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Join de urbirun newsletterRun all across a country?…How did I get here?
The “why”, I have my little idea, and the “how”, was gradually grafted onto it…
(NB : *for more about the projet, the story/gallery for each stage, click here / *for more about what’s in the backpack I’ll be carrying, click here)
The why first?
Well, I think that the semi-lockdown was part of it, preventing me from traveling, forcing me to run in circles around my house, to run up, to run a little more in the mountains, to lengthen my runs… Well, I realized that I could go, and I went everywhere by running… But as Forrest Gump said, “I was always running to go everywhere, but I never thought it would take me anywhere”… And yet.
By dint of doing it, flying over the maps and seeing the entire network of footpaths that criss-cross Switzerland (65'000km), the desire was born to get on these paths as if on a train, and to go to the end of the line.
The how, that’s easy.
I love maps, so I spent hours on the Suisse Mobile website (I recommend the 35/year subscription, better investment to make if you like running, hiking, cycling in Switzerland). I looked for the farthest point from my home, about, then I drew a kind of ideal itinerary back hom, to go from one lake to another… Drawing lines on the map, it’s already for me the beginning of the journey, and it’s always been the case: whatever my destination is, for me the journey is more the way than the arrival…
The arrival? well, it will be at the edge of “my” lake which empties further into the sea, at the end of “my” canton, 15km from home, between lake and mountain… what better setting?
Then I had to cut this ideal itinerary into “runnable” stages with my physical level, my 50 years, my lack of experience on daily repetition, and portage…
The idea was to go on a trip and not to do a speed performance. So I set stages of about 25–35 km, and I realized that Switzerland even on the edge of the “Plateau” was not as flat as I could have hoped, since I found myself with an average difference in altitude of 1'100 meters per day.
The route being set, it remained to find to sleep on the way. And as my experience and my passion for camping have been strongly affected by my few months in the army (30 years already…), I am in the spirit of sleeping in a bed. So I had to make sure that in each village there was a gite, an inn or a hotel. This implied some adaptations on the initial itinerary, but I remain quite close.
And so I’m going to run globally on the national route VIA4 at the beginning, then VIA3.
And now, there is nothing left to do but… running…