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Record-breaking run

January 12, 2019 (Night)

Exercise Type: Run

Comments:
This is the longest run I can ever remember having timed. It was also one the slowest. I mapped it afterward as best I could remember and it came to just under 22 miles, which is disappointing, but not surprising I guess given how steep those hills were and the fact that I was running on tire-packed snow for about 21 of those miles. Granted I wasn't exactly pushing the pace either. I only occasionally got my heart-rate up, usually on the 10-25-minute-long hills.

Almost all my runs these days take place at night, once I've finished doing interviews for the day and don't have anywhere I need to be by a certain time. That frees me up to meander and I see fit without worrying about the run getting too long and missing something. It's just a matter of what my body can stand, which these days seems to be quite a bit if I'm going slow. An added side benefit of night runs is that the roads are relatively empty, which given the lack of sidewalks, snow-free-trails, or really anywhere else to run, is pretty darn helpful. To those of you who may be getting ideas from this, please note there is a big difference safety-wise between being a 30-something man running at night and a teenage girl. F*** the patriarchy, what can I say, we live in an unjust world; but seriously, please stick to neighborhoods your parents or Anthony consider safe. That should still leave nearly all of Bethesda, Chevy Chase, and DC west of Rock Creek Park open to you. I'm not saying don't run at night. Just be smart about where and how late you go, pleassse? I always run at night with a cellphone, I wear something reflective, and I'm careful to watch for cars. (One might also pause to note here that there's a certain amount of white privilege in being able to run at night and not have the police assume you've committed a crime).

On this particular run, I started off planning to just go for a while with no particular goal in mind. Nearly every record-breaking run I've done starts that way--I rarely ever plan for a run to be super-long. I headed up the Moscanica ("Mosh-cha-nitza") Valley, a side canyon off the larger Miljacka ("Mill-yach-ka) Valley where Sarajevo lies. For those of you obsessed enough with this log to be curious where that is, here's the first 16-miles of my run. The next 6-8 are sorta confusing and I'm less sure where I went exactly.

http://www.mappedometer.com/?maproute=729797

For perspective, here's where most of my runs take place: 1) in the heavily residential hillside full of painfully-steep un-plowable one-way streets overlooking downtown Sarajevo where I live (miles 0-2 and 7-9), along the Sarajevo-Trebavich state highway that overlooks both Sarajevo and rural farmland on the other side of the ridge (miles 2-7), and downtown Sarajevo in the valley though often along the closed-to-traffic Wilson Blvd that hugs the Miljacka river (miles 9-12). https://www.mappedometer.com/?maproute=729798

And just to cap it off, here's the infamous Mt. Trebavic ("Tre-ba-vich") which I almost got myself into serious trouble on last week: http://www.mappedometer.com/?maproute=729799

tl;dr I was waaaaaaaaay outside of town. In fact, due to the way the Moscanica valley curves, I was out of sight of the city lights for much of the run. Fortunately, the street lights on the rural roads, though inconsistent, made pretty clear where I was supposed to go. When they went uphill, they looked kinda like a ski resort, since the roads were of course covered in hardpacked snow. I decided after about 45 minutes that I wanted to see if I could run all the way around the Moscanica valley, and after briefly checking the map to make sure the distance wasn't inhuman, dove into the 2-mile-long climb with exuberance. I apparently gained about 2000 feet at the highest point on this run. I was binge listening to This American Life which really made it fun, and while I can't honestly say I didn't notice the massive uphill, I didn't find the incline unpleasant. Gosh does it help to be distracted and chasing a goal.

I did get lost a couple times up in the hills, but luckily my phone was still working then so I could consult the map if needed, plus I always had the valley I was curving around as a point of reference. Typically what would happen is that there'd be a split in the road and, not wanting to stop and consult google maps, I'd choose the wrong one. But generally I'd notice after anywhere from 400m to a mile that I was heading off into the hills and losing sight of the valley, so I'd stop, consult the map, and retrace my steps. This worked until about 2 hours into the run when my battery got so low I didn't want to light it up anymore, for fear of losing my IV-drip of thought-provoking policy-or-life-lesson-oriented storytelling courtesy of Ira Glass (https://www.thisamericanlife.org/). This too went away around the 3-hour mark, however, but unlike last weekend, I was quite happy at this point to be lost in my own thoughts.

Towards the end of the run, I saw I'd gotten to 3:38 and decided to go for the 4-hour mark, and then after 15 minutes or so meandering around the Vratnik neighborhood inside a medieval walled fortress, I decided that I really wanted to get to the top of the hill I was steadily ascending, which is how this run ended up with the absurd time of 4:11. Unlike the run of Trebavic last weekend which I logged as 4:00, this was all running - no climbing, sledding, or shuffling in the snow. At the very end of my run, within two blocks of my house, I finally got to do the mitzvah I've repeatedly offered and always been turned down for--I helped a man push his car out of a snow drift. It was very satisfying. When I finally got back to my apartment, I decided the best way to cool down/celebrate was to flop in the snow, do a star stretch, and then make a snow angel. I then treated myself to back-to-back episodes of the HBO comedy Atlanta, after I realized that watching the entire second season would still not be as long as my run.