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Very short and uninteresting running log entry

December 9, 2018 (Morning)

Exercise Type: Run

Comments:
I set off tonight in just about the worst running conditions I’ve had all year: cold, raining, and polluted. One might hope that the rain would cleanse the air of pollution, or that the cold would turn the rain into snow. That would eventually be the case once I reached higher altitudes, but in the meantime my shoes, gloves, headband, shirt, and pants got thoroughly soaked. I told myself that if I could just force myself to keep going for half an hour, then I could turn back and call it a day. My run this morning was too short, you see, and I was trying to make amends. Sunday should in theory be my long day, and I was feeling guilty for having skipped 3 days this week (though as noted in earlier entries, this may have been for the best, given we officially had the planet’s worst air pollution this week). I headed west over the Hrid and down some minor streets I don’t think I’d ever run before till all of a sudden, in my attempt to avoid steep slippery downhills, I found myself at the turn up to the top of the ridge marked by the stone memorial with names of men who’d died in the war that I’d discovered 5 days before. Keep going up or turn back? I took the bait. By this time (by more accurately, by this altitude) the rain had turned to snow, the first I’d experienced in Sarajevo, at least an inch or two having already collected on the street. This didn’t make me any less soaked, but it at least made the whole world seem more charming. Also, I’d finished the rather depressing This American Life podcast about the massacre of the Dakota Indians in 1860s Minnesota and had moved onto a very touching and heart-warming story about a man who tracks down and reconnects with his 5th grade babysitter after 30 years. I had passed the half-hour mark several minutes ago, and the street was so steep and snowy I was zigzagging all the way up.

When I finally reached Sarajevo-Trevabich road (Route 446), there was little question in mind as to what to do; each turnoff I came to I wanted more. I’ve really come to love that road over the past 10 days, lonely and quiet as it winds through the woods perched high above the city, proudly straddling the border between the Muslim-Croat Federation where I live and the Serb-controlled semi-authoritarian country-within-a-country known as the “Republika Srpska.” I soon ended up in the latter, drawn by the warm yellow street lights illuminating the soft silent snowflake swirling all around. I was almost on track to repeat Tuesday’s epic adventure (worth a read, if you haven’t seen it), but then I got me a CRAZY idea. You see, I have a penchant for trying out streets that Google Maps claims to be dead-ends to see if they actually have a trail at the end, and from time to time, I am richly rewarded. On this particular run I tried three different supposed dead-ends before striking it lucky and finding a road that became a trail which a sign post claimed went all the way to the Serb village of Lukavica, a community I’ve been warned is most crime-ridden municipality for miles around. Also, it was pitch black out, had been for hours, there was snow falling, no moon, I was on a mountain, and the Serbs are not exactly fond of Americans since we fought against them in two wars (Bosnia and Kosovo). But… it was a TRAAAAIIIILLL. I’ve been starved for trails here. Other than the abandoned road near my house, which is lined with some uncomfortable gravel, and the concrete bobsled track (also not a dirt trail) I’ve had no trails in my life here since running to the top Mt. Trebavich on my birthday 2 months ago. In the end, I couldn’t resist. Into the Woods I frolicked, down the back side of Trebavich in the midst of a light snowstorm. Within a minute I’d already stepped in a puddle which left my shoe soaked and slipped several times in the muddy tire ruts now lined with water and patches of thin ice. But to be in the woods, frolicking, amidst SNOWFLAKES!!! Gosh, there’s just nothing like it. I eventually turned off my podcast (now onto my 3rd hour-long episode of This American Life) to fully appreciate the sounds of the woods. From time to time the trail would split. This was unfortunate, not only because I could easily get lost in the woods a night with wet clothes miles from home in politically contentious territory, but because I suddenly remembered why I’ve been running so few trails here. Landmines. To avoid getting these unwelcome reminder of the war which once saturated the no-man’s land ringing the city, one is advised to stick to trails that someone else has clearly trodden more recently. Thus, I either looked for white blazes on the trees indicated an actively maintained trail, or looked for tire ruts. I passed a small Serb cemetery (well, it could have been Croat Catholic cemetery – I’m not sure how to tell apart Catholic and Orthodox Christian crosses), and a little trailside hut in a clearing. Eventually I felt my feet hit pavement, though still buried in snow, and pretty soon I was out of the woods and facing a large high voltage transformer station the size of several soccer fields, buzzing loudly from contact with the snow and rain.

