Scarlet Runner by crooxi

Oh for heaven's sake!!! - just looked at the weather forecast for the next few days, confident that the temperature, having made a modest upturn today, is on its way towards something more humane, and what do I see?......... -19°! MINUS 19°!!!!!! Granted, that's for Sunday night, but still............. And Saturday's planned long-ish run is supposed to be accomplished in -11°. I'm getting a bit tired of being deep-frozen now!

Okay, where was I? I feel as though I've completely lost the thread since I last posted. (Consults Garmin.) Apparently I ran 10.15 km in 1:21:26 on 22nd January. Ah yes, the map tells me I went up the side of the woods, round the fig. of 8, down to the hut, then down the main track to Allmend; an unspecified (but smallish) number of rounds on the track, then back into the woods, up past the goats, along the Vita Parcours, apparently with a round or two of the Finnebahn thrown in, and home down the zigzags. (Thank goodness for technology, as my brain has retained very little of this. It somehow seems like half a lifetime ago now.) Even less recollection of the next, on 24th January. Bireggwald again: Waldrand, middle of the woods, Oberrüti, fig. of 8, down again, and down the zigzags. 6.52 km in 47:01. And without Garmin to remind me, I would have completely forgotten about the walk on 28th January, the day before the premiere (by which time I was so into overdrive on the work front, my grey cells were giving up on me.) It was our old standby, along the river Reuss from Gisikon to Sins: a route normally so easy, you could walk it in your sleep, but made trickier this time by incessant rain which had turned the path into very slippery mud. (Particularly tricky on sections with a sideways slope.) We managed it mishap-free, though - 8.64 km in 1:27:57 - and rewarded our efforts with a meal at Zollhaus, the military-cum-peasant themed restaurant with the menu of encyclopaedic proportions. I do love the place! J. got his yak hotpot this time; I stuck with Flammkuchen; shared a piece of Lebkuchen (kind of gingerbread cake) and cream for pudding. After the stress of the past few weeks, it seemed mightily well-deserved. And - I'd forgotten this too - I ran on the day of the premiere itself. The shortest way to the school track, 3 km on the track, and home along the lake. I 'meant' to keep it slow and easy, just a gentle leg-stretcher before the performance.............. but somehow, reckless with the relief of having got this far along, I accidentally turned in kms of 5:06 (oops! slow down, you fool!), 5:12, and 5:14. With there and back, 7.22 km altogether in 44:54. Thus ended January, the month from hell, with 145.36 of my 2012 km achieved, and 1866.64 to go.

And then came the trip to Hamburg, which coincided with the advent of this Siberian winter. Alarmed by predictions of -17° and the like, I took thermal underwear, several fleeces, and my thickest winter coat. I also (rather optimistically) took some running kit and my Garmin. It soon became clear, though, that free time was going to be a rare commodity........ and on the whole, I preferred to spend what little I had on seeing something of the city. So I ended up doing quite a lot of walking, but no running. The twice-daily commute between hotel and theatre alone accounted for some 14 km. ('Theatre': a converted factory still looking much like one. Brick walls, exposed metal ducts and girders, everything painted black.) Walking became my escape (from work, stress, bickering colleagues..........) The first afternoon, I set off into the unknown (map in one pocket, glasses in the other) heading at random in the general direction of the city centre. Crossing a frozen canal, with sparse, dry flakes of snow falling, I felt a sudden lifting of my spirits: one of those special 'moments', unaccountable but memorable. I found my way to the Aussen Alster, a big lake (actually a dammed-up river), walked along it, then over to the main station, where I got on a tour bus and 'did' Hamburg: the Aussen Alster with its millionaires' villas, the city centre, the infamous Reeperbahn, the enormous harbour............. and back on the U-Bahn for the evening rehearsal.The next afternoon was a short one, sandwiched between two dress rehearsals, but I made it back to the harbour for a boat tour round the docks. Huge container ships; an ambitious (but unfinished - run out of money) building project; the water thickly blanketed with ice, and the alarming creaking and crunching sounds as the boat pushed its way through it - the impressions crowded in on me. The next day I had arranged to meet up with a friend who works at the opera house in Hamburg. More sightseeing; a short walk along the frozen Elbe; a meal at his flat; backstage tour of the opera house; then it was time to navigate my way back for the evening's performance.

