COVID-19: Practical Tips For The Endurance Sports Community

In this special episode, TrainRight Podcast hosts Adam Pulford and Hillary Allen sit down to discuss practical tips that cyclists, runners, and triathletes can use to navigate the current Coronavirus crisis that’s affecting all of us around the world.

Listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, Google Podcasts, or on your favorite podcast platform.

 

For more resources, training videos, and daily workouts check out the CTS Quarantine Project here.

 

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Thanks To This Week’s Sponsors:

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Episode Transcription:

 

Adam Pulford:

Welcome to the TrainRight Podcast, I’m your cohost, Adam Pulford.

Hillary Allen:

And I am your other cohost Hillary Allen.

Adam Pulford:

This week we’re talking about the biggest, most obvious thing in the room, the big elephant in the room, the COVID-19 pandemic. But before we get into some of the training specifics, Hillary, you are abroad, you’re in Europe, tell me about your crazy situation over there.

Hillary Allen:

Yeah. So, I guess we’re going to timestamp this podcast …

Adam Pulford:

Yes, please.

Hillary Allen:

… for Friday, March 20th, that’s correct?

Adam Pulford:

Yeah.

Hillary Allen:

Basically, I’m talking to you from the future. France right now, we are under official quarantine status, so this means that all of France is mandated to stay at home. On Monday, the president issued kind of a official 15-day quarantine status, where all non-essential businesses have been closed, and public places have been closed, but he took it one step further that now everyone has to stay at home.

Hillary Allen:

I think over the course of the week, now it’s Friday, things have gotten a little bit more strict. At first, he was saying, “Okay, you can go out and walk your dog, or go for a run, but you have to do it alone.”

Hillary Allen:

This is, of course, all for … we’ll get into the specifics, but social distancing, limit your contact with people, but now the decree is we can only go outside about two-K from our place that we’re living. Again, this is all just for the broader, bigger safety of the communities that we live in, and they’re actually pretty strictly enforcing it.

Hillary Allen:

Right now, actually, you have to have a signed document saying, “Okay, I’m either leaving my house to go grocery shopping, or to go to the pharmacy.” There’s some work that’s permitted, like if you work in the medical industry, or in a grocery store, or a bakery, those are still open. You can still go outside to go to work, and then the other one is to do sport, but of course it’s still pretty limiting.

Hillary Allen:

I am fortunately in a little mountain cabin here, so I’m already self-secluded, but still it raises some bigger issues I think that we can talk about, but also the nearest town that I have to go to to go grocery shopping is about 10K away, and it’s in Barcelonnette, France, if anyone wants to look that up, but the problem there is I’m still trying to follow the government regulations, like only hiking two-K from my house, because there’s actually no hospital in Barcelonnette. So, if something happened I’d be not so well.

Adam Pulford:

Wow! And you have to get permission to go grocery shopping, right?

Hillary Allen:

Yes. So this morning I went grocery shopping, and I speak very limited French, and I had my signed paper and my documents, but there are policemen actually checking this to go into this little mountain town community, so I can only imagine how strict it would be in other bigger cities like Paris, and in the North of France the pandemic is a little bit worse, but this also just kind of, to circle back to the United States, I think some communities that we already know of, for instance, San Francisco is already experiencing the beginning, and I think the whole entire state of California as of this morning has been issued a similar stay at home advisory from the local governments there.

Hillary Allen:

So, I think United States is obviously learning from other countries, but we first saw it in Italy, obviously first saw it in China, then in Italy, then in Spain, and so now France, so I think United States can … Definitely some communities might be experiencing the same thing that I am pretty soon.

Adam Pulford:

Yeah, I think so, and that’s the timeliness of this podcast, and really what we wanted to do was jump on microphones, tell the story of what’s going on worldwide, but then also talk about how we’re coaching our athletes anywhere from the United States, to Europe, to everywhere else in the world.

Adam Pulford:

So, I know there’s been a lot of communication from the CDC, and even governing bodies on how to navigate this, just from the simple elements of washing your hands, and good hygiene, and sleep, and immune systems, and all this kind of stuff, but what I want to do … and there’s even some guy like coaches in podcasts talking about how we’re navigating this, but what I want to do is talk specifically to our audience, to our athletes, and hopefully give them some tips and tricks to start applying this to their quarantine lifestyle, and hopefully we get through this, and we can get on with training and racing as normal by the end of the year.

