The year, 2020, was characterized by manic baking, improvised home fitness workouts, and baffling but rather specific hoarding. According to Reddit’s 2020 Year in Review, the sourdough subreddit showed a 378% increase in activity. The home fitness subreddit had a 612% increase in activity.
I have this vision of men and women across the globe squatting and pressing 50-pound bags of flour and then kneading dough with the intensity normally reserved for the rugby field or hockey rink.
Oddly the cut my own hair subreddit only had a 121.7% increase. I guess a lot of those Zoom conferences were audio-only. I was unable to find a subreddit about making your own toilet paper but let me assure you there were several toilet paper-related subject areas.
Going from 2019 to 2020 was like going from jogging your favorite neighborhood 5k to filming an episode of American Ninja Warrior. Early spring found me wiping down my groceries like I would wipe down my bike after getting caught in a downpour and then getting passed by a salt truck.
I’m not saying that 2020 got a little dark but the new Hallmark Channel Christmas movie’s plot is a combination of 28 Days Later, Bird Box, and The Running Man.
My garage became my gym, my kitchen table became my office, and my pitbull/Lab mix and the cat that thinks I’m his butler became my coworkers.
Nothing encapsulated my struggle to work out at home quite like trying to do Turkish get-ups using my cat instead of a kettlebell, and the realization that my first aid supplies wouldn’t last through April at this rate.
Racing Goes Virtual
Virtual races really took off in 2020. They were a welcome substitute for familiar local races that are the milestones for my typical race season. This year I participated in the Panama Porcupine Punch 5K, Race Across a Rectangular State, and the Merseyside Skeptics Society Shuffle. Mike Hall is surprisingly fast for a man that runs in a three-piece suit.
My 2020 race season has been like a zombie movie only with less violence, more eating, and the same morbid curiosity about how it ends.
I signed up for the virtual race across Tennessee. By day five, the website showed me lost in southern Kentucky. I messaged the race organizers and congratulated them on the accuracy of their software.
Sports I attempted to invent this year included: paddleboard polo, also known as Lacrosse with a water hazard; Zoom aerobics; and trail run laser tag.
Rub-a-Dub-Dub, a Man in a Tub, Paddling to Glory
Tub racing is a thing and takes place in Rieti, Italy, Ito, Japan, and Wichita, Kansas.
Pros Race at Daytona
I never dreamed that the only big pro triathlon in 2020 would be held entirely on a speedway with the swim in a manmade lake best known for pro-am, pre-Daytona 500 bass fishing, and a jet ski endurance record. I guess they called it Challenge Daytona because Florida Man 62.4 just seemed too over the top even for 2020.
I noticed that there was a Bass Pro Shop just outside the Speedway. I’m betting that it was Alistair Brownlee’s first stop post-race to get a pole and some tackle so he could have a chat with the fish that bit his calf and caused him to drop out on the run. That or the Cracker Barrel. Clearly I’m joking but I do think the fish may have been drafting off Brownlee.
Why NASCAR’s Daytona track has its own massive lake
A New Not So Normal
One of the major bummers of this year was that I couldn’t buy a new bike. But on the plus side, I got bike tune-ups and preventative maintenance done on my entire bike fleet, and the bike shop only charged me 117 rolls of toilet paper.
New movies are finally beginning to come out again to but I’m afraid to go to theaters and don’t have subscriptions to the new streaming services carrying them. So, I guess my moving watching options come down to dangling from my neighbors living room ceiling like Tom Cruise in Mission Impossible or heading to the theater cosplaying as Matt Damon in the Martian.
A couple of months into the COVID confinement it looked like constant access to my refrigerator and lack of access to a barber would make me a prime candidate to work as a stunt double provided someone makes a film called Sumo Sasquatch Detective or a Yeti spaghetti western.
Pandemic Gear Mods
I was shopping for a new trail running vest and was surprised to find that one of the latest models has dedicated pockets for a face shield, infrared thermometer, and a taser.
Remember Gaitergate? When incorrect reporting on a Duke University face mask study had us believing that neck gaiters were not only less effective than masks but worse than wearing nothing. For a while there, runners were confused, fashion-challenged, and wondering if they should wear masks over their gaiters.
In one of the most bizarre stories of 2020, Garmin’s data was encrypted and held hostage by hackers. The company was forced to pay a multimillion-dollar ransom and take a huge hit to its reputation. Also, plenty of runners, cyclists, and other endurance athletes had to spend almost a week obsessing about something other than their last workout including me.
My wife vetoed letting me set up a cardboard cutout of myself for the Thanksgiving dinner Zoom call so I could sneak out to go ride mountain bikes with Barry. On the plus side, I am now one Santa hat and white beard away from a new Christmas decoration.
It used to be all that I was afraid of when lap swimming in the wintertime was chlorine and people noticing I was fat.
On the plus side, my phone and my steering wheel have never been cleaner, and now I keep antiseptic wipes tucked into my shirt sleeves like little old ladies do with tissues.
The Pfizer vaccine shipped from Michigan recently. There haven’t been so many people tracking one vehicle since NORAD started keeping tabs on Santa’s sleigh on Christmas Eve, 1955. Let’s close on that hopeful note.
Corona toilet roll art by image by freakwave from Pixabay.
(Minor modification to the text to keep things PG.)
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