2,000 meters

Every month, Strava has a new Running Climbing Challenge which gives you a trophy if you succeed in climbing 2,000 meters that month. This challenge has been a bit hit-and-miss for me as there is only so much elevation gain to be had here in Umeå. In February, I almost completely the entire challenge in one single activity when running South Devon Ultra but today I woke up with only one day left and 104 annoying meters short. So, after working all morning, this left me with little choice than to head over to Stadsliden for a lunch run with a nice vertical gain of 222 meters.

Strict rules

Sweden’s decision to keep the schools open has attracted a lot of international attention and surprise. In today’s Svenska Dagbladet, the historian Lars Trägårdh situates this decision in a longer tradition of generalized social trust and a strong preference for expert knowledge over populism. Sweden’s decision comes with some caveats though, in particular a rule that says that children have to be kept at home even with the slightest cold symptoms.

As such, Eddie had to stay at home today as well. After a morning of waffles and work, I felt that I needed a break so I took my Asics Nimbus 20 out for some road running. Running in these shoes brought back some good marathon memories from Marrakech where I broke that symbolic four hour barrier. My next goal will be to run a half marathon in under 1 hour and 40 minutes, something that will require me to keep an average pace of 4:44 min/km. Today I took it easy though and even stopped by the still frozen Holmsjön for a lake selfie.

Gremolata

Compared to my well-documented fondness for tabbouleh, I realized that it was quite some time since I last made gremolata. As such, I mixed together some fusilli con gremolada with Buffyesque amounts of garlic, taking some comfort in the thought that the world will eventually bounce back. Frightening as the epidemic may be, I am very grateful that we do not have to rebuild the world after a powerful geomagnetic storm such as the 1859 Carrington Event or a large asteroid impact, either which would be immensely more difficult to recover from. In the long run, the only way out of modernity is through, towards technological maturity. Even as the pandemic seems to have given some of the degrowthers second thoughts, we are still far from turning this around into a new era of deepening political and economic globalization.

Dark roast

With the roads drying up with little or no ice left, I can finally bring some shoes without carbide steel studs into the rotation. This morning, I ran in my Adidas Pulseboost HD down to USM for some strength training. These are shoes for asphalt and sudden turns and I have not been able to use them since Beirut in November. For obvious reasons, I could not end my run at Kalei Coffee this time around so instead I went across the Atlantic for a slightly more commerical dark roast that brought back memories from the Mendocino Coast and late-night stops along the New Jersey Turnpike.

Leftovers

Putting yesterday’s savoy cabbage with pasta into the oven, I make some al forno with a glass of Masi Campofiorin as I rediscover “La Peste”. Set in French Algeria, it is a book I remember reading decades ago, long before the Great Flood filled my friend’s basement in Malmö and washed away so many of my books.

“Rien n'est moins spectaculaire qu'un fléau et, par leur durée même, les grands malheurs sont monotones”

Or, in Elsa Thulin’s translation:

“Men saken är den att ingenting är mindre synligt för ögat än en hemsökelse och att stora prövningar blir enformiga just genom sin långvarighet”

Already in the early days of the SARS-CoV-2 epidemic, the notion of "behavioural fatigue" came up and I think it may very well turn out to be a determining factor, especially if the death toll can be kept manageable in the coming months. There is clearly a paradox at play here, that the better our measures succeed in “flattening the curve”, the less people will be willing to support those measures. Maybe if the situation becomes significantly worse in other comparable countries, support may remain strong, but since almost all OECD-countries are currently in near full lockdown-mode, this is probably not going to be the case.

Beetroot waffles

Wednesday was the Feast of the Annunciation or, as it is known in senselessly secular Sweden, “waffle day”. Though slightly delayed, I marked the occasion by making beetroot waffles with roe from Greenland, chives and smetana for lunch.