Not long after later I emerged Lukavica, crime-ville, where several bars—or more rather, establishments claiming to cafes that were somehow still open at 10:30pm on a Sunday—had a lively crowd I thought it best to avoid. Unfortunately, my hands suddenly lost feeling at this point, no doubt on account of my gloves being soaked. I knew I had better take refuge somewhere to warm up, but both the bars and the noisy gym next to me seemed like a dicey choice. I chose a gas station, figuring that if the clientele didn’t like me at least they were more likely to be sober. I bought a chocolate bar, trying to use as few words as possible and mumbling to conceal the fact that I wasn’t from around these parts. As it happened, the station manager who was about my age soon figured out that I was a foreigner with really cold hands, based on the fact that I smiled and nodded to what clearly were not yes-no questions, and by the fact that it took me more than 10 tries to pick up the coins I dropped. Fortunately, he turned out to be extremely friendly, even giving medically-questionable but well-intentioned advice about how to warm my hands (scratch my head) and, more helpfully, turning on the radiator. We chatted a bit in Bosnian (a language which in this part of the country is called “Serbian”) about how I was a student from America, that I’d be living for a year in Sarajevo, that I’m training for a marathon, that no I didn’t have a girlfriend and yes women in his country are beautiful and oh how lovely this city was except for the pollution… more or less the conversation I have with taxi drivers on a daily basis. This time however, the conversation came as a huge relief to me since I was so worried I’d be treated with hostility (my very first run into the Republika Srpska had resulted me getting yelled at by a farmer for taking pictures of the view). I even told me I was studying political science and we laughted about how things here were “never boring” and there was “a lot to study”. That’s about the extent of my vocabulary at this point.

Thanks to a cup of hot cocoa, my hands were soon warm, and so after about 20 minutes I headed back out, my useless gloves stuffed into my pockets and my hands retracted into my sleeves. My feet soon grew numb but somehow that was less concerning as its happened more often to me, and I’ve never suffered any ill effects. Besides, unlike with my hands, which I was constantly clenching and unclenching to keep the blood flowing, there was really very little I could do. I found myself listening to a very sad This American Life podcast from a few weeks ago about school shootings, which somehow brought me closer to tears than any of my interviews with Bosnians about the war had. As I crested the hill, I found myself in a small park that I’d been to several times, but had forgotten the proper way to get out of it. I decided to go down into an alleyway, but made a crucial mistake—it was one of those alleys that actually turns out to be someone’s driveway and but you’ve entered it from the back of their property and don’t know any better until you’re nearing the front. All a sudden a huge dog come leaping out of the darkness of his doghouse no more than 5 feet to away on my left, barking ferociously. “OH MY GOD!!! HELP!” I screamed, which was probably a more effective reaction that the words that slipped out of my mouth at my last canine encounter (“NO!” …as if the dog understood English). My body instinctively darted to the right and sped up. There was no time to plan or think. Pure animal instinct kicked in. The one thought I had was “I’m on his turf, he’s probably unchained, the owner’s will think I’m a thief.” Luckily, he was on a chain, and I managed to escape, nimbly hopping over a gate and escaping out into the street. We talk a lot about “fight or flight” reactions as the cause of stress, or reason our face turns red when we’re embarrassed, but I so rarely have had the experience of feeling that surge of adrenaline under the conditions which evolution had in mind: escape from a violent predator. I must say that I’m very grateful my ancestors on the savannah developed such a handy survival mechanism, one that gives you a sudden shot of the energy needed to escape without having the think through what you need to do. I’m always a bit ashamed of myself for not reacting more quickly in crisis situations, like when something catches fire or someone passes out. But in those situations, you have to recognize these IS a crisis and then decide what to do. When a pair of crystal white fangs come flashing out of the night at you, no decision is needed. Your body KNOWS it’s a crisis. It takes evasive measures, buying you just enough time to plan your next move. At least, that what I’m taking away from this incident.

I made it home in one piece, thanks to the extreme caution I exercised on the downhills to avoid a repeat of the thumb incident from last Tuesday. The snow was absent at lower elevations, but the rain fortunately seemed to have stopped as well. The run on the whole was slow, both because of the conditions because I’m lazy and out-of-shape. (I’m crediting myself for 19 miles based on effort, but the maps says it was actually 15.2). Including the 10-15 minutes warming up in the gas station and brief stops to consult the map, I was out there in the wintery mix for exactly 3 hours. Not bad for a run that I was ready to turn back from the moment I stepped outside. I really do want to explore those woods some more… but maybe next time in daylight.