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.
Yesterday I went for a run and I struggled. The distance was four point five kilometres so it was short. I suspect that it’s running straight after lunch that made me find the run hard.
Last night I felt fine. I felt like cycling today, and I hesitated between the group ride and going for an Ingress First Saturday event in Geneva. Now I find that neither motivated me this morning.
Until today I didn’t know what catkins were because I never looked them up. “A catkin or ament is a slim, cylindrical flower cluster (a spike), with inconspicuous or no petals…” according to Wikipedia. They are out at the moment and I know this is unusual because a few days ago I saw an article about how it was unusual to have pollen warnings at this time of year.
The Swiss weather app shows that there is a lot of pollen.
In Austria, there’s a pollen warning. Apparently the lack of frost has encouraged the trees and other plants to begin releasing pollen. That’s quite amusing. We have the same temperatures in central Europe as you’d expect to have down in the south Israel has seen snow but the resorts can’t open because of the lack. Where is winter? Is it hiding in the south? Should people go on skiing holidays with their bikes and hiking boots rather than snowboards and skies?