Heatmaps and routes

As a Strava Summit member you can generate a heat map of all the places where you ever run, in my case taking me on a tour around the globe from the rice paddies of Ubud to the trails circling the Lafayette Reservoir. Looking at my map of Umeå however, I discovered an obvious circle just outside my door that I never tried so this morning I went for ten slow countryside kilometres, passing by fields with birds returning but also forests still packed with ice.

Otherwise, Strava has just introduced another function called “Routes” that let you find popular routes around your current location, a function I think could be quite useful when travelling. Not that any travelling is forthcoming. Last night, Turkish Airlines, which used to fly to more countries than any other any airline, decided to cancel all international flights indefinitely. Among the major international carriers, Qatar seems to be the only one that is still flying, effectively becoming the world’s superconnector.

Savoy and black beans

With half of the savoy cabbage left in the fridge, I fried it with zucchini, red onions and black beans while the kids were listening to the audio book “Musse and Helium” in the background.

After the spring sunshine yesterday, today has been cold and melancholic. On the other side of the North Sea, Boris Johnson is taking one for the team and for future herd immunity by testing positive for Covid-19. In Sweden, the school remains open (for now) but gatherings of more than 50 people have been banned as of today. Not that many such gatherings were happening anyway as most people seem to understand the seriousness of the situation. The key factor remains to what extent older people will be willing to accept these new and rather extreme restrictions to their everyday life. Retirement alone often induces feelings of redundancy and emptiness. As such, I presume it takes quite a bit of existential maturity to understand that this is a collective problem of probabilities and not about one’s own situation.

Yellow Jack

In the old days, ships in quarantine used to fly a yellow and black flag called the “Yellow Jack”. Here in Umeå, I woke up with a new cold, something that will probably make it necessary for me to postpone the Ultra Interval Challenge yet again.

At least I was able to pick up a few novels that I have ordered in case of lockdown, including Christopher Isherwood’s “Goodbye to Berlin” which is set in Weimar Germany and features a story from Rügen. With all real world travels cancelled for the foreseeable future, paperback escapism will have to do for now.

Reading different online fora, there are many stories of travellers stranded around the world, including some who were out on the kind epic award trips that I have done a few of in the past. While I could think of worse things than being trapped on an island in French Polynesia or in the Australian outback, I guess a lot comes down to what kind of job you have and of course what your family situation looks like. Before I became a parent, I would definitely have cherished the opportunity of being in quarantine, of disconnecting, and having time to finally think and work...

Savoy

Keeping with my pledge to do more vegan cooking, I made cider braised savoy cabbage with Oatly cream and the house sauvignon blanc for dinner. Talking to my sister on the phone earlier today, it is clear that products like Oatly or fully synthetic milk is where we quickly need to go if future pandemics are to be avoided. Sadly, not everyone is on team. For instance, reading the EU documents on “sustainable financing” conjures up horror visions of endless fields with farting cows and wind turbines rather than any emancipatory future of wild nature and dense clean energy.

Suricates

While the weather forecast still has plenty of minus degrees in store, I went for a first stud-free run along the river with Elin this morning. When spring arrives, Swedes tend to have a striking visual similarity to suricates. As such, I very much appreciated the possibility of doing the last of my grading outside in the afternoon sun.

Evening run

While I tend do most of my running in the mornings, there is a certain charm in heading out at night in my yellow high-visibility vest and the Petzl Bindi headlamp. Running on thawing dirt roads under clearing skies, everything is at once so simple and sublime. As kilometre follows on kilometre, I am reminded of the autumn and the Church of the Long Run.

At work, there is a strange atmosphere behind the locked doors. With no students in the hallways and all cafés closed, the place has an eerily quiet feeling of summer days long gone by. I cannot even begin to imagine how many airports, hotels and restaurants around the world that look like just that right now.

To those who see the Covid-19 response as a template for future climate action, Alex Trembath and Seaver Wang wrote these insightful words the other day:

“People like traveling, for work and for pleasure, even when they know how carbon-intensive it is. People like eating out at restaurants, even if it is more expensive and tends to waste more food than eating at home. This moment might make us realize how precious, not frivolous, those experiences are.”

