Plaine Joux plateau

There's a guy here at the holiday club in charge of the adult's activities called Bertrand. He runs regularly and proposed to all of the holiday-makers to go training together. Laurence and I committed to going this morning with him along with a few others. The only problem was that it was a 7:15 am start. It's bad enough getting up early in the morning to go for a run when I'm working, but to get up at this time on holiday is nightmarish.

We stood waiting for the others at the allotted time and Laurence was devastated when she found out that the weaker runners had all decided to have a lie-in and that we'd be accompanied by Alain and Bertrand only. A quick exchange of marathon times and general level of fitness only further deepened Laurence's sense of gloom and foreboding. I promised that I would run with her.

We set off on the plateau above Onnion and Laurence's fears were quickly confirmed. Not only did Bertrand like running, he liked trail running and as soon as he could, he left the road and headed off across the fields. We all followed. After running up a little slope in muddy conditions, Bertrand found an even steeper, muddier slope with large ruts, cowpats and electric fences. Bertrand was in his element. Laurence was sulking and even walked up some slopes, visibly disappointed with the lack of tarmac.

After 3 kilometres of mud and rain, the route flattened slightly. Oh yes, I forgot to mention the rain. Despite the improvement promised in yesterday's weather forecast, it began to rain as soon as we started to run. It began lightly and then settled into a steady, heavy drizzle. The path flattened and we headed around the hill to a farm before finding a stretch of tarmac and a long descent down the road back to the plateau. Laurence's face brightened and she ran alongside Alain, chatting happily. She carried on chatting despite the acceleration to 4:27 per km and then 4:30 per km for the next 2 kilometres. Unfortunately the downhill section ended here and we ran back up a steep hill where I pushed the pace just to see if Bertrand could follow. He was just behind me as we were still on the road, as soon as we left the tarmac, he would leave me up the hills easily.

We followed a little path and ran back to the road to finish. A little acceleration at the end to get back to the car and we ended our first accompanied run. The plan is to run the same route at the end of the week starting from the holiday centre. This will add another 10 kilometres with an extra 300 metres of uphill. Hopefully, it will be drier next time.

9 km all up in 53:00 so not fast but the conditions and the route were far from ideal.

Plaine Joux in the sunshine with a clear blue sky. Didn't even see the top of La Pointe today as it was covered in cloud.