A Run And A Walk

Byrichard
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I am going for a run and a walk three times a week at the moment. The run is set by the Garmin Coach and the walk is set by the route I have chosen to use on that specific day. By running the first part of my daily walk I increase my fitness, according to Strava, Sports Tracker and one or two other apps.

At the same time by running, rather than walking these routes I am saving time. A walk that would usually take ten minutes per kilometre is cut down to seven, or less. The runs have gone from 1.6 km, to 2.4 to 3.2 and more. As the runs get longer so the distance I cover increases, and so the daily walk distance takes less time, as it is run instead. The aim is still to run 5km comfortably, not to increase the distance beyond 5k, for now.

Yesterday I found the run harder than on previous days. It might be due to running too soon after lunch, but also because I never take “rest” days. I will always walk from seven to ten kilometres a day, whatever the weather, whatever the mood. My body doesn’t get the opportunity to rest, that it might want. It could also be psychological.

Tomorrow the run jumps from being 2.4km to 3.22 kilometres long. After finding the last run harder I expect the same for the next one. If I wanted to make my life easier I could run by one of the lakes, either Divonne or Lac Léman. Both are relatively flat and both have the required distance to cover. One of the best features of that run would be that it is either downhill for the first two kilometres, to flat for the last part. One drawback is that I don’t like the last two kilometres for that loop. Too many couples and dog walkers… although I did find a track by the woods that I could use, rather than walk close to others.

And Finally

I struggled to find inspiration to write today, and I expect that I will struggle for the next week, to three weeks, as my routine is altered.

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Day Twenty-eight of ORCA in Switzerland – A Photo Walk
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Day Twenty-eight of ORCA in Switzerland – A Photo Walk

Byrichard

Today I went on a photo walk. Since walking far is now out of the question if you want to be consistently socially distanced it makes sense to go out with a different purpose. When the purpose of the walk is to take photos you can afford to walk up a hill, or between two people to avoid being too close.


A cat naps in a courtyard in the middle of the day during the 2020 Pandemic in Arnex-Sur-Nyon.


When I passed by the barn where cats love to spend time I found at least two of them having their afternoon siesta. Sometimes at this barn you can find quite a few of them.


Easter Road traffic during the 2020 Pandemic between Founex and Nyon.


Motorway traffic was quite dense today. People were apparently choosing to drive from one point to another. We will see what the impact of this public holiday will be on the number of new cases one to two weeks from now.


Three groups of people walk along an agricultural road in between Eysins and Mies.


This weekend plenty of people were walking along agricultural roads and as you can see they’re walking two to three abreast. These are single lane agricultural roads so if I had been walking along these roads I would have come within two meters of many people.


I really wish that during the pandemic people would have the same decency as hikers on narrow paths. That decency is to walk in single file, and to allow people enough space to pass safely. I look forward to when I can walk my ordinary paths, without worrying about passing too close to people.


People walking during the 2020 Pandemic in the Canton de Vaud, with the Alps in the background


Aside from having the pandemic as a reason to avoid large groups such as in the picture above I think another motivation is to avoid the feeling of loneliness that some of us could feel. Tomorrow will be week six without human contact for many of us. No hand shakes, no conversation closer than a meter and a half. No break from the solitude of a pandemic.


Solitude is when you’re alone living as usual. lonely is when you’re reminded of what you’re missing and you pine for something that you may not really need. When the order is to stay two or more meters away from people for one and a half months seeing other people with the company of another person is already sub-optimal. Imagine seeing a crowd of up to five people.


I started compiling a collection of hiking documentaries on Youtube. One of them is a hike from Switzerland to the mediterranean and the others are hikes in the United States. It may seem paradoxical that after so much walking I would be thinking of walking even more but I love the idea of walking for a few days and seeing different places. I like the idea of leaving civilisation for a while.





There’s a good chance that rock climbing, via ferrata and other sports will not be possible for at least a few weeks so it makes sense to think about things we can do alone or in small groups. Maybe this will be the year when I do at least one variant of the Via Alpina. We will see, once the pandemic has run its course.


