One of our earlybird runners shares her experience of the Montreux Wake Up Run, through which Surval girls raised CHF80 towards charity...
Today was an early start to our day: we were up by 5:00 a.m. and out of the school by 5:30 a.m., on our way into Montreux for the sponsored Wake Up Run. Once we had arrived at the stadium, most of us were shivering as we had underestimated the cold weather of Switzerland, especially at 6 a.m. We started discussing how many kilometres we each wanted to run, only to find out we were ALL running 6km! This caught us off-guard but we still kept up the positive attitude. We met our leaders, who then took us to do a warm up lap on the tracks before beginning our run. We then headed out, uphill.
However, this wasn’t walking or hiking uphill…this is was running uphill with stairs and steep hills. I was soon out of breath and ready to give up. Just before I gave up though, I remembered the reason I had signed up in the first place; just like the rest of the girls, I had signed up to support Téléthon and, particularly, for ASRIMM, a Swiss foundation which takes action in helping children and families who have been affected by rare genetic diseases. This is the thought that helped me, and the girls, push through the challenges of the run.
After the steep beginning had passed, the run actually became much easier and enjoyable, especially as we ran side by side through the vineyards of La Tour de Peilz, which overlook the lake and the mountain peaks across from us. As we were running, we were lucky enough to have a beautiful sunrise shining over us giving us warmth. I would love to say we ran the whole way, but the truth is we did stop to walk a couple times, everybody going at their own pace. We finally finished the run by just about 7:00 a.m., by which time we were ready to eat the great breakfast provided by the Commune of Montreux.
I am very proud of accomplishing the Wake Up Run, as I’m sure the rest of the girls are too, because it was not an easy task to do at 6:00 in the morning whilst still feeling half-asleep (at least in my case), but it was definitely worth it – before the run we each paid the sponsor fee of CHF10, with CHF5 going to the event itself and CHF5 getting donated to Téléthon. We ended up raising CHF80 for such a good cause!
On behalf of Surval, I would like to say thank you to Téléthon and Leena for a great experience, and thank you to the Commune of Montreux for organising such a lovely event – the team organising the event was also kind enough to hand out some of their sports merchandise for keen runners like me!