The next morning, Sunday, somehow felt like the first breathing space I'd had on this trip. The luxury of time: what shall I do with it? (Just an illusion, though - in its way, this day was just as tightly timetabled as the others (passport to be handed in, for someone to take to the airport to get our tickets; luggage to be packed; hotel check-out; another performance at 4, costume and make-up an hour before that..........) I spared myself the extra stress of any more touristic jaunts, and settled for a walk in the Stadtpark, a huge park very near the hotel. My running things (utterly redundant) were already packed, but I strapped on my Garmin, and off I went. One of my more peaceable colleagues accompanied me for a while. Blue sky, bright sunshine, but bitterly cold (-12°). Lots of runners about, even so, mostly muffled up in multiple layers (though I did see one madman in shorts!), some of them with scarves or buffs round their faces. 3 km took us as far as the Planetarium in the middle of the park, where we took the lift up to the 7th floor observation platform, admired the view for a very chilly half a minute, then hurried down again. Here we went our separate ways, and I headed back towards the hotel, detouring round a frozen lake where people were skating. By now, my face was so cold, it felt as though it might crack, and my right ear (the side towards the wind) was getting painfully cold despite the scarf wound round my head, so I was glad to thaw out in my hotel room for half an hour before I had to surrender it. So that, I'm afraid, was the extent of my recorded training in Hamburg: 6:12 km in 1:09:16.

From the 'theatre', straight onto a bus to the airport; flight to Zürich; train into Zürich; another train to Luzern - which we found no warmer than Hamburg, and a lot snowier; a cold, tired wait for a bus; home sweet home at half past midnight, dragging suitcase over piles of frozen snow by the kerb............. aaaaaah, so glad to be back!

I have spent much of the past 2 weeks feeling like something that lives under a flat stone. (Actually I like my flat stone - I like it a lot! It currently feels like my refuge from a lot of unpleasantness, and the one place I am occasionally left in peace........... well, almost.) You will gather it has not been the most enjoyable of times, and it's not over yet. One more week of the current horribleness to go, then a few days on tour in Hamburg (who knows what that will be like?), and then............... well, I hope there will be time to breathe and de-stress and get back to something resembling normality.

Right, enough of that! Running to recount! (There has been some, thanks to the incentive of the '2012 in 2012' pushing me out of the door even when I felt 'too tired'. Not high-octane stuff, but enough to keep things ticking over.) Monday 9 Jan: out over midday with J. A dull day, but fairly mild. Hirtenhof, Waldrand, goats, down to Allmend, 4 times round the track; then back into the woods, and up the main track to the hut; J. went home, while I went on up to Oberrüti, twice round the fig. of 8, back down again, and home down the zigzags, for 11.05 km in 1:24:39. Wednesday 11 Jan: Midday, with J. Up to Stutz, Matthof, lake, 5 times round the Wagner Museum, home along the lake. 5.22 km in 36:38. Thursday was my allocated washday (the house has a communal washing machine), so no time for running. Also managed to sprain my jaw (? yes), biting a little too vigorously into a somewhat resistant bread roll, which was quite painful for a couple of days, and is still giving me trouble now. (It's a myth that all opera singers have huge mouths - mine is very small.) Friday 13 Jan: another midday run with J. Waldrand, goats, no. 7 terminus, down to Sternegg, gardens path, bit of woodland, Wartegg, Wagner Museum; planned originally to turn right here and go home along the lake, but decided to do a bit more by turning left down to Alpenquai and adding in a loop of the Ufschötti; then back to Wartegg by a new little path we've only recently explored, and home via Wagner Museum and the lake. Felt longer than it actually was: 8.04 km, in 58:20. Saturday 14 Jan was a solo effort, Bireggwald, afternoon. Up to the Vita Parcours; 1st stop, the Reck, and 3 pull-ups; 2nd stop, the benches at the top of the Finnebahn, for 20 triceps dips and 20 push-ups; down the other side of the Finnebahn, and back to the Reck for 3 more pull-ups; then to the middle of the woods, up to Oberrüti, once round the fig. of 8, down again, and home via the zigzags. Lost a few hundred metres by forgetting to un-pause the Garmin at one point, but was about 7 km (Garmin showed 6.43 in 49:37.) Much colder - had to brush ice off the Reck and the bench before use.

