BIKING 101: GRAND SACONNEX - LAUSANNE

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After a few weeks of hitting the 50 km mark on the Nyon route, I decided last night today I will try to go for Lausanne, which is about 59 km from Geneva.

GRAND SACONNEX - NYON

I started cycling at 6.40 am. My intention was to beat the crowd, since usually, from 8.00 am onwards there will be a lot of cyclist on the road. The weather was nice, no rain and at 6.40 am the sun has already came out, shining. The good thing about going out this early was that, theres virtually no traffic at all on the road. It was quite and peaceful.

I am quite use to this route since I cycled every week to Nyon and back. Met with a couple of riders who obviously started much more earlier than me.

After 23 km, and 55 minutes later, I arrived in Nyon. Decided to stop in a park by its waterfront for a break.

NYON - GLAND

Put on my Ipod Nano, and with Iron Maiden songs playing in my head, I headed out towards Gland, 4.8 km away. Traffic was still light. Just one hill to conquer along the way.

GLAND - ROLLE

This 6.8 km stretch was quite straight with a lot of vineyards on both side of the road. Met a lot of other cyclist which seems to appear out of nowhere. A lot of small hills and elevation.

ROLLE - MORGES

This section of the route is the most challenging, since this 15.1 km route were dotted with hills after hills, elevations after elevations to take on. I felt tired and at times could feel my legs and my hands went numb. I could feel the increasing pain at the back of my right knee. My neck and back stiffened with every round of cycling. My mouth was dry and I was struggling to beat those hills. There were a lot of instances I considered to stop to take a break, but shaking off the temptation, I forced myself to continue. I too, reminded myself that if the fat, out of shape and never exercise in his whole life Eddie Izzard (Britain's stand up comic and actor) can run a full marathon everyday in 52 days, there is no reason why I cannot do this.

The last hill to conquer in this section was near Aubonne, and I breathed a sigh of relief since the town of Morges lies just a few kilometres after that.

I arrived in Morges in high spirit and felt elated.

Lausanne was next.

MORGES - LAUSANNE

The final leg of this route is about 9.7 km.

At first I planned to stop for my second break in Morges, but since Lausanne was just abut 10 km away, I decided to push through. I was taken aback when I found out the road to Lausanne had long stretch of elevation, three hills in sucession. To translate, I had to climb uphill 7 kilometres non stop. There was no other choice, of course, so I gathered all my energy, (baca Bismillah sikit) put my head up, changed the gear to the lowest possible and cycled slowly up the hills. Very slowly.

At this juncture, 5 other cyclists overtook me. They really seems like almost flying. I took a glance at their legs and noticed that it looks like batang kayu balak, compared to my own. I think I could see the blood vessels popping out out everywhere on their well tuned leg muscles. I comforted myself by thinking that they have been doing this for years and after all, I had already clocked over 50 kilometres from Geneva and they just started. Plus maybe they even lived nearby as well.

I managed to pull through and arrived in Lausanne in one piece, happy but tired. Met with a friend who drove all the way from Geneva to pick me up.

And no, I did not cycle back. Like I said in my previous post, my goal was to cycle to Lausanne . I did not say anything about cycling back to Geneva.

Hehe.

Maybe next time though.

THE STATISTICS

Total Distance : 59.11 km
Climb : 105 km
Calories burned : 21, 361
Air sebotol
2 Power Bar
2 batang Dunhill
Ipod Nano and Iron Maiden songs.
Age : 41 years old
November 2008 body weight: 104 kg
Current weight: 83 kg

And.... oh, if I can do it, there is no reason you can't.