Auswanderer Quatsch

Nürnberg being a “relatively small” city, I can start running directly from home ; and in a matter of few steps (ok big ones, like 3-4km) I’m in the countryside. But the problem is that it’s mostly flat. Real flat I should say. It’s actually so flat that I had to search for a spot to do some hill repeats and the only one I found is the Imperial Castle’s hill, right in the middle of the old city…

Today, with -10°C outside and a gorgeous blue-sky day and nothing to do, I decided to take the car and drive for a while and search for some more challenging terrain to play on. 35 min later, I was on my 10 toes, deep in the snow, already smiling.

The place I went to is actually the same as in this post. A small lake tuck between three small hills, 200m altitude difference. Perfect place to go rollercoasting.

I started by following a small road going slowly up on the same hill I went to with MmeV. After a while, I caught up a trail going in the trees but it soon started going down again so I decided to go vertical and hiked the hill straight, zooming by fox and / or rabbit holes, only to reach the top panting, feeling my heart in my ears. When I finally reached the top I took a small break to get the portrait above (couldn’t have been so hard to leave me smiling like that now could it?) and enjoy the view. There I followed a path for a while, the exact same we took with MmeV. last time but decided to cut short and avoid the trouble we had already back then when there was no snow of finding the trail in the woods.

So I took a sharp 270° turn and started heading down on the other side of the hill, letting gravity do its work and only try to control the descent as little as I could ; arms spread out, almost shouting as I ran. When you see the patch of ice on the left picture below, or the small ravine on the right you can imagine how fun it was (I really mean it) – I was smiling the whole way down.

When I reached the town, I spotted this sort of stony stuff reaching out of the trees (picture left) on the opposite hill ; and naturally set it as my next target before charging the hill straight again.

This time I kind of followed a trail, or at least something that looked like it. It was steep and forced me into hiking it half of the time, but it was definitely gorgeous.

After some point, the trail and its markers were clearly going right but I knew I had to go left. So I followed somebody’s footsteps going in the right direction. And I finally reached the right place…

… and its very nice view. Just to locate things a little, on the picture below right, my car would be something like 1.5 km further behind the hill, following the road going right. The hill I charged first was the one you can see on those two pictures. On the left picture you can see the way down I followed earlier (the patch of trees that seem to get inside the village a little) and the village I crossed.

From there on, it was mostly rolling down, enjoying the last 6km, trying to find my rhythm after power-hiking that hill and just enjoying the rest of the trip. With the sun setting, shadows getting longer, snow slowly becoming yellow, it was just a very nice portion of the run.

I reached my car after an 1:30 hour, ~12km and 250 m altitude up & down (you can see the map, profile and stuff on Runkeeper). I guess that if Nürnberg and Erlangen’s surroundings are going to be good enough for my evening runs, next weekend, if the weather is ok, I’ll drive somewhere to get my feet on the trails again…

I recently resigned from my position at Siemens and yesterday way my last day on the job. In order for my former colleagues to keep in touch with me, I updated my about.me page to sum up my profiles and contact information.

It sure feels weird to leave all those colleagues and friends behind. But I’m really looking forward to my new job as I’ll be joining a small – human size – company beginning of February, coming back to the core of my business, creating software solutions full time myself.

To all my former RO colleagues still working on our Radiotherapy solutions, I wish good luck and a strong back wind for the time being. The world is damn small, we’ll sure see each other again!

The color leaves can take is simply magical. This weekend, we went for a walk/hike in the Frankische Schweiz (actually it might be already the Oberpfalz… but that does not really matter) to admire the splendid colors of the countryside in this season. As you can see we were not successful at all :]

About 40 min driving from home, we finally parked in the middle of nowhere, in search for the beginning of the trail. After successfully not finding it, we decided to head straight into the tree line and head for another section of the trail that should be higher up and easier to find. After crossing some fields and electrified fences, we finally reached the woods where the early sun peaking through the trees  made a plain magical atmosphere…

The leaves cracking under our shoes, the silence of winter, no car passing by, no other hiker (there is a lake nearby so all the people tend to gather there and avoid the surrounding hills). Just plain nature. What a blast.

The hike was maybe 2 hour long ; barely more ; but going up and down, over gravel roads and pathways, wood trails and fields… a variety of landscapes bathed in red tones.

This weekend marked also the first signs of frost and this morning we woke up to a nice and cozy -5°C. During the hike, all the shadowy places still hidden from the sun were still frosty and the zones warming up were displaying a very light fog that created some sort of surrealistic ambiance.

The last part of the hike, we decided to head directly into the woods and avoid a part of the trail that would be following a road. In this last wonderful part of the hike, we crossed ways with 5 deers… probably also enjoying a Sunday hike.

Some seasonal details…

I’m looking forward to next weekend :]

When I created my profile on runkeeper and ran my first steps with my iPhone strapped on my arm (in April 2010), my profile goal said “I want to run a half marathon again”. 110 (recorded) running sessions in 18 months later (one third of which in the last 2.5 months) I finally did it. I successfully ran the  23.5km back from work last Friday afternoon!

Now my RunKeeper profile says “I want to ramp up to a marathon… and beyond”. We’ll see how that turns out :]

I just learned that the upcoming electric car lineup of Audi will be called “E-Tron”. For the non-french speakers, “étron” (pronounced exactly the way germans say “e-tron”) means “crap” in french… I wish a lot of fun to the French-Audi-marketing teams :]