Back to the future

Feeling strong after my morning run, I decided to go for a slow lunch run along the Ume River. Passing by “Sliperiet”, I was excited to see that all external work on the dome of the new space and science centre seems to be finished. While the centre will probably not open until the fall due to the epidemic, it feels more important than ever that we do not lose track of the bigger picture and what could be possible in the century ahead.

More and more economists are speaking out against the draconic measures that have been undertaken to stop the epidemic. If Sweden were to see a 10-15% drop in GDP this year (which may be entirely realistic if current trends continue), it may seriously undermine not only our efforts to fight the epidemic but perhaps liberal democracy itself. On the other hand, if these measures are not taken, and the health care system collapses with ten thousands of deaths, it may fray the fabric of social trust in ways that may be very difficult to repair. The worst of all worlds would of course be if strong measures are implemented but people fail to realize the importance of social distancing, creating both economic mayhem and an unstoppable epidemic (for more on this, see this excellent Medium post).

Regardless of what Sweden does, this is truly a global challenge. Just today, the airline Emirates decided to cease all passenger flights. In a globalized world, we have to realize that the chain is never stronger than its weakest link, and that there is no going back to a world of isolated islands. Instead, we need to move towards universal healthcare and, in the long run, a global welfare state.

Peanuts

Last summer at the Breakthrough Dialogue, I was sitting next to a couple of people at lunch who were joking about the ecomodern obsession with energy density, saying that it was like loving peanut butter. And I normally do not. But I do think that energy density is absolutely essential if we want to spare wild nature while at the same time eradicate global poverty.

As the transatlantic traffic is coming to a standstill, I made a very American breakfast toast with peanut butter and blueberries before heading out for my first run after a week of hiatus. And when I eventually get to run those 8x10 km, I guess I will have even more use for such high-density energy sources.

Considering all the race cancellations, I was thrilled when Seth James DeMoor announced that he will be organizing a virtual marathon event on Sunday 19 April. In addition, my colleague Elias has challenged me to run a half marathon with him in May which I am already looking forward to.

Soups

After Anna had her surgery on Wednesday, I have been cooking a new soup every day. As such, and true to the spirit of my previous blog post, I made a forest mushroom soup for dinner tonight. Otherwise, I was thrilled to finally receive my copy of Julia Tovesson’s book about roasting vegetables in the mail the other day. Once Anna has recovered, I will definitely make good use of it.

Et in Arcadia ego

My friend Carsten just updated me on the curfew situation in Germany where outdoor runs apparently are still exempted as long as you do them alone or with the people you live with.

Continuing my tradition of naming blog posts after Star Trek episodes, I am thinking back on when Anna and I were in West Africa last summer, how open and welcoming the world seemed then, and how closed and fragile it has suddenly become. So far, I think it has been possible to stave off most alternative epistemologies but, as the situation escalates, I fear that the need for culprits will grow, to say nothing of how for instance the anti-vaxxers will react when a vaccine is finally found. Horrifying as Covid-19 may be as a disease, I also do not want to imagine how the world would have reacted to something like the Spanish Flu which mostly affected young people between 20 and 40 years of age and those with a strong immune system.

The problem is that pandemics of all sorts are likely to become more frequent as long as we keep animals in factories or other confined spaces. As such, the best way to permanently reduce the risk of pandemics is to quickly move beyond meat and dairy products towards a future of synthetic biology and veganism.

Algorithms

Instead of running my usual 10+ km per day, I have been down with a nasty cold for almost a week now. The same is true for Eddie who again complained about a sore throat this morning. Outside cloudless blue skies and, on Strava, I can follow my friends who are taking part in the Ultra Interval Challenge. – Yes, it sucks. But it is not Covid-19 and in a few days I will hopefully be back running around the lake.

