I figured that since we were just sitting here in ugly old Zermatt doing nothing I would give a little update. The pictures will convey how awful it is here and how we are suffering through every minute.
Since we have been here we have run each day in order to better adapt to the new time zone and keep our legs ready to race on Saturday. Our runs so far are supposed to have been easy, but when all trails go straight up, easy becomes a relative term. Today we did discover the easiest trail in Zermatt! If you go down to the river and stay next to it you can have what is basically a flat run. The problem we have then is getting back to the place we are staying. The studio apartment is about 100 yards straight up a hill that averages between 10-15% grade. I may do a short video later of the hill and our apartment with short being the operative word.
As some of you may know, Zermatt is car free so everyone (locals anyway) walks or rides their bike everywhere they go. There is a local electric bus system that will take you up and down the street next to the river if you are not good at walking or are just lazy. Given the terrain, it’s easy to understand why most of the local’s bikes have electric motors on them. These are not the hidden electric motors that some pro cyclists have lately been accused of using, but are usually large obvious motors that aid a great deal in going up hill. A guy on his way to work yesterday scared me while we were on our run because he silently came flying past me going up a hill. Usually you can hear bikers going up hill because they are working hard but this guy was barely breathing. No worry about bikers on tomorrow’s run however!
Some of you may be wondering which race is tomorrow and I can tell you that it’s by far the “easier” of our two races. It’s only 13 miles with somewhere over 4,000 feet of gain. If I can finish in 4 hours it will be a good day for me, but I will not be pushing the pace by any means so we will see what happens.
Hopefully the photos below will convey our suffering accurately.
