Recovery Day

Recovery Day

Byrichard

We are in a heatwave and despite this I have cycled for four and a half hours and walked for three hours and fourty minutes. For the bike rides I woke at 6am to avoid rush hour traffic, and to do things before the temperatures rose. Yesterday the temperature in Geneva reached 39°c. Just a few decimal places away from 40°c heat.

Despite the weak I still went for my afternoon walks, but it’s also because of the heat that I walked with 1.6 litres or more. During hot days I find that I can act normally, but I still try to keep myself hydrated. If I feel that I am overheating I pour water on my hat/helmet to cool down.

Keeping Cool

There are four ways to keep cool. The first is to stay hydrated. Drink a few sips every few minutes. The second is to wear a hat. By wearing a hat your head is not going to cook quite as fast as without. The third solution, which doesn’t require drinking water, is to drench your head/hat/hair when you come to a fountain, or when you feel that you’re reaching your limit to cope with the heat. I did so during two walks and two bike rides, since Sunday.
The final option is to become a morning person, to do things in the morning, before the sun heats the air and the ground.

Knackered

Yesterday I cycled to RomainMôtier and back. I was already fatigued from walking and cycling in the heat so when I got to Romainmôtier I felt faint, with a mild head ache. Due to the heat and slight change in hydration I thought that it could be heat stroke. I made it back to my car, had some food and I already felt slightl better, but I still felt knackered when I shopped for food so I got the bare minimum, rather than thinking about something more interesting to cook.

When I got home I had a siesta. I felt much better. I don’t know whether I became exhausted, of heat struck. Since sleep was enough to feel refreshed I think I had just exhausted myself.

Cycling With E-Bikes

The source of my exhaustion. I believe, is partly to do with the heat, of course, but it also has to do with the amount of energy that we burn when we’re cycling on normal bikes with other people on e-bikes. We pace ourselves according to the e-bikes, rather than our own speed.

An Easier Gear

I found that to avoid going too fast, on my bike, I had to change to an easier gear. I would pedal with the usual effort but cover less ground. This works very well, for pacing. I think that it does tire me more than if I was pedalling at a normal effort level and a regular speed. My motivation to use an easier gear, was, in part, to make a different effort, to get a workout, at a lower speed. It seems to have worked. It’s the 80/20 rule on a bike. Sort of.

The Ignored Temptation

When I was in RomainMôtier I was tempted to run my head under a fountain to cool myself down. I didn’t feel that I was cooking but I did feel a mild headache. Near the very end of the walk I did splash water on my head to cool down.

On warm days I am usually desperate for a coke or an electrolyte drink, and for once I ran out of drinks two nights ago, so I didn’t quench my first. I think it affected my endurance the next day.

And Finally

By going for two mid-afternoon walks during the heatwave I challenged my body. I then went for two bike rides where I got up at 0600 before cycling for three or four hours. If I was cycling alone I would have drunk one or two litres on both days. As I wasn’t I drank half a litre or less. Between sleeping a different schedule, walking in the mid-day heat, and then cycling two mornings in a row, I pushed myself to the point of exhaustion. Today I’m recovering. I will go for my afternoon walk but at least I will be well hydrated, and I was able to sleep to my natural wake up time, rather than an alarm.

Day 37 of Self-Isolation in Switzerland – The Future, Or Uncertainty
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Day 37 of Self-Isolation in Switzerland – The Future, Or Uncertainty

Byrichard

I question whether we’re living in the future, or uncertainty during this pandemic. One friend on Facebook wrote that Coronavirus is making us live in the future because of a number of reasons, as listed in the embedded post below.





If I am being myself then I would say that we’re living in the past. We’re living in an age before cars where our village or neighborhoud has become our world. For the first month my home village and the shopping centre one village over were the only two places where I spent any time.


I resorted to walking from home and exploring more and more of the local countryside, to the point where I was walking along dirt tracks that only farmers use to avoid crossing too many other people.


It’s also living in the past because we’re living with very little to no use of the car. The car, for someone like me, is synonymous with going for an adventure in the mountains, whether hiking or other.


Working from home, in my case is blogging, and looking to find opportunities on various websites and through e-mails on an almost daily basis. We’re connecting with people online via WhatsApp, Zoom, Infomaniak’s video tool and other methods. I even used facetime for the first time in a long time.


We’re seeing which countries have good self-discipline and those that do not. I’ll focus on the positive without being negative. The positive is that Switzerland said that people should self-isolate, stay at home and keep two meters away from other people and to a great extent they did. I’m not saying things were perfect all the time, because previous blog posts show they weren’t.


What we do see in Switzerland is that at least at the time of writing this post the number of new cases was flattening to a couple of hundred a day compared to the higher figures from previous weeks. Switzerland said “you should stay home and avoid being to close to people” and people did this.


The consequence is that Switzerland is a rare eutopia, in that we could go for two hour walks if we wanted, we could go on long bike rides and more. In other countries people were restricted to ranging within one kilometre of their homes as in one country, and in other countries of being under house arrest, except for shopping, going to the doctor or other.


Uncertainty


We live in uncertain times because we don’t know whether we’ll have a normal summer. In Switzerland at least one third of people have cancelled their summer plans. On the oil futures market the value of petroleum went down to zero because those that had the ability to buy petroleum did not have the storage space to keep it.


Imagine being in a moment in time where petroleum is worthless, albeit temporarily. For the environment this may be great news because oil producing companies will have a strong incentive to innovate. We have to see if the fall in demand for oil lasts long enough for oil producers to reach a point of no-return in producing alternative fuels and technologies.


At least twice in the past oil crises have helped push innovation forward but that progress was abandoned when oil, once again became a cheap alternative.


A Short Daily Walk


Today my daily walk was a lot shorter than usual. This is due to the weather not being as nice as usual but also because my leg muscles feel tired and in need of a rest. After a 30km bike ride, a 16km walk with 790 meters of climbing and another ten-kilometre walk over three days my body needs a rest. It needs to recover. This wasn’t a zero-day so much as giving my body an opportunity to recover and rest.


I should prepare dinner soon.