Adam Pulford:

So, well Hillary, first and foremost, should our athletes keep training or should we not?

Hillary Allen:

Yeah, I think that brings up a really good point, and it’s a question on a lot of athletes’ mind, especially when the word quarantine is being thrown out there. We rely on training for balance in our lives, and I think not only physically but mentally, and so I absolutely think that you should keep training through this.

Adam Pulford:

Yeah. I fully agree, and along with that is just keep your good habits up as well, and that means training frequency, getting as much sleep as possible, but the great eight, so-to-speak, seven to nine hours of sleep, take naps if you can, hydration, nutrition, keep all of those good healthy habits that we have as athletes, keep those up.

Adam Pulford:

Finally, relax, relaxing, meditation, and some of that happens in our sport, as we’re running, as we’re cycling, that’s part of kind of the mental health, like you talked about, but also maybe reserving some time if you are working from home, and have some extra time, this is setting that aside for the cognitive.

Hillary Allen:

Yeah.

Adam Pulford:

For the training specifics, Hillary, with your athletes, have you drastically changed anything in terms of their habits, or anything in terms of their structure on your end with this pandemic going on?

Hillary Allen:

Yeah. Some of my athletes are actually in France and in Europe, and in some of the areas that are most effected by this quarantine, and I absolutely have changed their specific training from day to day. So maybe they can’t get out for a long run, but that doesn’t mean they should just skip training all together.

Hillary Allen:

And so I’ve kind of implemented some just shorter training sessions, like if athletes have access to a trainer, doing things like that, and having more bang for your buck. So I know it’s maybe be kind of boring to do a long session on a bike trainer, but I’ve tried to prescribe some more intense workouts, so you feel kind of those endorphins a little bit sooner.

Hillary Allen:

But I also kind of treat it honestly almost like a taper week, where you’re tapering for a race, that doesn’t mean you eliminate all activity, but you kind of knock down the volume a little bit, and keep the intensity there. So people feel like they’re still doing something, but then you’re also trying to eliminate the stress of having to do these big days when they’re maybe locked inside.

Hillary Allen:

So that I’m going to take with me for my athletes that are in the US when some communities are already being affected by the quarantine status.

Adam Pulford:

Yeah, that’s really good, and I think that’s a solid way to go after it. Well, some of my athletes have been doing a very similar thing here in the United States, we’ve started the cross country mountain bike season, we’ve started road racing crits, and race season was just about to be upon us, but for me, the approach that I did was basically like recovery week, if we did race or we had like a big, high-intensity build to … as kind of the final build before we started racing.

Adam Pulford:

So it was kind of like recovery week for a lot of people, let’s see where this thing is going, and I mean it’s changing daily, right? So we don’t really know, in my approach, that we’re starting this weekend and into next week is truly, like you said, kind of staying away from the bigger days, or the big training stress overall, and going into kind of an aerobic maintenance period, with, for cycling, a lot of tempo, or what we call sweet spot training, where it is like you said, a bang for the buck, or cost benefit, where it’s not costing you a lot of fatigue, but you’re getting a lot of benefit from the aerobic stress standpoint.

Adam Pulford:

You’re burning a lot of kilojoule, you’re burning a lot of calories, you’re racking up the miles, but doing it at a low fatigue cost.

Hillary Allen:

And if I can add something too, I mean you brought up a good point, I mean like using something as your recovery week, right? It’s not the worst thing in the world to take a step back. I know personally I’ve had a lot of my spring races already canceled, and so I was kind of like, “Oh, well I don’t really have anything to train for,” and that was the same case for a lot of my athletes.

Hillary Allen:

So what I’ve told them as well is that, “Okay, well this is an opportunity to kind of have a little bit of a downtime,” and I mean your fitness doesn’t just go away, it’ll still be there, and, like you said, if you maintain it, you kind of do these, I love tempo work, and actually running, but also like on a bike trainer that the sweet spot intervals are like my favorite. I love them.

Hillary Allen:

But, so telling that to my athlete is like, even if you don’t do these long days, if you’re still doing something every day, like just to stress the body a little bit, you’re still going to maintain fitness, and the cool thing is that maybe you’re going to actually reap some benefits of a little bit of extra recovery time, and that’s not the worst thing.

