{"id":1329,"date":"2012-07-11T09:11:19","date_gmt":"2012-07-11T08:11:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.gydlepublishing.com\/blog\/?p=1329"},"modified":"2012-07-22T08:14:55","modified_gmt":"2012-07-22T07:14:55","slug":"race-report-tour-du-lac-du-joux","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.gydlepublishing.com\/blog\/2012\/07\/race-report-tour-du-lac-du-joux\/","title":{"rendered":"Race Report: tour du lac du Joux"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.gydlepublishing.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/07\/lac_du_joux.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" class=\"alignleft size-medium wp-image-1333\" style=\"margin-right: 20px; margin-bottom: 20px;\" title=\"lac_du_joux\" src=\"http:\/\/www.gydlepublishing.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/07\/lac_du_joux-211x300.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"211\" height=\"300\" srcset=\"http:\/\/www.gydlepublishing.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/07\/lac_du_joux-211x300.jpg 211w, http:\/\/www.gydlepublishing.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/07\/lac_du_joux.jpg 226w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 211px) 100vw, 211px\" \/><\/a>Sorry about the AWOL. Life has been kind of hectic lately. I&#8217;ll to do a couple more race reports, and then I&#8217;m planning to take some time off. I need a break!<\/p>\n<p>Saturday after<a title=\"Race report: Aletsch half-marathon\" href=\"http:\/\/www.gydlepublishing.com\/blog\/2012\/06\/race-report-aletsch-half-marathon\/\" target=\"_blank\"> our epic Bettmeralp adventure<\/a>, Marc and I climb in the car and head up to the lac du Joux, in the Jura mountains. It&#8217;s the hottest day of the summer (so far), with 33\u02da temperatures down in Lausanne. The <a href=\"http:\/\/www.footingvalleedejoux.ch\/tourlac.html\" target=\"_blank\">24-km race around the lake<\/a> starts at 2:15 pm, so we&#8217;ll be running smack in the highest heat of the day. But over in the US, the entire country is sweltering in 90+ temperatures, so I refuse to feel sorry for myself. In comparison, this is nothing.<!--more--><\/p>\n<p>My speedy friend Monica is also running this race, and my goal is to see if I can keep her in sight. The first part of the race is hilly, but the second part is flat as a pancake. I lose sight of Monica just before the halfway point, after she zips past me on a steep, rocky descent. <em>Never mind<\/em>, I tell myself. <em>Just run your race<\/em>. I&#8217;m feeling slightly panicked because I&#8217;m really tired and I still have 12 km to go and it&#8217;s really hot.<\/p>\n<p>Led Zeppelin saves me. I grab at a snippet of a song we were playing in the car on the way to the race, and set it on &#8220;infinite loop&#8221; in my head. It&#8217;s an instrumental piece, named after <a title=\"Bron-Yr-Aur\" href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Bron-Yr-Aur\">Bron-Yr-Aur<\/a>, a house in Gwynedd, Wales, where the members of Led Zeppelin retreated in 1970 after having completed a grueling concert tour of the United States. It has the right tempo for my pace, and I find it very relaxing and calming. The last thing I need with 12km to go is something that pumps me up too much. Here&#8217;s a music video shot at the house in Wales (it&#8217;s pretty short):<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/YHR7ObvgW_o\" frameborder=\"0\" width=\"420\" height=\"315\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>With those guitar chords chiming through my body, I calmly but relentlessly start passing people. People who look exhausted, hot, tired, beat. Oddly enough, I start feeling better. I am completely in &#8220;the zone.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>With 2 km to go, I see Monica up ahead of me! Wow! I start running a bit faster, but not too much. I don&#8217;t want to bonk now. Over the last kilometer, I am definitely ready for this race to end. Marc and some other guy (who turns out to be Monica&#8217;s husband, who I know well but didn&#8217;t recognize) are cheering madly for me at the end, I make a last strong acceleration to the finish, and then go collapse under a tree. What an effort!<\/p>\n<p>I did an experiment with the 20km de Lausanne using an iPod, and I felt then that it helped. But after this race I almost think that mental music is better. It&#8217;s like a mantra, you just repeat the same thing over and over in your brain, and kind of slip into a zone. With the iPod, you&#8217;re at the mercy of whatever song comes up next. If it doesn&#8217;t match where you are mentally, it doesn&#8217;t help and can actually make you feel worse.<\/p>\n<p>For you runners out there, what do you do to find that zone &#8211; to stay focused, strong, yet calm during a race?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Sorry about the AWOL. Life has been kind of hectic lately. I&#8217;ll to do a couple more race reports, and then I&#8217;m planning to take some time off. I need a break! Saturday after our epic Bettmeralp adventure, Marc and &hellip; <a href=\"http:\/\/www.gydlepublishing.com\/blog\/2012\/07\/race-report-tour-du-lac-du-joux\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true},"categories":[8,5],"tags":[36,184,276,183],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1R58n-lr","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.gydlepublishing.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1329"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.gydlepublishing.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.gydlepublishing.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gydlepublishing.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gydlepublishing.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1329"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"http:\/\/www.gydlepublishing.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1329\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1340,"href":"http:\/\/www.gydlepublishing.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1329\/revisions\/1340"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.gydlepublishing.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1329"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gydlepublishing.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1329"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gydlepublishing.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1329"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}