Start of running season

After the long winter virtually doing nothing but feeding myself, going to school and writing all sorts of poetry (i.e. python, report, reviews, paper, etc.) I finally decided to once again change my life (by torturing myself). And it would not be me if I did not plan to do it on a grand scale. In fact, I got this fine idea of running ten kilometers. On a perfect plain around my village. 

As I would be bored to return the same way and designing a good cyclic route will be too much, I decided to go with the simple idea of going somewhere and returning by train.  I found a good destination - a rail station Eclepens roughly 10km away. The trains from Eclepens to Chavornay are going hourly so that should make it easy to return. Except ... well except that I was a bit slow in preparations. And it turned out that I have just 1:15 to finish my first 11.5km (by now I put the route into my gps and with the horror looked at the new projected distance) in this season.

Following the motto "start fast and then just accelerate" I started with an unusually fast pace. That said, it was just a matter of minutes until I was virtually dead -- a nice 100m ascent in woods near Bavois changed my running forecast from "speedy with light variations" into "zombie speed with pauses for breath". But you know, the trains are not supposed to wait till some stupid runner in the woods moves his ass towards the train station. Maybe with a divine intervention I managed to climb to the highest point of my journey. Afterwards it was possible to half-resume my running but I still frequently need to cache new air into my lungs and wait for heart-sync. But the overall time was promising. Not as much promising as I would like it to be but at least it was manageable. Till maybe 1 km before the Eclepens, when I had only a few remaining minutes. Suddenly, my GPS was telling me "go left". Excapt for the fact that there was no road. I briefly considered an idea of crossing through woods but ... well, it is not exactly the best idea to do it through the cliff. At least my estimate was that there is far more vertical distance than horizontal for the next 20 meters (which was roughly the distance of the shortcut on my GPS). Damn it! Stupid GPS. But verbally expressing my pleasure about Garmin's decision must be postponed. I am searching for an alternative track and I start running desperately around the obstacle in order to meet the increasingly near deadline (one feature of Swiss trains that they are quite punctual and almost never late). Fortunately, the additional distance is just few hundred meters more...

To keep it short -- I made it. One minute before the train. And with a nice muscle cramp for another 3 days.


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