Adam Pulford:

Definitely not the worst thing, and the more I think about what a lot of my athletes need, professional athletes and professional people, it’s like we could all use a little bit of extra downtime to …

Hillary Allen:

I know.

Adam Pulford:

Honestly.

Hillary Allen:

It’s like a little extra off season depending on when you’re thinking it and maybe you just don’t get an off season in general, well this is it, let’s seize the opportunity.

Adam Pulford:

Exactly. Well, so to that point a little bit of off season during season is because races have been canceled, it’s nuts, and it’s all over the place.

Adam Pulford:

So I know you’ve had some races canceled Hillary, talk to me about that, like emotionally what’s going on up in your brain, or what’s going on over there?

Hillary Allen:

Yeah. So I don’t know if you want to get into all that, Adam, but …

Adam Pulford:

You’re in a safe place.

Hillary Allen:

Thank you. It’s really funny ’cause my coach, I’m a coach for runner athletes, but then I am also coached, and my coach’s name is Adam.

Adam Pulford:

And that is ironic, that is very ironic.

Hillary Allen:

I know. So I called up Adam, literally it was like the day … it was on a Saturday, I had a long run planned, and I kind of was getting the first wave, this is last Saturday, and I was getting this first wave of, “Okay, like your first spring event is canceled,” and this was a running race in France at the end of March.

Hillary Allen:

And I literally laced up my shoes going out the door, and I was like, “I have a long run planned, but why? I don’t want to do it.” This was supposed to be my last big weekend building up to this race, and I was just kind of like, “I don’t really want to do this.” I was lacking the motivation, I was kind of felt aimless, I felt like I didn’t have a purpose, and so I just told myself … I called up Adam, my coach, and was like, “What do I do? I feel like I don’t have something to train for.”

Hillary Allen:

He’s like, “Okay, let’s just go have fun, just take off the pressure, do what you want, you can do four hours if you want to, you can do an hour if you want to.” I’m here in France, he’s like, “Just run to a bakery, get a croissant, then go back.” I was like, “Okay.”

Hillary Allen:

And so having that permission to just kind of like feel upset, but then take a step back and make different plans, that’s kind of how I’ve approached this, and then that makes it easier for me to kind of go to reset, and then to go into more of like a maintenance recovery period, until more races come back on the schedule.

Hillary Allen:

I actually was planning to race Rasputitsa, the gravel bike race in April, and that’s been canceled as well. So, yeah it can be hard to maintain motivation, and a lot of my athletes have been having the same thing, ’cause they have these spring races that are coming up, the season is opening.

Hillary Allen:

I mean I think that’s the wonderful thing about having a coach, is there’s much you’re training, to plan your training, but there’s much as like as a mental support system as anything, and so what I’ve been telling my athletes is like, “It’s okay to feel disappointed, feel it, but then let’s find a way to move forward together, and problem solve, keep yourself safe and healthy, the greater community safe and healthy, and then when things come back we can figure out what to do.”

Adam Pulford:

Yeah. That’s just it, and I think that is a really good perspective, and many of our audience and listeners do races, and do events because it is fun, it’s not part of their job, but there are athletes out there, plenty of them, where this is their job, Olympic-bound athletes, professional athletes, and they’re having a hard time right now, because they’re not able to race, they’re not able to do their actual job, get to qualifying races.

Adam Pulford:

I mean, there may not be world championships this year, and heck they might not, I don’t know, they’re talking about delaying or even canceling the Olympics. I know we weren’t scheduled to talk about that Hillary, but any thoughts on that one? ‘Cause that’s a real challenge right now.

Hillary Allen:

It’s a super real challenge. I mean, I myself am a professional athlete as well, and I almost feel guilty, like I’m not showing up to work if I’m not training, or if I can’t perform, or do these races, but of course, everyone is in the same boat and you raise a really important topic about the Olympics.

Hillary Allen:

I mean, I know especially here in France, there’s going to be several countries where their professional athletes literally cannot train during this time, and I mean we’ve seen kind of the timeline keeps shifting, at least in the United States, and even in China, even though the cases are going down.

Hillary Allen:

As people are traveling back home, they’ve seen kind of like a second bump, and increases in cases of people coming back home. So I think that that also could be a real issue, like if we’re having a bunch of people travel to the Olympics.