Meanwhile, I am reading the latest issue of Fronesis on “Algorithms”, edited by my new PhD student who was kind enough to pass me a complimentary copy. While I often find its “critical” perspective to be somewhat one-dimensional and predictable, I think it is really important to consider to what extent Big Data is “automating inequality” and deepen the conversation on the material effects of these emerging technologies.

As for the SARS-CoV-2 epidemic, I think we are beginning to see large regional variations in the response. Down in Stockholm, my sister tells me that people in general seem to be listening to the health authorities and that, for instance, most restaurants have closed. Here in Tomtebo, our local pizza restaurant was completely packed with people of all generations last night and I fear that real behavioural changes, especially among those 70+ and above, will happen first when the situation becomes as bad as in Lombardy and, by then, it will sort of be too late.

UIC postponed

With all the races being cancelled this spring, I have been joking that the Ultra Interval Challenge would at least happen tomorrow as it is an individual virtual event. However, given that I have still not recovered from my cold, I have decided to postpone it until the next weekend. Given the pressure that the health care sector will be under this spring, I really do not want to contract pneumonia just from being stubborn about a certain date. Instead, I will spend the weekend working on a research grant application to MISTRA and looking for a beak mask so that I can dress with the times.

Stepping up

After recording a crappy selfie-video this morning, I realized that I had to step up my game as this is likely to go on for many months. As such, I took the bus into town and bought a tripod and a microphone. The difference in quality turned out to be remarkable to say the least. I also bought some Grüner Veltliner so now I am fully #quarantineready.

Apple and fennel

As there will most likely not be any lounge hopping for quite some time, I decided to make an apple and fennel soup with walnuts for lunch, which seemed like a good choice as Anna is recovering from her wisdom tooth surgery. Otherwise, after being home for a week, Eddie was finally back in school today so I have had some time to work my way down the pile of student e-mails triggered by the government’s decision to make all teaching online-only starting from today...

Digital only

With all of Italy under strict quarantine, our civic virtues are being tested, emphasising the social and political dimension of the crisis as many people simply refuse to stay indoors. The fact that Italy has been forced to take such draconic measures says something about how critical the situation has become but also how important social acceptance will be, especially as we can expect this crisis to go on for many months yet.

Today at work, we had our first online meeting which I was grateful for as I am still having a sore throat. At the meeting, an infectious disease physician and teacher in disaster medicine gave a presentation about Covid-19, telling us about how they are working with the epidemic and giving a lot of useful advice about how to balance physical and digital learning activities. However, before the meeting was over, the Swedish government made the announcement that I have been fearing for the last weeks, namely that all higher education will be digital-only starting tomorrow. This will have vast implications for me as I will now have to quickly come up with take-home exams for a number of courses and stop dreaming of the picture above from Capri fifteen years ago... 

Toast

Shortly after 6 am, I make a toast with Port Salut cheese and some Scottish orange and ginger marmalade. Being down with a cold that I picked up from the boys, I have decided to play it extra safe this spring and only run when I am feeling 100%.

Toasters, yes, one can expect that the SARS-CoV-2 epidemic will further accelerate the biotech revolution, opening new vistas of hopes but also fears, all deepening our ambivalence towards modernity. A friend wrote, “I’m still working, but it’s like being in a sci-fi movie”.

New data suggests that industrial production in China was down 13.5% in China in January and February as retail sales plummeted by more than 20% in the first contraction since 1990, so we are clearly entering a period of global “degrowth”. Yet, the core of the world’s economies remains as fossil as ever and the low oil price will make renewable energy even less competitive. But as long as emissions are going down, it will be pedagogically difficult to explain that we are on a road to nowhere. In addition, when the storm eventually settles, I expect there will be strong political pressure to restore labour and financial markets by whatever means necessary.

