Author: Stein

2020 started out with so much promise. In January and February, we had a special New Year’s Day workout, Alexa’s farewell celebration, Winnie’s announcement, US Olympic Marathon Trials weekend. We feel so lucky to have experienced these things. They all seem like forever ago.

It’s been over six months since we stopped meeting in person and moved to virtual workouts due to coronavirus. We hope everyone is faring as well as they can given the circumstances. Health, racial inequality, employment uncertainties, any of these by themselves can weigh heavily on a person and to experience all of them at once has been exhausting. Self-care is more important than ever so please take care of yourself. If you need to sleep in, then sleep in. No judgement. We completely understand.

Many of you have asked us when we’ll start in person workouts again. We realize it hasn’t been the same and understand the desire to come back. Unfortunately, there isn’t an easy answer. While most people may be asymptomatic or experience mild symptoms, for others, coronavirus can lead to severe health complications. We still don’t know what the lasting impacts will be and comfortability levels are different for everyone. As an organization that is committed to building the community, we take this decision very seriously. The health and wellbeing of our members and Atlantans as a whole is our biggest priority.

Our group is fortunate to be made up of Public Health and Healthcare professionals at almost every level of the response (CDC, testing sites, Hospital ICUs) and we are closely monitoring the available data and using our collective knowledge to guide us. When things were starting to reopen in May and June, we chose not to come back because we felt that it wasn’t the right time. New cases were about the same as they had been during the shutdown and more people were interacting. We would rather wait and see than risk coming back too early. We won’t give specific numbers that we will need to see for when we resume in person, but will say we need to see a prolonged decline in cases.

There are options! Although virtual workouts aren’t ideal, we encourage you to get together with your “core” groups of friends or family and do the workout together. Or invite some close friends and meet outside to do the workout together. Post in the social group and find people who might want to go for a run or walk with you. Or give back to the community and volunteer.
For now, we will continue to meet virtually Wednesdays and Fridays at 6:27am. We will continue to find ways to make it as engaging and sweaty and possible: go on “field trips” to visit other NP Cities, collaboration workouts with NP groups and themed workouts. Speaking of which, October is a HUGE month for us: read more