Hillary Allen:

In fact, my physio, they say physio here in France, but it’s basically like you’re PT.

Adam Pulford:

We know what you’re talking about Hillary. It’s cool, we know.

Hillary Allen:

Okay. They have all these different names here, but yeah, like my physical therapist here in France, he is actually the massage therapist, the physio for the mountain bike team here in France is going to the Olympics, and even he is not sure that they’re going to happen, or if they were going to be postponed to what date that would be.

Hillary Allen:

It’s like so much uncertainty, but I think really the takeaway is that we’re in this together, like everyone in the world, it’s crazy. Everyone is experiencing this. Well, maybe not Russia, we still don’t know what’s happening-

Adam Pulford:

Yeah, we don’t know, we don’t know.

Hillary Allen:

… there, but I mean, everyone’s together, and I think it’s like we all have this understanding that the reason these things are being put in place, it’s to protect the greater community, and even though we’re practicing social distancing, staying kind of more secluded, it shows you how important community is.

Hillary Allen:

Like not only human contact, but just community in general, and I think it’s actually a really cool opportunity to be able to come together, even if you’re not physically together, to support one another in this global crisis.

Adam Pulford:

Yeah, I mean that’s very well stated, and I 100% agree. I think keeping perspective to that point, whether we are professional athletes, or professional people, keeping perspective through this is … we’re pretty privileged to sit here on microphones, and talk about what we’re talking about here, bike racing, run racing, the Olympics.

Adam Pulford:

I mean, let’s face it, because around the world people are dying from this thing, and economies are tanking, people’s life savings are going bye-bye, people are losing jobs, I coach a lot of chefs actually, celebrity chefs, and they’re closing doors, and they’re laying off employees, and that’s really hard.

Adam Pulford:

And so as we’re privileged, in the United States, even in France, I mean to still be able to go out and get some groceries right now, I think that we need to use that privilege, and apply responsibility to it, and what that means is getting away from the group rides, the group runs, not doing our races for a short time period, to not spread the virus, and being emotionally okay with that, accepting the fact that, hey, you know what? There’s going to be some more ultra marathons coming around, whether it’s at the end of this year, or maybe early of 2021, we’re going to get back to some racing, and that’s fine, but in the meantime, let’s just suck it up a little bit, save the world, and not give some high fives.

Hillary Allen:

Yeah, exactly. Refrain from the high five.

Adam Pulford:

Refrain.

Hillary Allen:

Virtual high fives, but no, you’re right, and actually this is kind of eerie, I mean, I’ve suffered some pretty severe injuries in the past, and this is almost reminiscent of that time, and it’s a little bit different, but it’s exactly like one of the things that helped me the most getting through an injury period, or a period of uncertainty, is to like embrace the suck, like embrace it, it’s uncomfortable, I don’t like it, but I know that there’s a purpose for it, and this too shall pass.

Adam Pulford:

100,000%, embrace the suck. And that is stemming from your last podcast I believe with Mr. Allen.

Hillary Allen:

Yeah.

Adam Pulford:

I love it.

Hillary Allen:

Exactly, I love that.

Adam Pulford:

Great dude, for sure, but thus we digress. Speaking of high fives, you’re probably not giving any more high fives in training in a group, or training with a partner, are you? Or are you?

Hillary Allen:

No. No, no. It’s even one step further here in France and a lot of European countries, they do the two kisses, so that was one of the first things that was like, “Okay, you just don’t do that.”

Hillary Allen:

In fact actually, so I mean I’m a pretty introverted person, and so I usually do a lot of my training alone anyways, and so that has been like implemented, but of course like I’d have one of my training partners to go on runs with, but they say that it’s best to not do that right now, and especially … I mean, you can speak more to the idea of riding, but group rides are probably not a … it’s not a good idea at this time too from the social distancing aspect.

Adam Pulford:

Yeah, that’s it, and USA Cycling did a great podcast with Michael Roshon, he’s a medical expert and doctor, and I think we can put that in the show notes. I posted it a few days ago, but he gave some really good recommendations, which were, “Hey, don’t do big group rides, don’t do big group runs right now.”

Adam Pulford:

And from the cycling standpoint, we spit and have snot rockets, just like you guys do running, but ours are done at a higher velocity; therefore, it has a little bit more of a launch to it.