Camera used to take pictures










Walking by the Sea with a Garmin Virb

Walking by the Sea with a Garmin Virb

Byrichard

Do you walk by the sea and watch the seagulls fly up with something in their beak and then drop it? I did, this morning. I walked by the sea and filmed. You can see the G-force climb up and down with each step. Unfortunately the Garmin virb doesn’t self-level so the footage is lopsided, making the mediterranean look as if it has a slope. If that wasn’t the case I would share the video on YouTube. Several minutes of seagulls, sea waves and more.

I didn’t know that seagulls lifted things, and then dropped them into the sea. Maybe they’re trying to get clams and oysters to open. Either that or they’re a little clumsy. I don’t think that they’re clumsy. I think that they’re deliberate.

If I had used the DJI Osmo mini (or whatever it’s called, I forget) the footage would be smooth, and level, but I buy such devices and rarely have the niche opportunity to use them so I leave them at home when I travel or for walks.

I could have shot 4K video, and then stabilised the video in post-production as 1080p video. Maybe another time.

Day 38 of Self-Isolation in Switzerland – Contact Sports
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Day 38 of Self-Isolation in Switzerland – Contact Sports

Byrichard

By May we may be able to go back to doing sports in groups as long as they are not “contact sports” in Switzerland. For me this means hiking, running cycling and other related sports. For me climbing is a contact sport because we touch the same hand holds as everyone else climbing the routes, we use the same ropes and we share quickdraws and belay devices.


This being said I also have no desire to do sports like climbing at the moment because they require us to stand around and socialise and I haven’t really socialised in at least 38 days. I need to ease back into the world of the extrovert. Hiking is a good way to do that.


Visual Studio Code


Today I started watching a course on Linkedin learning about using Chrome for webmastering but got distracted with the idea of installing a server on my mac book pro. I then got even more distracted by Visual Studio Code.


I like this piece of software because it’s free, intuitive to use and quick. A few days ago I had spent hours playing with another html editing tool and the process was so laborious that i wasted a lot of time. With Visual Studio Code it’s fast and I’m getting through the task of making the old part of my website mobile friendly.



The process is interesting. The more pages I optimise the more experience I gain and the more efficient I become. I found that if I remove some bits of code the page is mobile compliant within two or three steps and I can move on to the next page, and the next one after that.


In theory these pages should always have been mobile friendly because they’re light. There is no CSS or other clunk. Images are also small as bandwidth was an issue in those days. It still is, but we have a firehose rather than a syringe today.


Webmastering is great because time really flies when you’re working on a website. You can easily spend ten or more hours a day working on something and still have a few more hours of work. That’s why some professions look so busy compared to others. Of course it’s time consuming because I am still perfecting the work flow. By the time I’ve optimised every page I’ll be proficient at an updated skill.


TikTok


Last night I was unable to focus so I installed TikTok and looked at plenty of videos to clear my mind enough to be able to think about dinner. I must have been in the right frame of mind because I enjoyed quite a few of the videos and flooded my facebook timeline with examples. Don’t worry though, out of the flood I only got one like. It seems that no one saw the flood so it didn’t happen.


1SE – One Second Every Day


More in character with me is the One Second Everyday app. I created a compilation for every day of quarantine so far but I won’t share the video too frequently because it will be most effective when it has at least sixty more days.


That’s it for today. Time to think about dinner.

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Sharkwater – a documentary worth watching

Byrichard

Sharkwater – A documentary worth watching.

If you have one and a half hours of free time I recommend watching this documentary. It discusses the anti-whaling work by the Sea Shepherd, the work it did to combat long lining around the Galapagos and it touches on the shark finning mafia and corruption.

The documentary also looks at the public perception of sharks. It shows that they are not the dangerous animal that they were thought to be until recent history. The film ends with a shot of the narrator free-diving with sharks and being perfectly relaxed. At one point he says “sharks are so sensitive that they can feel your heart beat, if you are calm they will stay but if you panic they will flee”. I paraphrased his exact words.

Another theme that is explored in this documentary is the food chain. He mentions that plankton absorb a lot of Carbon dioxide and that with the overfishing of sharks the ecological balance will be ruined as the apex predators are lost. He pushes strongly for the conservation of shark numbers. We are familiar with the current Save our Sharks movement.