Three options

Sometimes when natural scientists write about social science, it is difficult not to smile at their enthusiasm at “discovering” what is already well-established (or, more often, long-abandoned) theories. I guess the same is true for me when writing about epidemiology and public health. But the covid-19 situation has had me thinking, and talking with friends, there seems to be basically three options:

1) “Big Bang” – get everyone infected in the hope of creating herd immunity; maybe isolate the most vulnerable until a vaccine becomes available; a painful option with high mortality but short duration of the epidemic and more managable economic consequences

2) “Flatten the curve” – slow the flow of new cases through social distancing; long duration of the epidemic with far-reaching economic consequences but less mortality

3) "Containment" – widespread testing and tracking down of every new case using cell phone location data and other invasive technologies combined with extreme social distancing; very high upfront costs but potentially short duration and low mortality

So far, China, Korea and Taiwan have been going for the third option but, without global cooperation, it will not be effective unless they also remain isolated from the rest of the world for the duration of the pandemic. Sweden started off with the third option but has now shifted to mitigation and a “flattening of the curve” (which may not be possible). Boris Johnson has floated the first option which, even if very risky, may ultimately be the most effective way to permanently address the issue, in particular if a vaccine fails to materialize. However, beyond the high human cost, it may also seriously damage social trust as the health care system becomes overwhelmed.

Apocalypse Now

Last night, Denmark closed its borders in an unprecedented move. To score some extra “apocalypse points”, the Danish Prime minister Mette Frederiksen added that the country’s armed forces will be used to strenghten the border. Shortly after, Poland followed with a similar ban on all international travel while Turkish Airlines announced that it will stop all flights to Scandinavia, Germany and a number of other countries in Europe.

To say that these are strange times is clearly an understatement. Like many others, I have been reading up on the Spanish flu of 1918 and the lessons that can be learned from it, including the limited value of closing borders. Over the last weeks, my thoughts have otherwise often been with former students and colleagues back in Seoul. A friend who is a French journalist stoically summarized it as “another crazy story we can add to our memoirs of our time in Korea”. Somehow, I can imagine that the universal use of facial masks must make it impossible to forget even for a moment what is going on as it brings constant visibility to an otherwise invisible disease.

Unlike SARS which was contained and then died out, my impression from articles in The Lancet and elsewhere is that it seems likely that SARS-CoV-2 will be circulating around the world for the foreseeable future. However, as immunity in the population increases over time, its effects will become less pronounced. For now, it is all about “flattening the curve” (but see this!) as illustrated by the first ever animated gif on Rawls & Me.

Degrowth and Covid-19

Living through a rapid economic contraction in the wake of a pandemic somehow puts things into perspective. With “degrowth” no longer being just an abstract idea but rather hard-felt reality as pension savings evaporate and people are starting to be laid off in the tourism sector, sentences that I wrote only a few months ago now seem like taken from another world.

Instead I am filled with dark humour, like “Degrowth with Chinese characteristics” or as a friend tweeted: “We have all the solutions we need. Vaccine research is a distraction from necessary social change. Also, if we defeat covid-19 without also overthrowing capitalism, what's the point?”

Jokes aside, it will be very interesting to see what the world makes of this once it is over. The best scenario would be that the pandemic strengthens the role of democratic government and global cooperation, brings Europe together as Simone Tagliapietra hoped for in The Guardian, and that people will realize that reductions in consumption, even if effective in cutting emissions in the short-term, are not the way forward. The risk is of course that the very opposite will happen, that the Trumps and the Millers succeed in framing this as a “foreign virus” and countries will start closing their borders, that the world will fall into a global recession as Italy defaults and that the degrowthers will feel vindicated in an increasingly ungovernable world...

Argyle

This morning, I went for a half marathon along the river with Elin just as I received the news that Göteborgsvarvet, which we were both scheduled to run in May, has now been cancelled due to the SARS-CoV-2 epidemic.

Once at work, I had a chance to meet a lovely person from our grants office who gave me a lot of useful feedback on an unsuccessful research application from a few years back.  Otherwise, much of my workday was dominated by the epidemic and its possible consequences for our teaching and upcoming exams. As such, it felt very good to end the day by dreaming my way up the Willamette River in Oregon together with a new biography about Selma Lagerlöf.