Adam Pulford:

So we have to watch that, as well as our droplets, as they kind of spray around a little bit, and so that’s one of the reasons why not doing group rides is a good thing, and you can’t control the variables of whoever is doing whatever with whoever out there.

Adam Pulford:

So the recommendations that I’ve been giving my athletes, and kind of coming from medical experts too, is don’t do group rides, especially big ones, and if you have been training regularly with maybe like a small group, maybe it is your spouse, or your neighbor, or somebody who you’ve been in close contact with, groups of three or four right now still in the United States, still pretty good, but like you got to give each other like distance as well.

Adam Pulford:

Personally, I’ve got one person I’ll probably ride with, but that’s about it, and normally I do a lot of group rides, so for me it’s a big change, but again, you get back to that emotional standpoint, you just, “Hey man, like what is the cost of it? That’s the cost? Okay, screw it, it’s not worth the benefit.”

Adam Pulford:

So, for those of you right now that are still doing group rides, knock it off, don’t do it. So I think for right now you just suck it up, put the emotion aside, and start to think differently really about how you get your training done, and Hillary, I mean with you sheltering at home, and kind of being on quarantine, I mean, how are you getting it done?

Hillary Allen:

Yeah, so that’s a good question, because I mean I’m a very active person, and it’s hard when you’re told you can’t do something, and I don’t like being told what to do, but just like with the group rides, or group training, I think it’s easier if I tell myself, “Okay, the reason I’m not going to go with my friend or someone that I normally go with, is because I’m doing my part to be responsible, like socially responsible for the greater health of the community.”

Hillary Allen:

But here, what I’m doing is it can be monotonous, or really like pretty boring, because, like I said, I’m only allowed to go about two K from my house, like maybe I can extend that a little bit more just because I’m in a cabin with these frontage roads where there’s no one to police me.

Hillary Allen:

But again, I want to be respectful, and I don’t want to put myself in danger because it’s not like the police are going to come and rescue me when they’re trying to deal with this bigger global health crisis. So I’ve changed my training about, basically there’s a road up above the cabin, and then there’s a road down below, I’ll kind of switch off by doing, and I’m in the mountain, so it’s either I start downhill, or I start uphill.

Hillary Allen:

So it’s pretty steep, like literally there is a road that I ran by this morning that was at 19% grade, so it’s really steep.

Adam Pulford:

Get it, get it Hillary.

Hillary Allen:

Exactly. So doing something like that, like maybe I’ll go out for an hour run, but I’m going to run the same stretch of road, up and down, and some days I don’t feel like doing workouts, so I’m just going to go for just to run and just to get out, and other days maybe if I feel like it, I’ll do just a few pickups, or running a little bit harder.

Hillary Allen:

I’m pretty sure like I’ve already started in my head, like, “How fast can I run up this section right here?” But again, being respectful, and repeating it. And then also, thankfully I have a bike trainer, and so I brought my bike, I call it, not only is it mental conditioning, but it’s butt conditioning, because your butt can get pretty sore.

Adam Pulford:

This is true, your butt can get very sore doing that.

Hillary Allen:

At least for me it’s like a little bit different than riding outside, because you don’t move as much, you’re in the same position, but yeah, so that’s kind of what it looks like, but I’m trying to take it as an opportunity again, like the volume is going down, but I can ramp up the intensity in different ways, and also I think about it as like mental training. It’s going to make me stronger in the long run.

Adam Pulford:

Yeah. Well that’s it. I mean, I think a lot of it is for me as an athlete, and for my athletes as well, I always go back to like the shitty times. I think I can say that on this podcast, but like the real bad times of life, when you are going through an injury, or you’re going through self-quarantine, or whatever, and whenever you’re having a bad day, you go back to that, and you’re like, “You know what?” A year from now when you’re in your next ultra, and you’re like, “You know what? It hurts right now, but at least I’m not self-quarantined.”

Adam Pulford:

Something like that. I know for us, since we’re less quarantined here, we’re still out riding and whatnot and the cherry blossoms are popping, and it’s beautiful, we actually have really good weather. We’re still able to enjoy that. My wife, Kristen, actually rode around like the National Mall, she was kind of like doing hot laps around the whole mall, just ’cause there’s no traffic out, right?