So week 2 of the 2012 challenge added another 30.75 km to my tally, making a total of 81.88 km (50.88 miles.)

Sunday 15 Jan: finally a whole day off! - the first in 12 days. A little island of peace and sanity in the midst of all the.......... (*add whichever word seems suitable - I'm too polite to write it!) Good opportunity for a long run, so we got the bus to Meggen Gottlieben and ran home via the castle and along the lake. Hard frost, -2°, a rather frisky wind, but bright sunshine - lovely. Said hello to the donkeys (6 of them) in their field; stopped off at the public toilets after only 800 metres............. a slow start, but picked up speed as it went along. Lots of people out enjoying the fine day - more and more of them, the nearer we got to Luzern. Stopped off briefly at Hotel Hermitage to see if the little ice rink was still open - it was, and very popular - before picking up speed along the short stretch of main road. Slalomed our way through the hordes of people in the lakeside park and along Schweizerhofquai; over the Seebrücke, and home along our side of the lake, taking all the longer alternatives to stretch the distance a bit. I reckoned with about 1 hr 50, but it came in at 1:38:39 for the 14.36 km (so somewhat faster than usual - or should I say 'less slow than usual'?!) A bit on the short side for a bona fide 'long run', but I was feeling mildly tired towards the end, after 3 days' running in a row. It was heaven to get home knowing I didn't have to go out again! - time to cook a proper meal, time to enjoy it, time to relax.

Tuesday 17 Jan: another short midday outing with J. Up the side of the woods (to take advantage of what sun there was), round the fig. of 8, down to the hut and the middle of the woods, home down the zigzags. Very, very cold; everything thickly furred with frost. 5.45 km in 44:35. Wednesday and Thursday, perfect running weather, milder and sunny............. but really too tired. Friday 20 Jan: weather now grim and wintry. Still feeling dead, but thought 'go out, just do 5.........', and set off. Down to the PO first, posted a letter, then along the lake to the Wagner Museum. Running without plan, just to put in the distance. Once round the museum, then over to Wartegg, across the bridge, through the bit of woodland, and via gardens path to Sternegg. Felt like turning for home, but instead headed up the hill to the no. 7 bus terminus, and into the woods. Somewhere along the line, the 'dynamo effect' started to kick in again, and I felt that upwards of 5 might be possible. By the time I had passed the goats and turned off towards the ponds, I had revised the target to 10. Up from the ponds to the middle of the woods, then up some more, to Oberrüti; twice round the fig. of 8, down again, back to the middle, a couple of times round the triangle for good measure, and home down the zigzags. Wind, rain, snow - that hard, round sort that's almost like hail. It felt good, actually! - good to battle against something as simple and impartial as the weather, rather than deviousness, insensitivity, and over-inflated egos. 11.15 km in the end, in 1:21:13.

And so ended another week of the '2012 in 2012' challenge, with another 30.95 km, and a total of 112.83 km (70.11 miles.) Into a new century, with 1899.17 km to go! A good point to end this post, and report again at the end of this week. (With apologies for all the minutiae of my routes, of no great interest to anyone - just for my own record, really.)