Broken Pieces

As WHO declares SARS-CoV-2 to be pandemic and the Swedish government bans all gatherings of more than 500 people, all bets for the spring are off. The aviation sector seems to be particularly hard hit, with cancellations at a scale not seen since the 2010 Eyjafjallajökull eruption (which I remember writing about here on Rawls & Me).

Today, I received two items in the mail, one glossy invitation to a Lund University alumni event and one blue EHIC card; clearly two outliers in terms of timing. With regard to timing, one event that is definitely more attuned to the times is the Ultra Interval Challenge which is taking place on 21 March. Being an entirely virtual event, it is 100% self-quarantine compatible and one of the few sports events that will actually happen as planned...

Turkish Coffee

With overshirts being all the rage this year, I found a nice corduroy shirt jacket at the store formerly known as MQ at 20% off. However, as I am just learning that the conference in Vaasa has been cancelled due to the SARS-CoV-2 virus – and with a high probability that my remaining classes will soon be cancelled as well – I guess I will not have much use for it outside Rawls & Me.

Over the last couple of days, several people have independently of each other asked me what I think about electric aircraft. While I am generally a fan of low-carbon innovation, I think there are many other sectors where far greater emissions reductions can be achieved at a fraction of the cost. If anything, I would rather recommend a policy mandating the use of Direct Air Capture (DAC) for all emissions from the aviation sector – something that would make it possible to keep existing aircraft and infrastructure while pioneering a technology that will be absolutely essential if we are ever to reverse climate change.

Another concern has to do with the electricity used to power any future electric aircraft. If that electricity comes from nuclear or hydro, as in Sweden, then there is real potential for decarbonization. If it comes from coal or from renewables backed up by natural gas, as in much of Europe, the equation looks quite different.

Nepenthe

In Greek mythology, “nepenthe” is a medicine for sorrow, a fictive drug of forgetfulness. Obviously hard to come by, Anna’s mother gave me another bottle of that remarkable albariño from Hunter Valley which will have to do as a substitute. And instead of saffron fish soup, I made a vegan curry from Goa, a former exclave that I am still dreaming of visiting one day.

At Navet today, I went all in with 1,000 meters of swimming followed by a brutal 10k on the treadmill in a 4:18 min/km pace. Afterwards, I had my first meeting with a new student whose master’s thesis in the programme “Leadership and Organization” I will supervise this semester. Otherwise, I have a few days of respite before I receive another batch of exams so I am trying to finish my article on climate didactics that I will present in Vaasa.

Sundays with scones

In what has become a new weekend tradition, Eddie and I made scones once I got back from my extended morning run around the lake. For some reason, I was reminded of slow mornings in America and the white rocking chair on my balcony.

As whole cities and regions are being locked down due to the new corona virus, the open world of just a few months ago suddenly feels very distant. Looking for something good to come out of all this, I am thinking that maybe covid-19 will be what finally brings universal healthcare and paid sick leave to the United States as people realize that their own health, however affluent they happen to be, depends on the health of others.

Babybjörn

While I have come to understand that Babybjörn carriers are controversial, this #seoulsunday is from October 2012 when we were about to fly down to Taipei for a weekend trip and I can still remember how convenient it was to be able to carry Eddie close to me rather than having him in the stroller. Looking at the picture now, I can see that the ergonomics could have been a bit better though :-)

180 bpm

Having signed up for Asics Premiärmilen in three weeks from today, I could not resist the temptation of a 10k tempo run along the lake in my “180 bpm” budget sunglasses. Keeping my heart rate a bit below that, I was still able to run 10k in under 48 minutes.

Macrohistory

Since October, I have had the great privilege of supervising a newly admitted PhD student at the department. Like all academic supervision, it is a two-way street and, as such, I have already learned about several lines of work that I was previously unaware of. For instance, when mentioning my project on nuclear democracy, my student brought up the book Foragers, Farmers, and Fossil Fuels: How Human Values Evolve by Ian Morris which I have found quite stimulating to read.