Adam Pulford:

And for us, people are in the parks, it’s kind of crazy. It’s nobody on the roads, but everybody’s in the parks, and they’re doing park exercises, they’re doing pushups, they’re doing jumping jacks. I even saw, I posted this on social media last night, there was a girl doing dry land exercises, or like some yoga stuff on top of her roof in DC, and we were just like walking by, took a video, I was like, “Yeah, awesome. Get it in.”

Hillary Allen:

You were outdoor?

Adam Pulford:

Yeah, for sure, but to that end, I mean start thinking about TRX, home gyms, yoga apps, and even like the Mirror, which is this funky crane, I have one, an athlete who has it, but it’s like a personal trainer at home, then you just mirror what they’re doing, and you can do it in a like 4’5″ space, it’s pretty effective if you can’t get to the gym.

Adam Pulford:

To the audience members, start to think differently about what you were doing, and how you can replicate it at home, and alone.

Hillary Allen:

Exactly. At home and alone. And then I know for running, unless you have a treadmill, it’s hard to replace that with something; but again, it’s like kind of getting creative, like your heart doesn’t know if you’re running, if you’re cycling, if you’re doing like TRX, or a cross training routine.

Hillary Allen:

Your heart doesn’t know, it’s training, it’s still like you’re getting … it’s increasing in beats per minute, so that’s training. So it’s just kind of reframing it, and I think a life hack that I’ve noticed here is even if you live in an apartment in the city, or pretty much really any house in the United States, you can have stairs, and so you can like run those stairs.

Hillary Allen:

You can even have it be a family activity too, where the kids are out of … they’re at home with you right now, I know that and it can be a hard thing for a lot of my athletes if they’re managing work, and life, and training, it’s a lot.

Hillary Allen:

Running the stairs just for like 30 minutes, you can do some pretty good cardio stuff there, whether it’s in your apartment complex, or in your house. I think it’s kind of a cool opportunity, I remember when I was injured, and I couldn’t run, and I couldn’t walk for like months at a time, and I couldn’t run, so I really had to reframe what training was to me, and you can do a lot of different things.

Adam Pulford:

Yeah, I know, that’s 100% true, and I think that once you are in this crisis mode, and then like you mentioned before, having an injury and stuff, I have a wrestling background, so I feel like I was injured all the time. So we were always doing everything, all the time, and probably over-trained and all this kind of stuff.

Adam Pulford:

So from that background, whenever, I always get pretty creative, and I think it trickles over into my coaching in terms of how to solve a solution, but like you said, I mean your heart doesn’t know, it wants to be run hard. Right now, personally, if I ran stairs my glutes would know that that’s different than a bicycle ride, and would let me know about it the next day.

Adam Pulford:

But that’s just it. So start thinking differently right now, and I think it was something that Kerryn said, maybe on your podcast or a different one, there’s an opportunity right now and that is to come out with a stronger core, and stronger muscles than when I came into the quarantine, and so I think that’s super important.

Hillary Allen:

Yeah, and what’s really cool too is I think well just that kind of jump into the virtual community that we’re tapped into. We have all of these resources at our fingertips, whether it’s on a smart trainer, like training with Swift, or I know there’s even Swift apps for running, so you can link it up to a treadmill, like virtually run against your friends or something like this.

Hillary Allen:

But a lot of the people that I even follow on social media who quarantine themselves, either in Europe or starting to in the United States, they’re coming out with some really cool content there too. So it’s like, again, we’re all connected in this greater community, and so go check out that and get some new ideas for something that you can do.

Hillary Allen:

I mean, even me, I’m going to be posting some stuff on my social media for ideas of what I’m doing to entertain myself in my little cabin, and giving other people ideas of what they can do too. So I think there’s going to be a lot of resources, and even CTS actually, they’re going to be publishing some kind of, more specifically for bikes, some bike workouts you can do that are actually going to be pretty killer.

Adam Pulford:

Yeah. I think we rolled that out, I think yesterday, of all of our virtual workouts for cycling are downloadable for free, so check those out if you are reduced to the virtual side of things indoors, but CDC has reported that the COVID-19 virus doesn’t hold up well in UV light, so being outside is, to me, like as long as you can do it, get outside at least once a day. Get the kids out like you mentioned, get the dogs out, just get out, breathe fresh air, get the vitamin D, run around, and enjoy that now.

