SEATTLE — This year started with so much promise.
I spent two weeks in January competing in biathlon races in Seefeld, Austria, during the Winter World Masters Games 2020, winning three silver medals and celebrating with 3,000 winter-sport athletes from around the world.
Six weeks later, I was hunched over my laptop at my dining room, keeping track of COVID-19 deaths in the U.S. and afraid to step outside my house.
The swerve from international celebration to home-office isolation was jarring. But being an Associated Press reporter in Seattle, where the earliest coronavirus cases were reported in the United States, gave me a unique front-row seat to a worldwide event.
I’d been training for the Austria trip for years. The Winter World Masters Games are the Olympics for masters athletes – people 35 years and older. It’s held every five years in different locations. Innsbruck2020 hosted competitors in a dozen winter sports.
I started racing biathlon when I moved to Seattle in 2014, after cross-country ski racing for about 15 years. Biathlon combines the physical demands of Nordic skiing with the laser-sharp focus of marksmanship.
We ski loops around a track and stop at the range to shoot at five targets with a specialized .22-
More than 40 biathletes from across the U.S.
In other words, life was “normal.”
When I returned to the Pacific Northwest, the coronavirus story was growing. I moved to my home office in late February as new cases came in each day and people were dying at a nearby nursing home.
One day, a colleague asked if we were keeping track of coronavirus deaths in each state. The go-to source, the Johns Hopkins University virus page, offered world and U.S. numbers but lacked timely state-by-state counts. So I started a tally for AP.
By March's end, the death count was spiking. One Saturday morning I reported 270 deaths, and the number jumped by 130 overnight. By Wednesday it increased by 217; on Friday, we hit 1,550. U.S. fatalities now top 190,000.
Seeing the rapid death toll was disturbing. After a time, we began using Johns Hopkins counts for all our stories, and I stopped keeping track. I was sad to let go of that steering wheel, but also a little relieved. I had not taken a day off since the outbreak started and welcomed a chance to clear my head.
Which was what training helped me do. Through this stressful period, I kept my sanity by maintaining my biathlon routine, which includes eight to 18 hours of workouts six days a week.
During a recent work webinar about dealing with stress, a
My biathlon racing season had been cut short. They cancelled U.S. Biathlon Nationals in March. It's still unclear what will happen this winter.
But each morning, I head out for a long run or rollerski interval session. Weekend runs and bike rides can last three hours or more. I haven't gone to the shooting range like I normally would this time of year, but I’m staying on track.
I hope next winter will bring more travel and racing. In the meantime, training keeps me sane.
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Virus Diary, an occasional feature, showcases the coronavirus pandemic through the eyes of Associated Press journalists around the world. Follow Seattle-based AP reporter Martha Bellisle on Twitter at http://twitter.com/marthabellisle
Martha Bellisle, The Associated Press