On Sunday I will be running 17km in a running event. My goal isn’t to be fast. My goal is to run 17km without getting exhausted, and without suffering too much.

Two or three weeks ago I ran a social 18km or so and I felt fine at the start but as people picked up the pace, and I started to get fatigued, especially when it flattened out I started to suffer with the pace.

In an ideal world, we step out of our home and we go for a walk, like they did in The Last of the Summer Wine, and we socialise, and see local people. During the pandemic we could step out of the house, and go for a walk, without worrying about traffic, and without automatically taking the car.

When lockdowns ended, and the dependence on cars came back, so the local walk was degraded by the increasing frequency of car use. Eventually rural roads along secondary paths became unpleasant so new routes had to be found.

When I was at university the second time, as a mature student I estimated that my social network was around 600 people deep. In light of this it seems absurd that I hooked on to Facebook and Twitter at the same time. Why would it make sense to hook on to both of these technologies when I was already surrounded by people.

It’s even more surprising, given that Twitter came out in 2006, and I had already been at uni for at least two years. Of course it helped that I was at uni when Facebook was still new and exciting because I was in the prime social situation for it to be relevant. If I had been in the world of work instead, then it’s likely I would have ignored FB and Twitter.

Yesterday I was struck by a paradoxical site. An Autumnal looking stream that has practically dried up. A week ago the river could be seen, and the rocks, and stones. Last night, during a group run what I saw was yellow leaves sitting on still water, with no water flowing.

Water is still pooled in certain spots but it is still so dry, with no rain, no fog, and barely any clouds, that this Autumn feels like Summer. It’s warm enough to wear shorts and t-shirts. Some people still cover up, but you don’t need to. Summer isn’t finished yet.

In recent weeks I volunteered at two events. The Triathlon de Divonne and the Critérium de Céligny. At both events there is a social need that people need to be made aware of. That social need is for people to volunteer at sporting events, not just participate. The Course de l’éscalade is 42 CHF and the Triathlon de Nyon is 110+ CHF. The Critérium was a reasonable 20 CHF for people to participate. I don’t know the price for the Triathlon de Divonne.

For a week or so there were a lot of flies clustering. I believe that this was due to weather weirding. For months it was too warm, and dry, so they didn’t breed as voraciously. Eventually the weather changed temporarily so there was an infestation for those with bad luck.

During this time I noticed that a fly or three tried to fly into the fridge. Flies tend to slow down and hibernate or die when they get too cold, so they might be full of enthusiasm and optimism when they fly in but once the door is closed they’re trapped. The light goes out so they think “bed time” but they also realise “Wait, this is a very cold place, and all of the food is covered so I have no food or drink.”

Today I woke when it was still dark and cold. I went to Décathlon for a run and got there early so I waited in the car, where it was warm. I saw people arrive, and when 07:50 arrived I walked into the shop.

I learned at that moment that there were two runs planned. One was the usual Final Saturday of the Month Run, and the second was exclusively for women, to run, discuss running for women, and to shop without guys being around. It is part of the Breast Cancer Awareness Month in Octobre.

A few days ago I watched an interesting documentary in which Lucy Worsley investigated Jack the Ripper, but rather than look at the crimes, motivation, and identifying who the criminal was she took a “media and society” perspective focused on the genre of true crime journalism.

Within the documentary and podcast genre there are people that like to investigate and study crimes from the past, explore them in depth, and then discuss them at length.

Imagine, for a second that we reverted to the old habit of paying for a day’s content daily, a week’s content, once per week, or a month’s content, monthly. With Substack and many online newspapers they have the habit of saying “pay for the entire year” before we’ve had time to read a single article. At most we read half a paragraph before we see a popup saying “Please allow notifications, and half a scroll later “This content is for paying customers, please subscribe, or go away.

Recently someone said that the Apple watch is seamlessly integrated and easy to use. I never considered its simplicity of use because I grew up playing with GPS devices from the etrex 32 to the Nokia N95 8GB to several dozen watches and devices over the decades. As a result the difficulty of Garmin, Suunto and other platforms is normalised.

I did switch back to the Suunto Run watch on Monday or Sunday and I was surprised to see that I had not started the device properly. I noticed the same with the Coros Nomad a day or two later.