Running

For several days I either had bad allergies or I had a cold. Both are possible because we went from cold and rainy, and cold and snowy to spring like so three or four trees at once dumped their loads of pollen into the sky at once.

Since so many people are coughing and spluttering at the moment, it’s likely that some generous individuals onpassed the virus to me. The result is that for several days I didn’t run or cycle. I even had one or two short walks, rather than long ones. My short walks are still long for many.

It’s ironic that since I started a Runna fitness plan my “fitness” has been going down rather than up. The simple reason is that although the workouts are challenging, they’re challenging for a short time.

Take this morning’s bike ride for example. It was short in distance and time, but high in effort and strain. I had to keep up with specialists. By specialists I mean “people who cycle without touching other sports as often”. I walk, hike, run and cycle every day so I’m excellent at walking, and mediocre at everything else. This is written with humour.

Last night at around 05:30 the alarm went off and either before or afterwards I heard lightning. I also heard very heavy rain. The question was whether the weather app was to be trusted. I could see that it would rain heavily while I walked from home to the meeting point but that for the duration of the rain it would remain dry.

I chose to take a good raincoat and walked in the rain towards the meeting point. For a moment I thought that I would be alone. Luckily two others turned up, including the person that suggested the run.

Today I woke early. I set the alarm for 05:30 and again at 05:40 and yet again at 06:00. The reason for so many alarms is that it’s easy to set the first, wake up to turn it off, and then wake too late. It’s also as a backup. Usually the first alarm is enough to wake me.

I can be a morning person, if other people are not noisy at night when I want to go to sleep at a reasonable time. Being a morning person requires living somewhere that is either quiet, or filled with white noise that covers other noises.

Yesterday was cold and grey when I set off on my daily walk/run and my intention was to go up to Cheserex across to Tranchepied and then back down towards Nyon. I had no intention of running a semi-marathon.

The reason for which I ran so far is that I saw dog walkers and their dogs were not leashed. Years ago I was agressed by three dogs, one of them every time we crosssed paths, so now, if I’m alone, and I see a dog, I cross where the field boundary is, and then I continue my walk, run or bike ride.

Recently I ran with the goal of getting above the fog and I succeeded. The result was a 16km run. Since then I have run ten kilometre runs four more times. In the process I have shifted from not seeing myself to seeing myself as more of a runner than before.

Last year I couldn’t run five hundred to eight hundred meters without my knees hurting. Instead of trying to run far I just tried to run as far as I could before I felt pain, and then stopped. With time and persistence I was able to run further and further.

Yesterday we were under the clouds for the entire day. Low lever clouds or fog kept us away from the sun. I noticed that someone on Strava had managed to get above the clouds by going for a bike ride. I decided to try to do the same thing, eventually, by running. This is the longest distance I have ever run. It was uphill for the first part.

I ran from the height of Nyon towards Tranchepied, and from there I ran up towards the Domaine de Bonmont before turning to run along the foot of the Jura towards Trelex, before running back down towards Nyon and home.

Last night, as I finished dinner I noticed that others were out so I joined them within twenty minutes or so. That wasn’t fast enough. They had decided to call it a night. As this impacted my mental health I decided to go for a run.

Often you see people are out, and you know they might call it a night by the time you get there. I had that thought. My decision was “If they have called it a night, by the time I get there, then at least I will have had a second walk.”

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.

Meetup and Strava are two sites filling specific niches. Meetup is a dinosaur of the web. It dates back to 2005 when the web was still looking for a way to be sustainable, and thus, more fun. Meetup was good for people in big US cities, London and other metropolitain cities. If you lived in Bumbleduck nowhere it was not. (Intentional spelling)

Strava in contrast is a young company. It was created in 2009 and became popular among the cycling community for a while, before eventually including running, hiking and then climbing and many other sports. The point of Strava is that it is a social network for sporty people. Meetup is a social network for sedentary, as well as sporty meetups.