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BOB STAZA!!!

September 8, 2018 (Morning)

Exercise Type: Run

Comments:
That's Bosnian for "Bobsled track." Yes, I found the Sarajevo Bobsled track from the 1984 Olympics, the goal of this run, and I have photos posted to Facebook to prove it. The old bobsled track served a major international sliding center for 7 years after the Olympics, but then found itself on the front lines during the Seige of Sarajevo and was extensively damaged as snipers used it for cover. The area was only recently cleared of landmines and is now a popular place for Bosnians and foreigners alike to go hiking the weekends. Naturally, I was eager to find it, and you can bet I wasn't going to use that cable car. But that required running up a mountain.

I started mid-morning just heading up from my friend Maja's apartment where I was staying winding myself through the outer neighborhoods up the hillside. The roads were incredibly steep, but the slow pace was ideal for memorizing Bosnian vocab on my new flashcards which I used to distract myself from the terrain. I didn't really stop running or going up until I'd climbed over a mile or two and accidentally hit a dead-end in the woods. It was only then that I chose to look at the map. Turns out I was still a ways off from the Bobsled track but there was a mysterious icon labeled "Happyland" in English nearby, so I headed for that instead. It's worth noting that I had without realizing it crossed into the Republika Srpska, a semi-autonomous region in Bosnia created a part of the Dayton Peace Accords that has strong cessationist tendencies. Seemed strange that I could cross into the this territory that the Bosnian Serbs had fought so fiercely to win during the war without even knowing it. No signs or border markers. There were a number of ruins I passed which probably had been destroyed in the war and never rebuilt.

Happyland turned out to be a small amusement park, with a rather lame looking roller coast that looked vaguely like it might have been inspired by a bobsled. I stopped and rode it, of course. Turns out it was worth the $3 I paid, because you can control how fast you go with a handbrake, which I vowed never to use. The families with little kids ahead of me were going really slow so I gave them plenty of room. After that not-quite-Olympic rush, I got back on the road and starting climbing up toward the Bobsled area, pausing once for some feral horses that blocked traffic and then seemed to want to follow me. I can't understand why they have metal horseshoes but no tackle and no owner in site. Maybe they were abandoned. Or maybe they graze freely and return to the barn at night. In any case, I finally made it to the crest of the road where trail hits, and followed the trail down the Bobsled area.

The bobsled track is soooooo cool! I wish it had ice on it, thought the graffiti is really pretty and you can run along it. I chose to walk through, and hiked down with a German guy and a girl from Minnesota. There's a long trail which I hadn't know about that goes from City Hall directly up the mountain to the Bobsled area. Well, it's mostly winding little streets, but its well marked. Next time I'll take it up and ride the cable car down again.

Needless to say, I have no idea how many miles this was. I think I earned about 8 though.