Morning

If you had the chance to get up at the crack of dawn to run with a group at 6AM, have breakfast, coffee, and then head to another town for an 8AM run, would you? Hypothetically that’s what I could do on Friday morning but in practice I think that it involves too much driving. It is also exhausting.

If I was sleeping well, and I felt nice and fresh in the morning then I wouldn’t hesitate. I think it would be fun to run in Morges at 6am, and then Nyon at 8am. My concern is that it requires getting up by 04:30, which requires going to bed early, and sleeping well.

Have you noticed how if an event is organised in the evening, long into the night, people see it as normal to participate. Have you also noticed how waking at the crack of dawn, to run, four towns away, is seen as lunatic, and crazy behaviour. We live in a society and age that has normalised being nocturnal, in the evening rather than the morning.

Last night was special because a storm was forecast, and expected. It took a while to arrive and at first it was just a gentle rain. The rain then got worse and worse, until eventually it was a sudden, intense downpour with litres of water being forced down onto the roof. I thought “This is as if a canadair had dumped its load of water on my roof, now that I’m writing about it. I started recording the sound, and I went to check that all the velux were closed, and that the blind was closed on the one that had a blind.

I see news reports and articles that say “Don’t do sports during a heatwave”, which, to me is bad advice. It’s not bad advice to tell people not to push and overheat at the hottest point of the day. It is bad advice not to say “Try to run in the morning” and “Be sure to have water nearby to help cool your body” or even “make sure to run by a river, in a forest, where evapotranspiration is possible.

Naturally we think of doing group activities in the evenings, after work, or over the weekend, when we’re free for the entire day. Some people take the opposite approach. They wake up early to go for a morning sunrise run or a croissant loop bike ride.

The concept is simple. Instead of waking up for work, you wake up early, and you do an hour of sport between 0700-0800. In so doing you get your bike ride or run, before your day of work. It then includes a café, a croissant, possibly breakfast, and then to work we go.

I set the alarm for 05:30 this morning and when it went off I was tempted to ignore it and sleep more. I had the self-discipline to get up anyway, shower, and then dress for a bike ride. When I was ready to go the watch told me “sunrise in 10 minutes” and I set off then.

On the way to Nyon I was beeped by a car for not using the cycle lane. There was no traffic, and if I had used the cycle lane then either I would have been forced to stop as the car passed me, due to losing my priority. That’s why I stuck to road. I was at over 30 kilometres per hour in a town, and since there was no traffic the car had no reason to beep me.

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.

This morning I set the alarm for five thirty, and I recharged my bike lights, head unit and more. I decided that if I felt good, and full of energy I would go for the group ride. I slept through the night and woke up feeling fresh, but I skipped the ride.

I had a cold, and when I got better from the cold I was double vaccinated against the flu and COVID. I then slept like crap two nights ago and now I feel good.

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 set the alarm to wake me at five but I didn’t get up. I felt tired and decided I need sleep more than a bike ride. I don’t know whether I am affected by the seasonal change, or whether I am still tired from this weekend. Waking at 4am wasn’t that hard on Friday, but after cycling hard on Saturday, and hard on Sunday I need time to recover.

Yesterday as I cycled from Nyon to Geneva I felt my mouth become dry so I drank, felt it get dry again, and drank again. The wind that is usually cooling, or cold was warm. I was having a hair dryer ride. This is a term I use when the air is so warm that it offers no cooling effect.

We Ride at Dawn

One solution to avoid such a ride is simply to ride at sunrise like I did with Tête de Course. You wake up before sunrise and head towards the meeting point as the sky starts to gain some colour. The ride itself takes place at dawn, so you’re in 20°c rather than 34°c. It’s 10°c cooler than my bedroom so I wore layers to stay warm. If you don’t like the heat then this is an excellent way of getting a bike ride in before it gets too hot. It’s also a way of getting a bike ride before work.