The end of the first week of '2012 in 2012' (the km version) found me with 51.13 km (or 31.77 miles, in 'old money') notched up. Even allowing for the fact that 14 km of this was 'just' walking, this is quite a lot for me. It did help that this was a week with 2 1/2 days free at the beginning of it - I think it's going to be harder in the next few weeks, and I will have to scale it down a bit (I'm thinking 30-ish). We have another premiere (a world premiere, in fact) at the end of January, and then take it to Hamburg for a few days at the beginning of February. It's a modern piece, and far from easy. The current regime of music rehearsals and staging are taxing enough, with the orchestra due to be added to the mix soon for additional complication. Worse, I have solos. I certainly didn't ask for them! - in fact, I hoped/assumed that as one of the, er, more senior members of the ensemble, I would now be exempt. Not so. It's sort of a character role, so maybe they thought I would suit it best (or maybe they just want to save the cost of a wig by using someone with real grey hair....?) Whatever............. I was not too thrilled. This does mean I have to be a bit careful, take care of necessary equipment (lungs, throat, etc.), preferably not get a cold, and keep enough energy in reserve to get through several hours of rehearsal a day. (Plus any performances of the other pieces we have.) Even after this shorter week, I have an inkling of just how tiring this is going to be. At the beginning of it, I felt recharged and full of elan; by Friday the batteries were already running low again. Towards the end of Friday night's performance of 'Lucia di Lammermoor', with Lucia singing her little heart out in the mad scene, I just found myself thinking 'Come on, hurry up and die - I want to go home!' (Except that we then have to wait for Edgardo to die too.) It didn't help that I currently have several mouth ulcers and they are horribly painful; nor that our make-up is very uncomfortable too. For some reason they want the women to look very shiny, and their solution is to put face mask on over our make up - that stuff supposed to tone and cleanse the skin. It's designed to be on for a maximum of 15 minutes, but we have it for about 2 hours, during which time it gets tighter and tighter and eventually starts to crack and peel (it's impossible to sing without using facial muscles!) - by the end of the evening we look like The Thing that Crawled out of the Crypt. Ah, the glamour of the theatre! Anyway, I digress - I just wanted to say, I'm not too optimistic about the feasibility of combining work and serious running for the next 4 weeks, and I fear work has to come first. But there will be SOME running - I need it to preserve my sanity!

The latter half of Week 1 was fairly tame in comparison (sorry to disappoint anyone expecting more rows, fence-climbing, and getting lost) - possibly because I did most of it on my own! Or no, I was with J. on Friday, but it was one of those 'midday quickie' sessions at the school track (open over the school holidays) - hard to get lost there, and short cuts don't come into it. A day of stormy west wind, snow showers, and the occasional lurid gleam of sunlight from behind slate-grey clouds. A slowish 2 km there, 3 km somewhat faster (5:44, 5.46, 5:28 - I generally do them about half a minute/km faster than this, but didn't chance it this time as the air was so cold), and another slower 2 km home - 7.17 km in 48:04.

The next day I went off to the Bireggwald on my own, quite late in the afternoon, after procrastinating for a while because I felt so tired. (Apart from the rehearsals etc., a storm had kept me awake in the night.) Setting off up the side of the woods, I felt I could barely muster the energy to put one foot in front of the other.......... but by the time I reached the top, I felt better; and the further I went, the better it got. I had discovered the Dynamo Effect! By the time I had been twice round the fig. of 8, down to the middle of the woods, and twice round the middle hills, I felt good for more......... but common sense reminded me it would be getting dark soon, so after a round of the triangle, I headed for the ponds via the top path of the Vita Parcours, and along Waldrand, planning to go home along the road. I heard the church bells ringing for 5 o'clock mass.When I reached the turn-off, though, it was still quite light, so I risked the longer way back, along the continuation of the path along the edge of the woods. Home at 10 past 5, and still not properly dark - I do believe the days are getting longer again! Got back feeling quite re-energized (though glad that for once I didn't have to go out again - no rush to get changed, bolt down some food, and set off for work. A free evening feels like such a luxury........ and I had 2 of them to look forward to! - one on Sunday too: a performance Sunday afternoon, but nothing in the evening.) So having set out out planning to do just the minimum, it ended up as 9.41 km in 1.16:16. And an interesting side-effect: the mouth ulcers felt much less painful. Whether it's the improved circulation, more oxygen, or the cooling effect through breathing in cold air, the swelling had gone down and they hurt less. I noticed the same thing the previous day, but didn't make the connexion with running until the phenomenon recurred. Alas, the 'cure' was only temporary........... but very welcome while it lasted.

