How to Run a Pandemic PR

Find an actual race, one with fully automatic timing and lane numbers that you stick to your left hip and left chest. Do strides at race pace with your mask on the night before after finding out last minute that not only are masks required at the event and on the infield, but also during the race. Bring no one to cheer – no husband standing at the far corner shouting, “You’re about to PR!” Lose count of the laps in mile 3 and don’t kick until the last 400, going entirely against your race plan. Be mad that your OCD wasn’t there for you when you actually needed it, since you painstakingly memorized each split beforehand. 6:20, 6:10, 6:00 was the plan. 12:30 at 2 miles. Great! You hit that one. Then what? Cry because you only ran 19:23 when you should have run 19:10. Be grateful that at 37 years old, fueled by disrupted sleep, way too much sugar, and mountains of anxiety over raising young children in 2020, that you CAN run 19:23, a 25-second lifetime PR.