Early

This morning I toyed with the idea of wearing a proper winter cycling top. Instead I settled for a thermal layer, the usual top, sleeves, and a wind blocker. These weren’t enough for me to feel warm.

10°c

The temperature has dropped. it was 10°c this morning and I was cold when I set off and I seriously considered turning back for another layer but thought that if I did, then when it gets really cold, I won’t have anything warmer to wear on bike rides. I should have worn that top. It didn’t warm up.

This morning I woke at Four, before birds started to tweet, and before the sun started to rise. I woke so early, not to deice planes, like I did years ago, but to go for a group run with five hundred and fifty other people, in theory. In practice I think some people paid to participate but failed to wake up.

Wake Up and Run, in Switzerland, is based around a simple concept. Lunatics, like me, pay 38 CHF to join a 5km run at 05:30 in the morning. We get coffee, breakfast, a purple/pink t-shirt, a wake up and run glass and more.

I think that tomorrow I will wake between 05:00-05:30 to be ready at the meeting point to go for a bike ride that starts at 06:30. The start is early because it is meant to be a “ride before work” for this group.

The pace is tempo. On the flat I expect to be okay. It’s on the climbs that I expect to be left behind, between Tartegnin and the turn where if you go right you go to Signal de Bougy and if you go left you go through cement roads.

This weekend I have the choice between running, hiking, walking, via ferrata and probably more. Years ago I would have automatically gravitated towards Via Ferrata because that is a sport I really loved. These days I’m not so sure. It’s especially that the VF would take one and a half hours of driving, which isn’t really the issue, but that it starts at around 11:30, which, for me, is late.

In theory I am waking at 0400 or earlier tomorrow to go and run in Vernier at 0530 but in practice that is now in doubt, not because I’m lazy but because I have a sore throat.I really hope that what I am fighting is just a short lived bug, nothing more.

For the first time in years I went to Geneva, and I spent time indoors, and in a city and within two days I’m fighting a bug. I don’t think it’s serious enough from running tomorrow.

This morning I got up at 4am to go for a run with strangers in Nyon. The meeting time was 05:10 and the run/jog/walk began at 05:30. Before the run Activ Fitness gave us a warm up workout that I followed half-heartedly. I had already walked 3km so my body was warm. I now needed to remain warm before the run itself.

For some people the idea of getting up at 4am to run at 0530 is an absurd one. They would prefer to sleep. In reality I think that waking at 0400 is easier because that’s where I am in a light sleep phase, so if I wake up then I’m fine. It’s if I wake at 0600 or so that I may struggle, because that’s when I might be in a deeper sleep phase. In either case I woke quite easily ahead of this run.

One winter I woke seven or eight days in a row at 2am to be at work and ready to work for 0400. It was very hard to do, and since then I prefer not to have to wake up too early. Yesterday I woke at 0600, naturally, but also because I wanted to set off by 07:30 to be at my destination by 08:30. Traffic was good so I arrived half an hour earlier than anticipated. The one hour drive took half an hour.