While I still consider myself an idealist, my thinking has clearly taken a materialistic turn the more I have been working on the relationship between energy and social values. Like Morris, I believe that fossil-fuels have enabled equality and emancipation in ways that would not have been possible in a hierarchical agrarian society (and which will again become impossible in a degrowth future). As such, the hope of maintaining a cosmopolitan and pluralist society depends on successfully transitioning to new high-energy, yet low-carbon, fuels such as nuclear.

As the SARS-CoV-2 epidemic has shown, change is not always gradual and we are learning new things about the functioning of the global economy as the world is experiencing its first supply-side shock since the oil crises of the 1970’s. All over Europe, flights are being cancelled as travel is down more than any anti-globalist would ever dream of. Just yesterday, I learnt that my flight to Finland has been rescheduled, leaving me with a day in Stockholm and enough time to run “Asics Premiärmilen” on Norra Djurgården on 28 March. While this 10k race most likely will get cancelled as well due to the epidemic, it at least means that I get to see Ally and indulge in some nostalgia over our Beirut trip.

Snowstorm

Many hours delayed and three de-icing rounds later, Anna was finally able to take off from Umeå Airport last night. With all other flights being cancelled, it again showed how vulnerable one is at an outstation like this when it comes to international connections, especially when on separate tickets. This time it all worked out in the end and Anna is now on her way across the Atlantic with BA.

Back on the ground, we are shovelling snow as a few decimetres have accumulated overnight and I have to bike up to my morning lecture with the social work students.

Polenta

Looking up the weather forecast for Nashville, I have to admit that I am more than a little jealous of Anna who will have 16 degrees and sunshine. Remaining at home in Umeå, I am reading the latest issue of Monocle with its “Austria special” and not a single mentioning of covid-19. Always fond of parallel universes, I make some polenta with thyme, artichokes and mushrooms together with a glass of Roter Veltliner from Fels am Wagram in Niederösterreich.

USM

After being deep frozen out on the roads yesterday, I decided to move indoors for my afternoon workout consisting of 5k rowing, 5k treadmill running and some strength training at “Umeå Sport och Motion”. With three different gyms in Umeå, USM has sort of become my second home over the last couple of years. As the days are getting longer, one thing I really appreciate is that they open already at 5.30 am so that I can run down there in the mornings before my teaching starts.

In the real world, Pete Buttigieg ended his campaign last night which was as sad as it was expected after his losses in Nevada and South Carolina. With both him and Cory Booker out of the race, I guess Biden represents the last chance of maintaining some sanity and hope of meaningful progress on key issues like climate change. Whereas Booker fully understood the role of nuclear power “in any serious climate policy”, Sanders remains committed to the same failed 100% renewable-orthodoxy that has permanently locked in fossil fuels in Germany.

March Long Day Challenge

Every so often, Strava announces a new format for its challenges. This winter, there have been several different “commute challenges” by which you record, say, a bike ride every week for four weeks in order to get a virtual “trophy”. For me, who bike 15-20 km every day by default, these challenges feel a bit stupid so I have only recorded one activity per week (also to avoid creating too much clutter on Strava). Anyhow, this month there is a completely new kind of challenge called the “March Long Day Challenge” which suggests that you “put your early season fitness to the test and knock out a 4+ hour activity”. Since I am an easy victim for all these things, I decided to make real my long-held dream of completing a full circle around the Ume River delta. Inspired by Anna, Henrik and other long-distance runners that I follow on Strava, there is something casually insane with running 42.2 km all on your own in the snow on a random Sunday in March. So, I did.

The first 10k down to Holmsund felt great but running along E12 in the wind was really rough. Whatever one says, the marathon distance remains a challenge, especially on icy winter roads (real feel temperature today was -13). Even under the best conditions, pain is an integrated part of long distance running and, as such, experiences like the one I had today help putting things in perspective on better days. Now I will cook some spaghetti with prawns and rocket.