This certainly has been a bizarre Spring. When we were in South Tyrol in Italy attending the biathlon world championship in February, we already started to hear and read about the alarming rate of new coronavirus cases in Lombardia region in Northern Italy. We were not really worried, even if Austria closed its border with Italy just a nigh before we were to leave home. They re-opened the border next morning.

Everything went fine until we reached Milan, where were stuck for hours since no trains were coming or going, because they were stopped somewhere for health inspections. You can read about this return trip in our previous blog post about the Anterselva world championships.

When we returned home, Tomi had to self-quarantine for two weeks. Fortunately, he was allowed to work from home. He got to return to the office for just three days before his company asked all its research staff to work from home indefinitely starting on Monday 16.3. It was then when the French government also declared a complete lockdown for the whole country, starting at noon on Tuesday (17.3.).

This is the 14. day of lockdown: we are required to stay home, and can only go outside for necessary shopping (for groceries and medication), visit a doctor, walk a dog (not ducks or rabbits), or do physical exercise nearby our home for a short period of time. Since some people thought that the last point allows driving to the mountains to go climbing or paragliding, the rules were subsequently made stricter: now we are allowed to go out for physical activity once a day for one hour, and not farther than one kilometer from our home. Particularly, we are not allowed to drive a car or ride a bicycle to do this activity. And we need to carry a paper indicating the purpose of our outing, together with the date and the time, and our signature — even if we want to visit the bakery 50 meters away (yes, there is one!)

So, we had to interrupt our successfully started half-marathon training program (the race was cancelled anyway) and resort to speed training. Still, it requires some creativity to find new (and interesting) running routes in our neighborhood. And the worst thing about this all? It has been a gorgeous, sunny and warm, Spring since we came back from Italy. I bet the weather will turn really bad once this confinement is over. If it will be before the Fall.