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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
One of the strangest things, in my observation of other people, is that they dress as if it was warm when it was cold. They dress in shorts and t-shirts to walk in the mountains in spring. That’s quite absurd, given how the mountains, in April tend to be cold.
Others dress in shorts and a t-shirt to go running when it is barely above freezing and I find this behaviour absurd too.
In the last three days I have been for three morning runs. The first was a base run, the second was a threshold run, and the third was a recovery run. I chose to run in the morning because the temperature has increased in recent days and I prefer to run when it is slightly cooler.
I left the decision of what type of run to do up to Garmin, with the Instinct 2.
Usually I like to go out in the afternoon because that was often when I felt the need for a mental break. This morning, and yesterday, or a day or two I went out in the morning. Part of the reason for this is that summer temperatures are arriving. We are getting back to 30°c or more, and running in that temperature is not as pleasant.
Noise and Comfort There was little noise pollution yesterday so I opened the balcony door in the morning, and a velux and I had a nice cooling draft in my apartment.