. Most importantly now, he’s on the frontlines of the Coronavirus pandemic
as an ER doc at Northern Dutchess Hospital in Rhinebeck (fun fact: my three
children were born at Northern Dutchess!). Last week, I reached out to Jay
via Facebook to see how he was doing. Then, I emailed him some questions for
use in my weekly running column in the Poughkeepsie Journal. Jay gave me
excellent, detailed responses, which I will have to parse considerably for my upcoming
Journal column (usually, I’m constrained to a word count of 750-800). Back in
the day, the newspaper vernacular for this was “newshole” (which sounds like
something the president would say with a sneering look on his face?), the
limited amount of space in print that you have for your copy. But alas, here in
the blogosphere, we are not constrained to such newshole issues. As such, I
felt it would be neat – not to mention quite informative -- to include the
email interview I did with Jay here, in a special weekend edition of the
Pandemic Papers. Other than being a local runner and a “friend to the program,”
he has no direct ties to Marist Running. Still, I felt his thoughts and
comments would be extremely relevant during this unique time in our country’s
history. I hope you agree.
How has the Covid-19 pandemic impacted you on a
professional and personal level? Are you working more, less, different? What
percentage of your patient work is now with Covid-19?
It's changed the way I interact with patients,
the way I approach my job ... when you've been doing this for a very long time
like I have (I graduated med school almost 20 years ago!!), you have certain
assumptions you can make based on your previous experience, and patterns that
you can recognize that help guide your practice. So many of those are now
out the window. In many ways I feel like an intern again, constantly
second-guessing, flying blind in a way I haven't needed to do in a very long
time. Treatments that we use every day for common, critical illnesses
like asthma, emphysema and congestive heart failure are either not available to
us or available in limited circumstances. Other treatments are fraught
with danger to both patients and medical staff. I'm working the same
amount as before, seeing fewer patients (some people avoiding the ED due to
COVID fears, some decreased patient volume because people aren't out and about
and getting injured or going to bars or driving as much or seeing other
people), but the stress level is much higher.
Based on your experience working with Coronavirus,
what lessons have you learned about the disease? In your opinion, what's
working and what's not working in terms of public health decisions?
We know very little for certain about this
virus, how it works or how best to treat patients -- but we're learning more
every day. What's interesting is that many of the assumptions we made
early on based on what we were hearing out of other countries and how patients
initially presented were either incomplete or just plain wrong. It seems
like we're starting to recognize the role that abnormal blood clotting plays in
this disease, which is not something we were not aware of or prepared for early
on. But at least that is a complication that we can treat with a fair
degree of success, if that is in fact proven to be one of the underlying causes
of morbidity and mortality.
In terms of public health -- physical
distancing is working. That's about it. New York did a poor job (like
most states) of recognizing or anticipating the problem and so we lost a lot of
time early on; but since then I think the state has in general done I think an
admirable job in ramping up its response quickly. In our area, local
health systems have responded well in setting up remote testing sites and
increasing access to tests. But testing is still woefully inadequate in
terms of getting the data we need to safely start to reopen our state and our
country, and unfortunately while I think state leadership recognizes this, the
federal government does not. We need millions and millions of tests to
get the data we need and we need a centralized, coordinated analysis of and
response to that data ... but it doesn't seem like that's coming anytime soon,
which is incredibly frustrating and frightening.
Looking into a crystal ball, what factors need to
improve in order for us to return to normalcy? Massive testing and contact
tracing? An effective drug? A vaccine? What is a realistic timeline ... for all
of that?
Without a vaccine or a reliable treatment (or
both), we're not returning to normalcy. Period. We've already shown
in various parts of this country that we're not going to keep up social
distancing for an extended period of time, so we're going to see another wave
of this, and another, and another, until that changes or we have a vaccine. Massive
testing/contact tracing will tell us how and when we can reopen various aspects
of society, but if we do that safely, it will not be in a way most of us would
recognize as "normal."
Timeline? On testing, I wouldn't hold my
breath. If the president would invoke the DPA to produce and distribute
hundreds of millions of tests, I would be optimistic. Why that wasn't
done a month ago is beyond me. If it had been, and we were in the position
to test a million people a day right now, we might actually be able to safely
reopen. But he seems to think we can reopen without that, so I'm not sure
it will ever happen. I have no hope at all for contact tracing.
There is no way people are agreeing to that.
Treatment-wise, who knows? Like I said, we
learn more about this almost every day. If blood clotting plays a huge
role in pathology, and blood thinners are useful ... well, we have lots and
lots of blood thinners already. Beyond that, we're still figuring out how
this thing even works. Until we figure that out, I couldn't say how long
for a treatment. Maybe it'll wind up being something simple, but I doubt
it. Serum antibodies from recovered patients seems promising as well.
Maybe a month from now we'll find out that's a magic bullet of sorts.
We still don't know if antibodies from previous
infection confer any real immunity. Once we figure that out, that will
help immensely in terms of developing treatment or figuring out how best to manage
our response.
