Run

I woke early on Friday to go for a run. From 5am onwards people start to gather and at around 5:15 there is a quick warmup and at 05:30 the run begins. The run is without a timer so this isn’t a race. It is a persona challenge instead.

I was right at the front of the race, with the fastest of people, running at 3-4 minutes per kilometre. When I noticed I slowed down to a pace that I thought would be sustainable for 5km. As a result some people overtook me and I resisted the desire to speed up.

Last night, before going to sleep I had a thought. If the meeting time is 05:15 then I can’t wake at 4am as planned, I need to wake half an hour earlier, to be there in time for the warm up, and possibly earlier to pick up the running stuff.

In the end, after struggling to sleep properly I woke at 03:20 and decided that it was time to wake. I turned off the alarms and got ready. I then drove to Morges and when I got out of the car I was struck by how warm it felt. I had expected to be cold. I removed a layer and left it in the car. There was no need for it.

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.

Yesterday I went to Gland for a mid-afternoon run before watching Disclosure Day at an outdoor cinema. The run route took me along the Toblerones up to Vich, and then I turned East and ran along a road I often cycle along, before then heading back down, over the motorway, and then over the railway line, back to Gland, and then back to the field where the film screening was taking place.

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.

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.

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.

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.

When you drive to a place you don’t have a place for it. That’s why it’s good to use sites to find recommendations. Usually I like to explore routing opportunities with Komoot, to look at routes, what they offer as sites and sounds, and how long the route is.

Last night and this morning I let another site decide. I told Strava that I was going to start from one point, and I looked at what it recommended. I then drove to the start, and ran the route. In the process I found that the route it recommended was not as intuitive as I thought.