This is an interesting investigative documentary about the economy surrounding shark finning and why it has a negative impact on the food chain. If the documentary was updated it could look at the economic viability of shark tourism that has grown in recent years. Sharks, in some places are more valuable alive than dead. If you don’t have time to watch the entire documentary then I recommend that you watch the last thirty to fourty minutes.

Day Twenty of ORCA in Switzerland – An Island of Tranquility
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Day Twenty of ORCA in Switzerland – An Island of Tranquility

Byrichard

Today I went on my daily walk and found an island of tranquility. Instead of walking in one direction I reversed it. In doing so I saw the river from another point of view. I was on a trail and saw that I could get down to the riverbed and did. I saw a tree lying from one bank to the other and I thought, “Look, a bridge” but of course I didn’t cross it because I’d have fallen in.


Today’s walk was shorter than usual and there are two reasons for it. The first is that I’ve walked the routes so many times over the last three summers that I’m in need of a change. The second reason is that today it was warm, it’s a Saturday, and it’s warm.


All of these factors meant that people were motivated to go out for a walk. When too many people go out during a pandemic the challenge of not walking within three meters is more pronounced.


As I got close to home, and saw how many people were walking I thought that the last four hundred meters would be really challenging. I thought I would have to find a quiet spot and watch for a gap in pedestrian traffic before I could walk home. Luckily that fear stayed theoretical.


I had planned to ride the bike indoors when I got home but then I got distracted with the need to work on a motivation letter but this was interrupted by a phone call and now it’s time for dinner and I have to write the blog post first.



I want to keep my daily routine up. I want to keep discipline. I also want to be ready for when life gets back to normal. I want to know that I set daily goals and I reach them consistently for weeks or months at a time. I am on day 208 of my German practice streak for example.


“COVID-19”, as people have been saying, “is not a holiday. It’s a pandemic. Stay home, and self-isolate.” Did you notice the shift from “social isolation” to “self-isolation”. I prefer the second term. I am self-isolating. I am keeping myself company, and at the end of the day, after having conversations via whatsapp or other apps I have a conversation with myself, in the form of writing. By the end of my “write a blog post task” I feel rested and relaxed, and I often feel my mood lift. It’s serving me well.


Now I can prepare dinner.

Getting Back Into Running
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Getting Back Into Running

Byrichard

I am getting back into running at the moment. I have run several times recently, irregularly enough not to feel pain in my knees or other articulations so this is a good sign. The advantage of running, over other sports, is that it’s easy to catch a bus, car, train, parapente or other form of transport and start running. The second advantage is that it is twice as fast as walking.


Six or seven years ago I ran regularly. I kept pushing until I reached over 10 kilometres in a run but I had to stop because I got pain in my legs that was so bad I sometimes questioned how I would get back. It’s not that I couldn’t run faster, or further, but that I didn’t reach training plateaus, and then improve speed and stamina. If I achieved A I went for B, and from B to C, without ever giving my body time to strengthen and adapt. That’s why I ended up injured, and why I paid the price for several years.


This time I sometimes ran only until the first feeling of pain and stopped. By doing this a few times I allowed my body time to be pushed right next to the limit, without overdoing it. As a result of this more gentle and understanding training regime I got back to running for seven minutes, and walking for three minutes, without feeling any pain.


The next workout will be seven kilometres of running and one minute of walking three times. I could try tomorrow, or Saturday. I think it’s better to do this workout on Sunday. This gives my body time to adapt to running, and recover. I want it to recover. I don’t want my progress to be blocked because I was too greedy to allow my body time to adapt.


Running is a good winter time sport because you can do it in the mud, on the side of roads, through fields or in other locations. You can also dress quite normally, compared to cycling and other sports. It is also flexible gradient wise, unlike rollerblading, where you need to learn to stop on steep descents in a landscape like this one.


And Finally


My goal is to run five kilometres, first, and then to keep running five kilometres, but faster, without pushing myself beyond a threshold. Eventually I may run further but I think I would run the routes that I usually walk. When the cycling season comes back I should be able to resume cycling in good shape.

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