Now I'm not quite sure how this happened, but in a moment of temporary insanity, I found myself agreeing to try to run 2012 km in 2012, inveigled into it by the evil Jenny C. (No, we love her really, madwoman that she is!) Moreover, there are OTHER victims of this insanity, (some of them on this very site) - in fact, not a few of them are suffering an even more advanced form of it, as they have agreed to try running 2012 MILES!!! in 2012. I could not contemplate such a massive challenge (as I commented wryly, I don't know which would crumble first: my resolution or my knees............), but have been persuaded into the lesser challenge. Not sure I've ever covered such a massive annual mileage (kilometrage?) in my entire running life - all 17 years of it now, or nearly. Luckily walking counts too (though the purists would probably turn up their nose at such wimpishness), so maybe, just maybe............ I might survive! We shall see.

Got off to a pretty good start (I thought) on New Year's Day, walking home at half past two in the morning. Walking fast - well, as fast as is possible after several sausage rolls, a mountain of potato salad, and several glasses of champagne - Garmin on wrist, and with every intention of this 2.02 km being my challenge opener. However, I thought better of it the next morning (or later the same morning, rather) and discarded this silly idea in favour of something a bit more convincing. (But if at 5 to midnight next 31st December I find myself 2 km short, I will recall it!) Alas, I made the mistake of telling J. about the challenge, and suddenly he started organizing it like a military campaign, planning what I should do when, and printing charts for me to record my efforts. (This will never work - I'm too much of a fan of spontaneity.............) Finally I prised him away from planning and into some actual running. A lovely day for it, quite mild, and halfway sunny. We got the bus to Würzenbach, and ran along the lower side of the Meggerwald, then heading up towards the little lake at Wagenmoos as usual, but turning off before we got there to follow a path signposted 'Meggen'. We'd explored the beginning of this path before, and thought it looked promising - in fact, it was one of those 'to do' things on my wish list, so I was able to tick that off too. A very nice path, directly towards a wonderful panoramic view of the mountains. (Alas, no camera.) It came out at Tschädigen, and then we were on part of the route we followed from Weggis on one of my pre-marathon long runs - the one where J. accompanied me on the bike - along the other side of the Meggerwald. At the end of the woods, we decided to go and look for the Salzfass (a ruined tower) again. For some reason, this is always rather hard to find. We did find it eventually........... but at this point things started going a bit wrong. Trying to get down to the lakeside road, we found the tunnel under the railway line - the only way to get across without a long diversion - barricaded off. I thought we should go back and find another way; J. decided we should ignore the barrier and go on. And so it was that we found ourselves traipsing around a very muddy building site with no way out. And still he wouldn't go back - oh no, we would just climb over the fence.........! (Déjà-vu?!) He found a place at one corner where the fence abutted onto a steep bank covered with brambles, and clambered round. I tried to follow, and got totally ensnared. I had thorns sticking into every part of me, and couldn't move. I asked him (really quite nicely, I thought) for help; he just stood there, mocking my predicament. Finally, painfully, I managed to free myself............ and rewarded his unhelpfulness with an almighty wallop. I was seriously p****d off with him! In fact, once we got onto the path by the lake, I ran off and left him for a while! (He stopped at a drinking fountain, and I didn't wait - I ran faster, in fact, to make it harder for him to catch up again, which he finally did somewhere along Schweizerhofquai. (Dear god, we're like Punch and Judy sometimes!) He decided to run all the way home, but at Schwanenplatz I decided I'd had enough and caught the bus back. Anyway, that was my first day's tally: 15.18 km, in 1:59:02. And as if that wasn't enough exercise for one day............... there were fireworks over the lake that evening which I planned to go to Sternegg to watch, having discovered a good vantage point there. I would have been quite happy to walk, but J. made me go on my bike, which he thinks I scandalously under-use (and I admit he does actually have a point) - he brought it to the front garden and threatened to leave it there unlocked if I didn't take it. So bike it I did. I am a very nervous cyclist (and darkness makes it worse), but made it there and back - about 3.5 km - with no problems.