Adam Pulford:

So practice social distancing for sure, and if you live in a more populated area like myself in Washington, also know that as you’re walking up to streetlights and things like that, the virus still can live on surfaces even if it is in UV light. So, I mean, I’m no medical doctor, I’m just relaying it from stuff I’ve read from the CDC and other doctors, you still don’t want to be touching stuff on a regular basis, and you want to wash your hands a ton, but get outside, exercise, get the fresh air as best you can.

Adam Pulford:

So, with all that being said, Hills, let’s talk about some normal life hacks, and I’m going to start off by saying if you ain’t first, you’re last. And what I mean by that is, I actually learned this from my wife yesterday, Christine, where we needed to go to the store, and she was like, “Man, if you need anything right now you need to go first thing in the morning when no one else is out, ’cause they cleaned everything, it smells like Lysol inside, and all the shelves are stocked full.”

Adam Pulford:

So we got everything that we kind of needed there, but that’s it, if you’re not first you’re last. Get there early, and get your stuff, and then head back home. What else are you doing in France Hillary, that could be a nice little life hack to kind of get through normal life?

Hillary Allen:

Yeah, I mean absolutely. I’d liked that, like having some like hand sanitizer, or things like that, but again I think it’s just like following the regulations too. I mean, like you said, social distancing works, I think sometimes … I’m a scientist, I have a scientific background, and I think some people can get angry, they’re like, “Well, why is the government issuing these quarantines generally when people are outside, if something doesn’t hold up in UV light, like shouldn’t I be outside?”

Hillary Allen:

The answer is yes, and yes, but scientists are trying to reduce contamination, or the growth of the pandemic, the growth of the spread of the virus. They’re trying to reduce that, and then also trying to promote things in a healthy way. So I think for tips, for me at least for daily living, is to still have a routine.

Hillary Allen:

I mean, it’s really hard to adjust, especially if you’re used to kind of like the go, go, go that we’re always used to in life, especially if you have a busy life, training, work, family, but for me, literally every morning, I’m a huge morning person and I really like journaling, and so I start my day with a to-do-list of, okay, this is something that I can do each day, and every time I check that off, I just feel accomplished, and it sets the tone for the day, it gives me kind of a purpose to do, and a new routine, and so that I feel like I have some sort of direction in the day.

Hillary Allen:

And then again with that daily routine is prioritizing that. I think it can take both the mental and the physical health of getting outside for even if it’s just 30 minutes, get outside, and stay away from people. I think you can wave, and everyone’s going to know why you’re staying away.

Adam Pulford:

For sure.

Hillary Allen:

They’re not going to be offended. It’s actually kind of like the best thing here in France, if I see people, I don’t speak French that well, so I’m like, “Bonjour.” And then I just don’t say anything else, and then they’re just like, “Okay.”

Adam Pulford:

Amazing. The new normal, the new normal. All right, well in summary, I guess we’re living in a pretty crazy time, and we’re talking about stuff that I never thought that we’d be talking about on a podcast, and I mean no one that I’ve heard or seen or met has all the answers, and it might get a little worse here in the United States before it gets any better, and in France I think you might be kind of at that point where … a tipping point, hopefully it’ll start to get a little bit better.

Adam Pulford:

But I think as athletes, and to our audience, the kind of takeaways here is to, one, keep training and keep that structure in your life, two, it’s get outside if you can, and do some virtual training if you can’t, and then finally keep perspective, because we’ll make it through, racing will come back around, and the new normal will go back to the normal normal, and we’ll be living our lives hopefully with a better perspective on the backside than when we came in on the front side. Anything else you want to add to that, Hillary?

Hillary Allen:

No, I couldn’t agree more, and I think just like a little sub-point to the key perspective, it’s just we’re all in this together, and so just a reminder to be nice to one another, maybe your patience is a little bit thinner, I know sometimes I feel that way when I feel like locked in to a certain place, but it’s having empathy for not only yourself, but everyone else is kind of experiencing something similar, and in a weird way that can actually bring us together, and make us closer. So that’ll help us all kind of come out of this stronger on the other side.

Adam Pulford:

Couldn’t agree more. Well, Hillary thank you for taking some time during the crazy times over in France, and I know it’s a little bit late there, but thank you for taking time, and talking with me on this next episode of the TrainRight Podcast.

Hillary Allen:

Thanks so much Adam, it was a pleasure.

Adam Pulford:

Bye.