Running

It’s easy to fall into the trap of looking at expensive Garmin watches and thinking that maps are a premium feature, when, in fact they are not. Suunto and Coros offer them on affordable devices, should you require that feature for trail running, hiking, and more.

If you want to use the Coros Nomad for navigation while cycling then it’s bad. I tested it when cycling from Morges to Cossonay a few weeks ago. The problem is that it tells you “straight ahead” or turn left, but not in a cycling/driving context, so it’s unreliable for that.

Today I had the pleasure of going for a run early. I had planned to run at 07:30 to finish right as the shops were opening but I felt too lazy, so I was at the shops by 08:20 and running a few minutes later. I was thinking “Oh it’s still early, so I don’t need to run with water. That was a mistake. What wasn’t a mistake is choosing a course that passes by a number of fountains.

Today I went trail running in the Jura near St-Cergue and I found the experience okay. I think that the group stopping regularly helped make this a relatively easy run despite the gradient. Cycling got me used to making hard efforts, not for seconds or minutes at a time but for an hour or more, especially when heading up the Jura.

When I run, my fitness has a positive impact, and because running is more egalitarian than cycling, I suffer less to keep up. With cycling I have a heavier steel frame, heavier aluminium wheels, less efficient group set and rim brakes rather than disk brakes. All of those mean that for every climb I am at a disadvantage. I climb faster than some, but it costs me more.

I ran five days out of seven this week. I ran Monday, twice and then once several days. Most of the runs were easy and early, for two reasons. The first is that we’re in a canicule so pushing hard doesn’t make sense. The second reason is that there are fewer social rides organised.

Today I ran four times around the Lac de Divonne, to meet the distance required by Runna. I didn’t actually run 13km not because of pacing but because of heat. We’re in a heat wave and Runna doesn’t have the intelligence to see the heat and say “stay healthy” and “don’t overdo it”. For Runna it has a program, and that’s what you have to do. Heat doesn’t matter, gradient doesn’t matter.

I was very sad to see that tomorrow’s evening storm is cancelled due to lack of interest. I am very interested in rain falling heavily from the sky. I want it to drench and cool the minergie building within which I live. I want the cool air to help make this building I live in liveable again.

This morning I woke at 6am or so, to go for a group run at 0800 with Décathlon Chavannes and the conditions were good. It was around 23°c and felt like 25°c, so nice and fresh. We ran, and during the run the temperature rose a little. When we got to the forest it felt nice to be sheltered somewhere nice and cool. Evapotranspiration is fantastic for cooling down humans during a heat wave. It’s especially good that we could end the run in the shade.

For several weeks I have run with the Ochsner Sport Runday Monday Signy group. Last night the run began at the Abériaux parking before heading towards Gland and skimming the Domaine Impérial before then heading back through some woods towards the parking, before then stopping by a plage for a swim and apéro, before heading home and sleeping.

The course was around 8.8 kilometres long going along the woods and a water fountain where we could get fresh water, before running along the road, turning left, and then right, and then into the woods, before making our way towards the edge of the woods and crossing towards the Aérodrome de Prangins, before running along, and then turning back towards the same woods, and making our way back to the water fountain. We then picked up swimming stuff and went to the plage.

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.

Over the last week or two I tested the Garmin ForeRunner 570 when navigating from Crans-Montana to Leukerbad. I also tried a group run navigating with the 570 during a Décathlon run, before spotting that the Coros Nomad and Coros Apex 4 offered full map navigation without paying the Garmin premium price.

Hiking with the 570 is a red line on a black line. You look at the squiggle and intuit where you’re meant to go. With hiking it worked most of the time, although in one or two situations context would have been nice to have. In the second I was running with a group as unofficial navigator. I had the red line helping me intuit where the track was and I got it right.

Tomorrow there is an event in Cossonay that could easily involve cycling fourty kilometres to get there, and cycling whilst there, and then cycling back. The low estimate would be an eighty kilometre day and the high estimate would be at least a century.

I was looking at the train, from Nyon to Cossonay, but the connection in Renens is four minutes. Plenty of time, in theory to swap from one track to the other, but with sluggish people that seems less likely.

We are familiar with the situation. We look at Saturday and we think: I want to do this, but then a week or two before you see that something else is available so you think “Oh now I want to do that”. The result is that the thing you were certain about now becomes a Buridan moment.

I have such a choice this week. A group I like to cycle with once per month, or twice per month if long rides become regular, has a ride scheduled at 09:30.