Monday 2 January: the first soaking of the new year. Set off in drizzle, which became full-blown stair rods within 5 minutes. Hirtenhof, Waldrand, goats (where we found the wind and rain blasting straight at us from Pilatus, necessitating a quick about-turn and change of plan); along the top path of the Vita Parcours, where it was a bit more sheltered; 2 rounds of the Finnebahn, stopping off at the Reck for 3 pull-ups each time (I was only planning on one round, but J. set off on a 2nd, and being a good, obedient wifey (?!!), I followed); then up to the middle of the woods, and home down the zigzags. The wind was whistling past my ears, blowing rain into my left ear, and stinging my eyes. By now I was literally soaked to the skin - aagh, that chilly feeling when it starts seeping right through!.......... until you are so wet, it ceases to matter. We were not the only 'mad fools' (my brother's description of runners) out: encountered 3 other runners, a mountain biker, and 2 walkers wrestling with recalcitrant umbrellas. We all gave each other beaming smiles, as though acknowledging other members of an exclusive little club. Added on an extra little bit round the road at the end to make it up the distance, and squelched into the house with 5.33 km and 42:39 on the clock. Surprisingly, my feet were the only dry(ish) part of me, thanks to trail shoes and the wonders of gore-tex. (St Berchtold's Day, it was - is he the patron saint of rain?!) So that was another 5 km, and the 2012 was now down to 1992.

The fashionable 'drowned rat' look!

Reduced it still further (to 1978) with a 14 km walk the next day. (I wasn't actually planning on it being quite this long, but there was one of the inevitable 'short cuts' (aaaagh!) that turned out to be anything but........... well, you know the scenario by now!) We started from St Anna, and the first 10 km or so were really very enjoyable - lovely sunny day, mountain panorama (we were following part of a long-distance trail: Route 3, the 'Bergpanoramaweg), over Utenberg and Dietschiberg to Adligenswil; lunch stop at the Gasthof Rössli, then onwards to just before Udligenswil, crossing the main road, and along the edge of the Meggerwald, retracing a bit of our New Year's Day route. Just as I had been lulled into a false sense of security, marching comfortably along, assuming we were heading the usual way back to Würzenbach, J. announced that in fact we were NOT going back that way, we were going to try something new. On our run, we had noticed what looked like a bridge crossing one of the valleys - a seemingly more direct way back. We were going to check it out. Long story short: it was NOT a bridge. Not for people, anyway - just for water pipes. By the time we discovered this, we were at the far end of a boggy field, looking in vain for a footpath to the supposed bridge. There wasn't one. Now we knew why. So once again, the way out involved climbing over a fence (a luckily disconnected electric one) and cutting across someone's vegetable patch. A man in a neighbouring garden started shouting at us. Couldn't understand what he was saying, but I don't think it was an invitation to tea! We found our way up to a road, but our problems didn't end there. After navigating our way through a residential settlement, we came up against a dead end again: another steep valley with only a water pipe pseudo-bridge across it, and definitely no way across. We had to go back and find another way. It was like a maze, the solution known only to the residents................. but finally we emerged onto the main road at the top of the hillside. Ah, a bus stop.............. and yes, we had just missed one by about a minute. So we carried on walking for another rather unexciting 2 km or so down the main road until we could get a bus home. 14.03 km, and 2:39:13.

I designated the next day a rest day. And so, as it turned out, was the next: too many things to fit into too few hours; plus the arrival of storm Andrea, and some truly evil weather. Back on the case tomorrow, though, all things permitting.