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Join de urbirun newsletterI’ve always loved maps, drawing lines on them.
For me, the journey is already starting on the map …
I have drawn lines representing the distance I ran per year in recent years (see my virtual 2017, 2018, 2019 or 2020 routes), for the pleasure of seeing how far I could have gone..
Forrest Gump said “I was always running to get everywhere, but I didn’t think it was going to get me anywhere”…
Unlike him, I think that running has taken me a long way, and has changed a lot of things in my life… sure…
But have I gone anywhere?
So suddenly, I told myself : “why not?” …
Why not run to somewhere, precisely…
And that’s how the idea sprouted, while my thoughts where flying over the map of hiking trails that cover Switzerland …
Why not run all across the country?…
Wouldn’t that make a nice line on the map?… But what line?
After having flown over the map again and again thanks to Suissemobile (I totally recommend this app) and Google Maps, I picked the Via Panorama Alpin (Via 3 (national hiking trail 3), mainly, and a few of the 4)… From Lake Constance (northeast) to Lake Geneva (south-west), with some slight changes at the end of the route, to get “home” …
Running from one lake to another…
An about 370km route, which I hope to run in 12 stages, with an average of 31km run and 1100m elevation per day, in semi-autonomy (restaurants, inns, airbnb, shelters)…
Running in a travel mode and mood, not in race mode, but simply to go every day from A to B, then C, then… without seeking any other “performance” than the pleasure of having traced the route by my own means, step by step, my bag on the back, step by step,… free… and the pleasure to discover the country “from human height”, at the speed (or rather slowness) of a man, along its paths and rivers, throughout villages and hamlets, forests, hills…
But before planning the route of every different stages more precisely, I realize that I still have to answer a lot of questions… regardless of my physical capacities for such an adventure…
Among these questions the main ones are:
- “Philosophy” of the project: what “color” to give it, what is its meaning… what do I want to experience? … Should we also give it one… is it not sufficient for it- even?
- support : all alone on my own or with running buddy or some “assistance” at stages (comfort and companionship), occasional or permanent?
- sharing: should I force myself to keep a daily blog to tell this story? should I film this adventure or not (with the constraints that filming alone comply, to have a rendering of a quality at least viewable by my mother, am not Spielberg either …), and considering the mental energy that it mobilizes, and the time it takes …
A lot of “technical” aspects are already clear in my head, but I think I really need to answer these few questions …
And above all, I have to figure out how to train, prepare myself, for the daily repetition of long runs, the portage (approx. 5.5–6kg on my back), the repeated elevation up and down, the weather hazards, and the weariness and mental (especially) and physical (surely) harschness of such a trip…
I’m no more of a youngster, neither are my 50yo joints… and running 30km every day … it makes you think…
How to train? How to recover every day? How to avoid injuries, before and during? How to cope mentally in the face of moral fatigue and physical fatigue?
Many questions, few answers, but a strong desire… A dream? … A project?… I think I had to create one for myself … Could it be this one?… Is it?
Not yet. But talking about it binds me. A little…