On Heatwaves and Getting Up at Dawn to Run

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We are entering the first Canicule of the summer today from Thursday and towards the 23rd of June. During this heat wave Minergie buildings, will climb towards 32°c plus, as will apartments. Cities will gather more and more heat energy and radiate it it. That’s when noisy music festivals can have deadly consequences, but it is also when it makes sense to get up at the crack of dawn for a group run.

Now, to get up at the crack of dawn requires something. Silence. Going to sleep stupidly early is difficult because our circadian habits want us to be awake until the default time. If we go to sleep early, then our body says “nope” and we’re awake, rather than asleep.

In theory the solution is the afternoon siesta. This requires two things. It requires you to be tired, but it also requires you to have the freedom to disappear for half an hour. Some places of work provide rooms for naps and similar activities, whilst with others, the parked car in a basement might be the best compromise. For others sleeping under a shady tree is appealing.

Now, if you’re at home in a house, heat rises, so if you open the veluxes just enough to purge hot air, without letting it in, then you get a chimney effect to provide a draft to cool the building.

If you live in an apartment, but especially if you live in a minergie building that traps heat, as do old buildings, ironically, you’re stuck with a temperature graph that shows a gentle rise in minimum temperature over a period of days, not weeks. That’s how fast heat energy gets trapped.

In an ideal world the minergie building is designed to purge hot air during a canicule. In the real world the Swiss Minergie standard is designed for Winter, not Summer and this matters. In old buildings you have natural drafts. You have a chimney for cooking heat to vent, and you have the chimney which could purge hot air although I never tried that theory.

The best solution to make a minergie building liveable at night is to get mosquito nets, and to keep windows open 24/7, just enough to exhaust hot air during the hottest part of the day, and at night to allow hot air to flee, and cool air to enter. Cool air, in a 27°c room is, 26°c. Cool air, is in reality moving air.

The simple act of opening a window at one level, and a second window at a second level, or on the other side, creates a pressure difference, and a draft that cools human beings.

During a music festival open windows are no longer an option because the music is so loud, and for so long that everything needs to be sealed, and in a Minergie building, if you close windows air no longer flows. It stagnates.

In light of this it makes sense to be stricter about noise pollution from music festivals during active heat waves, because being able to open windows during a heat wave is essential for quality of life, and potentially survival. During a heat wave music festivals should go into silent disco after 22:00 to allow people to open windows and sleep.

The plan, on Friday is to wake at 04:00 or 04:30 so that I can run at 6am in Morges. You might ask, but why the duck (intentional spelling) would you wake so early, and the answer is “to give myself time to wake up properly before driving.” We never think of asking someone “but why would you stay up so late to go out partying and drinking. Society is so focused on being nocturnal that it has forgotten that being diurnal is normal.

On Friday morning, those that wake for the 6am run are rewarded by a run in 20+ degrees. Those that run after lunch are rewarded by 30+ and those that run before 2100 are rewarded by 25+°c. It makes sense to wake early, to run when it’s physiologically healthier.

In essence, the quieter it is, at night, the earlier we can get up to take advantage of the fresh air. By taking advantage of the fresh air, before it warms up we can run without suffering and without having to adapt to the heat wave conditions.