Step, step, step.
Sara Hall could distinctly hear her feet making contact with the road — every single time — like somebody had attached a mic to them.
It was the first mile of the 2020 London Marathon on Oct. 4, and Hall, 37, had a lonely realization: Silence was going to be the only constant during this race. No fans to scream encouragement at her when she felt sorry for herself, no landscapes to keep her company when she felt lonely on the course. Just her, the 10 other elite runners, and the 1.34-mile (2.15-kilometer) loop that had been cleared for the marathon.
Her husband and coach, Ryan Hall, the only other person in her running bubble, stood by the beginning of the loop, and she looked forward to seeing his face every time she did a lap. When she was seconds away from making her personal best — the sixth-fastest time in U.S. history — he yelled out, “You have it, 40 seconds for the last mile!”
And like some energy force had suddenly taken over her, she grunted and pushed one last time, sprinting the last 150 meters — and 20 seconds — all the way to the finish line. She finished second to Kenya’s Brigid Kosgei, running a 2-hour, 22-minute marathon.
“I would get to this mindset where I’d feel so sorry for myself — like why am I here running this one-mile loop — and then I’d constantly talk to myself: ‘You should be so thankful that you get to participate in a marathon during a global pandemic,’ and that really kept things in perspective,” Hall said.
The coronavirus pandemic has already changed road racing, maybe irrecoverably. It’s a sport that brings together tens of thousands of everyday athletes in tandem with elite runners — on a single course, often for the duration of a day. So while just about every major sport has been able to return to more-or-less similar settings compared to those before a COVID-19 world, it still seems unthinkable to organize a marathon while keeping thousands of people safe. Plus, mass cancellations of races means millions of dollars lost in registration fees and in race-day earnings for organizers, small businesses and the city where the race is held.
After a seven-month hiatus, the London Marathon was the first world major marathon to take place during the coronavirus pandemic. The race was restricted to elite athletes who were put in bubbles, in an athlete-only hotel surrounded by 40 acres for the runners to train for a week before the race. Rapid testing was conducted twice upon arrival and twice during the week of the bubble. The runners and their coaches were given a contact tracing band that turned colors if the runners moved to within six feet of another person.
The race itself was a loop around St. James Park in London, closed to spectators. To prepare, Hall changed her entire training method back home in Arizona, and instead of picking routes that mirrored the typical hills and plateaus of the London course, she trained on looped roads. During the race, Hall was given her own portable bathroom to use. “Imagine that in a pre-COVID race — one has to stave off competition to pee on time,” she said with a laugh afterward.
And for the thousands of non-elite runners? The London Marathon opened up reservations to run virtual races at the same time as the elite athletes — 47,000 spots from 109 countries — and within weeks, it was sold out.
“The marathon-running community really wants this. They want something to hold on to while going through this ordeal,” Hall said.
Virtual racing has been the lifeline of the road racing industry during the pandemic. The New York City Marathon, originally scheduled for Nov. 1, is a virtual race this year, and 27,000 runners will select a course of their choice to complete between Oct. 17 and Nov. 1. Their race will be monitored through live location-sharing technology. While there won’t be a crowned winner with a trophy or prize money, there is a leaderboard that tracks everyone’s virtual results.
Though it’s very different from the road racing experience, people still love sharing their progress and pumping each other up through the process, said Jim Heim, race director for the New York Road Runners.
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