Undertrained, Overcommitted

If you're superhumanly attentive or monumentally bored, you may notice I sometimes attach a label or 'Category' to the bottom of blog entries. Honestly I haven't the foggiest idea why readers might filter this blog by category but nonetheless, it's easily facilitated by blogging technology. There's one category in particular you haven't seen in a loooong time. You've seen lots of 'Excursions'. You may remember seeing 'Housing' entries before and after we moved. Yet although we consider it a major component of our lives, 'Exercise' hasn't made a blog appearance since way back in Sep/Oct for my/Steph's last big triathlon/marathon, respectively.

Not belonging to a health club here (insufficient value for the Franc), we mostly kept in a shadow of shape by running the nearby farm fields in Kloten in Nov/Dec and running (weather allowing) or swimming in Zürich during Jan-Mar. Maintaining our customary regimen was nearly impossible, since due to initial stress and/or new germs or climate or something, I've been sick literally once every month since moving to Switzerland in November, after not contracting so much as a cold for over a year in Chicago; Steph hasn't fared much better. And this is without our much more frequent Chicago (often late) nightlife activities; we're teetotalers in comparison today.

Naturally, our exercise schedules themselves become less flabby once a goal is set and our bodies follow suit; therefore we had targeted the Winterthur (next big city over from Zürich) half-marathon in mid-May--13.1 miles. We enjoy the half-marathon distance for requiring some (but not too much) organized training, yet ending well before the marathon's masochisitic brutality begins in earnest.

Nonetheless, our demanding European vacation travel schedule (sympathy probably not forthcoming) combined with schizo mountain weather this spring rattled our training schedule. You're perhaps familiar with the endurance-training concept of tapering, that is, pushing yourself to the desired performance level and then relaxing or "tapering" in the week or two approaching the event? Well when Sunday, May 18 rolled around, I considered us extremely "well-tapered". That morning we rode the train (of course) from overcast Zürich to Winterthur, about 25 minutes, then found the registration area within the city, about a 15 minute walk, then obtained our race numbers and stored our extra gear (despite all-German and patently unclear signage), then lined up with another 1,600 fitness freaks at the starting line (1,600 is quaint compared to Chicago athletic events, which always unfortunately attempt the "World's Largest (fill-in-the-blank)" because of Second City syndrome).

Good news was miraculously avoiding rain despite every forecast all week predicting the opposite. Bad news was that every single other competitor had apparently not been gallavanting around Europe all spring and were already accustomed to Swiss germs and were teetotallers and have trained on mountains all their lives. That is, at least not trained on the world's flattest largest glaciated lake bottom for the past 13 years. Still not fully accustomed to Swiss topography, we'd term the race's first half as "rolling"; the entire second half was inclined with the only variation being a gradual burn upwards vs. occasional steep killer hills. Admittedly we never tried for a personal best and would have posted a lackluster result on flat terrain, but could only chuckle finishing in the bottom 10% instead of our Chicago-usual top third. The highlight was undoubtedly the charming Swiss spectators, scattered thinly but conspicuously along the entire course, spiritedly cheering even the dregs like us in their inimitable trilingual fashion, "Hopp, hopp, hopp!" (Swiss-German), "Allez! Allez!" (French), and "Bravo!" (Italian).

Now here is where I maintain that Steph and I, despite all our adjustments and obstacles the past seven months, must finally be clawing back to a semblance of our true social form. In addition to the race, we had several weeks back also planned to entertain our original Zürich relocation guide, the peerless Mr. Mssrli, for dinner that evening. In our Chicago heyday, a random weekend might include an endurance event, dinner party for eight, Chicago bar-hopping until 2am, an impromptu wine and cheese pairing for friends Sunday afternoon, and then baking pastry from scratch Sunday evening for everyone in the office Monday morning. Well maybe not entirely, but our deliberate overcommitment to Mr. Mssrli must mean we're feeling slightly closer to normal.

As further evidence, we insisted on grilling outside as originally planned (our imported U.S.-Weber grill was brand new and, yes, we bought the largest American-sized one available from a Swiss retailer and, no, I won't tell you how overpriced no matter how much you ask) under the new big patio umbrella despite the downpour that evening. And might I add, although we're usually befittingly humble, we nailed all three courses with possibly as good a meal as the best we've enjoyed in any Zürich restaurant to date. Our culturally-comparative conversations with Swiss/British Mr. Mssrli were as entertaining as always and before leaving at 11:30pm (one positive sign) that Sunday night he suggested (unaided) that we meet out for dinner again in the near future (another positive sign).

Thus completely exhausted and probably on the verge of our seventh sickness, we toppled into bed perhaps a touch more satisfied that someday soon our general overall performance in Europe--athletically, socially, psychologically, (linguistically?)--will improve a hair past that bottom 10%.