The above image is my updated map which now includes today's run (Monk's Alley, 11.5 miles) and one that was mistakenly left off yesterday's cumulative map (Gorrick Wood aka Cosy Catastrophe). The total after today is at least 150 miles, and it is day 15.
The subject I wanted to get off my chest today is related to hearing extremely anecdotal reports that runners are being shunned on the streets. This is being done in two ways. The first is the reactions of other pedestrians on the sidewalks, who will make exaggerated efforts to avoid us, the perception being that we are breathing heavily and are therefore putting others at more risk.
The second is that there is now the idea out there that you should only run for one hour maximum. In the Guardian this morning it was reported that the one hour rule (which is arbitrary and erroneous) has been imposed in some places by the police, and that such impositions are now being addressed by newly drafted guidelines designed to counter potential heavy-handedness by the police.
In response to the heavy breathing charge, I would counter that it is mostly new runners, of which there are very many now that it is one of our only means of getting outside (that or walking), who are doing the heavy breathing.
Someone who has run a lot prior to the lockdown will have an elevated VO2 max level and will therefore be an efficient oxygen-utiliser, from which it follows that their breathing will actually be quite controlled and moderate.
But even so, the charge against new runners should not be allowed to stand. Is it really heavy breathing that is spreading CoronaVirus? Perhaps it is a lack of government testing, and an inability to leverage mobile technologies to the extent that China, Taiwan, and Singapore are able to do so, that is the real problem.
We shouldn't take out frustrations at our own shortcomings on those who are in fact strengthening the response to the virus by taking care of themselves, running on their own, getting stronger and therefore more able to resist the illness (and to free up ventilators) on an individual level.
The police heavy-handedness allegation (if true) is more troubling, and could again be seen as an authoritarian over-reaction to perceived shortcomings. Again, this could be related to failure of the powers that be to (through technology) implement surveillance of the population, and thus (had we the means and the will) to be able to target areas in which KNOWN (through maps of precise points of transmission obtained through mobile phones for example) contact of infected individuals has occurred.
We simply don't have this knowledge, and we don't have competent testing either, but society wants to get the curve go down, and they look to the police. The police then try to find ways to curb excessive behaviour and they implement arbitrary rules in lieu of actual evidence-based action.
It is an understandable reaction based both on fear (pedestrians) and on ignorance and/or the futility of using the limited set of tools at the West's disposal. I would counter that individuals need to internalise the technologies of the self, to discipline themselves and in doing so to strengthen, from the bottom up, the societal response.
We do have some technology, and we know for example that governments will use the Investigatory Powers Act to harvest metadata and create some of the maps needed to produce a targeted response. They will keep this activity secret for fear of upsetting civil liberties activists. This response is doomed to seem authoritarian and secretive.
Individuals have technologies like their mobile phones and their Garmin watches. I can track my resting heart rate and from that gain a slight jump on potential infection by noting when my heart rate becomes elevated. By self-tracking our own health statistics I would say runners are ahead of the curve and are an asset in times like these.
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