A vaccine is actually the avenue I'm most
optimistic about. It sounds like there are research teams both here and
in the UK that are starting human trials on a vaccine very soon, if they
haven't already started. I've seen estimates that a vaccine could be in
production by September. I'm skeptical that we'll have widespread
vaccination any time this fall (partly from a scientific perspective as these
things rarely go smoothly, and partly because even if there actually is a vaccine
available I'm very confident that the federal government will botch the roll
out), but I wouldn't be shocked if we have one in early 2021.
In terms of the running and racing scene: First,
what are some dos and don'ts for local runners: Should we be wearing a mask
(gosh, I hope not)? Should we be running solo? If we can run in groups, how and
where can we do that? What other precautions do we need to take?
Again, recommendations change frequently.
Masks aren't necessary if you're able to distance from others (at least 6-10
feet). I've started carrying one if I'm running in a high-traffic area
like the rail trail or the River to Ridge trail in New Paltz, and I put it on
when I pass people, even though I give them plenty of space ... mostly just to
make other folks feel comfortable. Yes, if we're running and breathing
more forcefully, we're probably releasing more virus particles if we are
infectious, but we're also releasing them in larger droplets that will fall to
the ground faster. I've seen the "garden hose study" and I'm
not sure we're putting anyone else at any additional risk by running as
long as we're still doing the 6-10 feet thing, but it seems to make people more
comfortable.
I'd recommend running early or late when
trails/routes are less crowded. In terms of running with others, I think
groups of two or three are OK, again, as long as you can maintain that 6-10-foot
distance. Seems like running abreast with space in between or
"offset" is better than running single file. Groups larger than
three get unwieldy in terms of maintaining appropriate distance and I think
should be avoided.
Unfortunately, on my side of the river, the
closure of the Mohonk Preserve has forced runners, walkers, and cyclists into a
much smaller area with many fewer routes and therefore has had the opposite of
its intended effect. I understand the instinct and what they are
concerned about, and I understand the concern for the health of their
rangers. But I do wish they had just closed the Preserve for climbing and
left the trails open for recreational use, even if they had to do so with the
parking lots closed or restricted. It's led to greatly increased
congestion elsewhere.
Part 2: Realistically, what are the chances of
organized races returning anytime soon and if so how would it happen? How long
before "big" races like NYC and Boston come back?
I could see limited-field races at New York or
Boston like they did with Tokyo earlier this year -- like, just
elites. NYC, Boston, and Chicago as 30,000-plus events are not happening
this year, in my opinion, unless the most optimistic projections for an
effective vaccine are met.
I could see smaller races coming on line this
summer, like 100-200 people or less. I actually think the Escarpment
Trail Run has a good setup for the COVID era -- about 150 runners, waves of
15-20 runners starting every few minutes on a remote trail and spreading out
quickly.
What are YOU doing in terms of your running and
fitness? How has the pandemic altered your training and racing plans? Did you
have any races coming up? What's "next" for you, whenever we return
to some semblance of normal? Any "virtual" races in your plans?
I've been training as usual, though running a
lot more roads than I'd like ... but still doing my 60-70 miles per week, still
doing 1-2 hard workouts weekly. Actually, I've been feeling really strong
recently ... all this fitness and nowhere to go! I was registered for
Rock the Ridge, which was scheduled for this weekend. It's been postponed
until September, so we'll see if that happens. I'm registered for
Leadville, which I'm still holding out hope could happen in late August.
I'm not into virtual races, but like many trail
and ultrarunners, I'm into the Fastest Known Time (FKT) scene. If you're
not familiar with that, it's basically creating a route or finding a well-known
route and trying to establish the fastest time on it. You need to
document your attempt with GPS data, photos, etc. There are routes all
over the world; some famous routes like the Presidential Traverse in the White
Mountains, or Rim to Rim to Rim (R2R2R) in the Grand Canyon have had many
world-class runners taking shots at them over the years. This was a
growing aspect of the sport in the past few years, Ultrarunning Magazine has
started including a "FKT of the Year" section in its year-end issue;
but as you can imagine its really taken off in the past few months. Last
month, I put up an FKT on the Wallkill Valley Rail Trail from Gardiner to
Kingston, and Phil Vondra set an out-and-back FKT (Kingston-Gardiner-Kingston)
on the same day. We've got a couple of well-established routes we've got
our eye on -- one pretty long one later this month, and one very long one
either in the summer (if races are still cancelled) or in October if we somehow
get to race in August/September. I'm not gonna name them yet though ... don't
want other people going for them first! Gamesmanship is fair play in the
FKT world.
Anything else you'd like to add ... including a
little background in your running -- how long have you been running, number of
marathons, ultras, PRs, career highlights, etc.
Running for 30 years. Don't know how many
marathons. Almost 50 ultras. Top 10 overall at national
championships for 50K, 50M, 100K, 100M, and 24 hours, including an age group
national championship at 100K in 2018. Also an exercise physiologist for
the Heart Center and coach with Boundless Coaching and Guiding (boundless10200.com).
Hope this helps. Stay safe my friend.
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