Zurich - Mindful Triathlon

Wanderlust Mindful Triathlon in Zurich (photo (c) The Yoga Affair)

An event I booked a while ago was the Zurich Mindful Triathlon (5km walk/run, 90 minutes of yoga, 30 mins of meditation). I think this might be the first year it’s run, but I’m not too sure.

As usual when I book things, I spent the day before the event kind of regretting it – this time, I was sulking about the fact that I had to be there at 8.45am on a Sunday and I’d really prefer to lie in. I really do need to book things for myself because given the option on any day, laziness always wins.

The day started off rather stressfully – not really the aim of “mindfulness”! Firstly, we were supposed to be wearing company t-shirts to the event (work had paid for our tickets), but I’d left it until last thing on Friday to collect mine, and the person who had them had already gone home. I decided I could wear the company t-shirt that we had for a charity day a while back – it was bright orange instead of bright green, so I would be visibly very different, but at least I would have tried to be “corporate”.

And then I realized that actually I didn’t have any gym stuff at all. I’d left it all in Egypt. I’d meant to bring it across to Zurich since I never do the gym in Egypt, but I’d completely forgotten (I think I got too sidetracked into packing the bucket!). I could do the 5km walk OK in my skirt and t-shirt, but not the yoga. In the end I decided to use my pyjama bottoms. Very hippy-like!

And finally, the bus pulled away just as I got to the bus stop. This meant – horror of horrors – that I had to use my phone to inform my friends that I was going to be a bit late. It was all a bit of a shambles.

As it turned out, the others were also late and I wasn’t even the last one of us to arrive. I was surprised to see so many people on my train also heading to the triathlon but at least this made finding the venue easy, even if I was feeling a bit intimidated by their sporty appearance and possession of yoga mats.

It’s amazing how people can create events like this and people actually turn up. If I’d been organizing it, I’d have been petrified that it would fall flat on its face. It takes some guts. But I think there were probably about 1000 people there – apparently all tickets had been sold out.

Most people ran the 5km, but there were also a fair number walking. I don’t really do running but might have tried if I had the correct gear with me, but since I didn’t… anyway, I ran through the finishing line which is what counts but unfortunately nobody took a photograph of that. The run/walk was through a wooded area just by Sihl City and along the river, so it was also good to see a bit of Zurich that I hadn’t seen before.

Then there was time to look round the stands and there were a few other side activities. I tried doing the hula-hoop but I just couldn’t get it to stay round my waist. I’m sure I could do it as a child, so I don’t know how I’ve lost that skill.

The yoga, performed outside on a large field with a stage in front, was preceded by a quick warm-up of “breakletics” which is based on break dancing as a form of exercise.

I hadn’t done yoga for maybe decades now and I was a bit shocked at how demanding it was and how incapable I was of doing it. The weather teased us. It started to drizzle just as the yoga started and then it stopped, almost as if it had heard the collective “no!” that I’m sure all of us were inwardly whispering. At another point, it also started to rain, but again, it didn’t last long. I guess it was one way of getting in tune with nature!

You could choose which bits of the yoga you wanted to do and when you didn’t want to push your body any further. They also had people on the sidelines to correct you if you were doing things wrong. Despite having sat out at various points, I still ached the next few days, so it must have done something.

The meditation was a bit curtailed as we’d overran a bit, but all in all it was an enjoyable event and I somehow felt I’d achieved something. On top of that, it’s got me going to yoga every Thursday now, so you could say it was a life-changing experience!