Cycling to the City that Never Wakes Up

Reading Time: 2 minutesYesterday I wanted to go for a bike ride. I hesitated between driving to the Vallée De Joux and cycling around the lake, cycling up to Les Rousses and facing a long and sustained uphill or cycling to a meeting in Geneva. In the end, I cycled to the meeting in Geneva.

As you see this is a 67 km bike ride with a vertical change 0f 714 metres. On a road bike that's fine, because the bike is light. On a mountain bike with slick tires and no one to pace me it can be quite tiring. According to the watch, it will take 120 hours to recover from the journey. The segment along Chemin des Pins and Chemin De St Oyend are closed to all traffic except agricultural. This means that you can use the entire road. Rue De La Brunette is a funny name for a street coming off of St Oyend.

I enjoy cycling in cities because I see it as a series of sprints, to try to keep up with cars. As they go at just 30 km/h this is easy for a few minutes. I noticed people on e-bikes and I had the intention of drafting behind him but he changed direction so it was short lived.

As you can see from the graph above I was making most of the effort on this bike ride as I cycled to Geneva. The gap is where I stopped at Impact Hub to meet one or two people, refill my water bottle and then cycle around Geneva before heading back towards Crans and Nyon.

When you live at the foot of the Jura you have two choices for every bike ride. You can head down towards the lake, enjoy your bike ride but then be left with a 200-metre climb or you can cycle up to the mountains and then have a nice downhill on the way home.

With training and a lighter bike these graphs could be less extreme. When that becomes the case then commuting to work by bike is feasible.