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Praised be the Almighty!

September 27, 2018 (Night)

Exercise Type: Run

Comments:
I made new friends this evening.

More accurately, I joined up with a running club I found of Facebook, the only one in Sarajevo from what I can tell, which was formed about a year ago and seems to be almost entirely locals new to running, plus one British ex-pat in his 60s who teachers medication and does holistic physical therapy. I made the rather questionable decision to have a milkshake before running, two actually, which I only did because I was sitting with my host uncle hearing stories about how he's fought the Serb army for three years when he was a teenager a few hundred yards from where we now sat, and then he offered me to come inside and have a milkshake and since I wanted to honor Bosnian hospitality customs I couldn't refuse. Actually, I could refuse, and I could DEFINITELY have refused his offer of a second milkshake an hour later, but it sounded really tasty. I figured, what the heck if the founder of the intensity club can't handle a measly milkshake, what is the world coming to? So with a stomach full of chocolate, banana, dates, yogurt (okay, it was really more of a smoothie) and hubris, I started down the mountain in the dark from my host family's apartment to meet up with a friendly-looking pack of strangers across town.

Fortunately for my digestive system, there was no one remotely my pace, so I ended up going pretty slow. This was, in fact, particularly lucky since the workout that the top group doing was 10 by kilometer with one-minute rests, 6.25 freakin' miles, a ridiculous workout to assign novice runners and longer than I've even done with the BAA during marathon season. Granted, it was through the city along a sidewalk and bike path, so maybe it was a bit less intense than a track workout would have been, but the young woman leading our group (a recent college grad) was constantly checking her Garmin watch and looked positively exhausted after each pickup. Adina was her name and I couldn't tell at first if her hair was covered because she was religious or because the temperature had dropped to 40 degrees and everyone but me had brought layers (I'd made do with a second T-shirt). The other person in our group, a law student named Ner (I think?) was lagging a big behind but generally finished with us. Our third pickup was our fastest (5:13) and Adina taught me that Bosnians...or at least Bosnian Muslims...say "Mashallah" mean "thank Allah!" after they've achieved something really great. Rather similar to religious Jews saying "Baruch Hashem" (Blessed be The Name [of God]). I also learned how to say "Let's go team!" and at some point in the workout looked on google translate on my phone how to say "You can!" and "Come with us!" That limited vocabulary proved surprisingly effective. Adina spoke solid English and Ner a bit, but I really wanted to be supportive in Bosnian.

After our fifth pickup, our times having slipped a full 10 seconds, Adina announced that she was out of shape from 2 weeks of not running and couldn't go on. I told her maybe she could do one more and that we could go slower, but I didn't press the point. As we were walking our recovery and I was setting up Strava to record the remaining pickups, she had a change of heart and said she'd give it a try. She then rallied and we managed to pull off 5 more pickups. On the last one I told them, "We have a saying in America: Last one, fast one!" Actually, I never say that, but I heard it once. She told me to go ahead but I said no, "Zajedno!" (together) and proceeded to pace her to what was probably our fastest or second fastest pickup of the workout. I can't remember the last time I saw someone who breaming with pride and suddenly by their own accomplishment. I was gonna give a high-five, but she told me she doesn't touch guys, so we settled on several "air hugs." "Listen," she said, "I don't want you to think I'm weird, but this is so special for me, I'm going go down over there an pray for a minute." Can't say that's ever happened to me before in cross country workout! She's incrediby grateful to me, but honestly, I know better. I don't think I've ever seen someone so exhausted on the first three pickups pull herself up by her bootstraps like that and decide to keep going.

Anyhow, new friends? We'll see. They all seem like nice people, and about a dozen of us gathered for coffee afterwards before I ran home. In any case, its nice to have other people to run with for the first time since reaching Bosnia.