With everyone cooped up in their house, unable to go anywhere essentially, you may be asking yourself, is it still okay to go run outside? Is it still safe to go run outside? Well, I'm Jessie Funk and we're going to talk about just that here on today's episode of Runner’s High.
As usual, let me give you a disclaimer, if it wasn't obvious by now, I'm not a doctor. So, I'm not giving you health advice. If you are immunocompromised, clearly, you probably know to stay home. But if you're an healthy individual, really, it's probably safe to go outside and run. What we know at this point, and we're still learning more things. So, when I record this video, there might be more things coming out past the time that this is uploaded for you to see.
But what we know now basically, is that most of recommendations say that you need to stay about three feet away from people so that you don't contract the virus if they're carrying it, either from being actively symptomatic or asymptomatic and it can’t travel through the air, but it falls off after that kind of period.
So, here in the US often people say six feet away from other people. And that's kind of a buffer as far as I understand it. But obviously, the farther away from people you are, the easier it is. Now, I actually talked about this situation with my coach on the Smart Athlete Podcast. At the end of this episode, I will link to that. And we talked a lot about training in quarantine and things that you can do. But one of the underlying themes of our conversation was seeing this as an opportunity, not an obstacle.
So, the way I would view this, and the way I do view this is this is an opportunity for you to go out and try things you wouldn't normally do. And by that, I don't mean let's go run a race full of people and see if we can try and pick up a virus. I mean, try to find routes that you don't normally do. So, there's a trail near me and it's busy. It's busier than ever right now because everybody is at home and they're trying to get outside. Getting outside is great because we need some outlet.
But we want to stay away from people. So, this is an opportunity for me to try new routes; run through the neighborhood, run through new routes where you don't think people are going to be and then that gives you the opportunity to see new things, explore new areas, and give your brain stimulation you wouldn't normally have. All those things are probably good right now, especially when you are trapped at home.
This can be you know, really applied to any pandemic situation. Hopefully, we don't have too many of these and nobody watches this video later on. But for right now, use this as an opportunity to get outside, do get your usual run in, but run places where you think are going to be less populated. Stay away from those popular running trails where people are packing in because you don't want to attract it and carry it somewhere else.
Remember, this is about keeping you safe and you keeping your community safe. So, doing your part is important by staying away from other people. So, if you want to know more about running, subscribe to the channel, and that video was me and my coach talking about training in quarantine should be coming up now. I'll see you next time on the next episode of Runner’s High.