View Workout (Matthew Simonson)

Return to Log

Railroad Adventure

February 9, 2019 (Afternoon)

Exercise Type: Run

Comments:
After another two days of not running for no good reason, I dragged myself out the door to do what I hoped would be a fun and moderately long frolic in the hills. It was at this point that I began to make a number of very questionable choices. First, I discovered (or perhaps I should say "re-discovered since I re-discover this fact every spring), that 45 degrees is not really short sleeve shirt weather. I guess I'd come to mistakenly believe after so many days in around freezing that temps 15 degrees warmer would be like night and day. Not so much. I circled back after a mere 5 minutes to put on a warmer shirt, though still did not bother with long pants, a hat, or gloves. Only the last these was really necessary, though I'd later wish I had all three for reasons that will soon become apparent.

The sky was blue and beautiful with some scattered wisps of cloud. Inspired the sunshine and the nearby hillside that looked almost clear of snow, I decided to check out one of my all-time favorite routes from the fall, an abandoned narrow-gauge railway that starts halfway up the hillside just past my house and heads all the way to Pale, as Serb town 9 miles distant that was the capital of the breakaway Serb Republic during the war.

The snow, it turns out, had not completely melted. It was patchy at first but got thicker as the path wound its way through the canyons, also from the urban heat bubble of Sarajevo. I didn't mind at first. The old railroad isn't the most comfortable surface to run on anyway. The tracks and tied and long since removed but gravel still lines the trackbed, and it's the big chunky kind that rather than getting into your shoes actually feels a bit lopsided to land on. At least I'm used to running on snow around here, so for the first hour or so I was too caught up in admiring the beautiful scenery to mind. The Miljacka river was a raging torrent a hundred feet down below, with magnificent cliffs rising dramatically on the other side. On my side, I never felt like I was on the verge of a dangerous precipice, probably because the steep embankment is covered with trees and shrubs all the way down. The evergreens in the snow captured my heart, as always.

My phone rapidly started losing battery power from the cold, so I turned it off and stuck it between my arm and chest for warmth. That seemed to preserve the battery life pretty well, but it meant that I had to run rather awkwardly when it got cold and that I could only use it rather sparingly to check my progress. I passed through several small tunnels that I was forced to walk through to avoid tripping and past some warning signs for landmines that told me not to try venturing left or right off the path. At once point, I passed a car coming from the other direction that led me to think the road must be vehicle accessibly the whole way. I was soon disavowed of the belief however, upon coming to a bridge that was...um...missing. No debries down below, no pieces on either side, just a gaping chasm 100 feet wide that I was forced to go around. Luckily, some hiking club which periodically marked the trail with red dots (I don't know why; there was really no place else to go), appeared to have carved out a detour trail that headed up the ravine, across an narrow creek, and back around to the railroad path on the far side. It was a bit precarious but had I slipped I merely would have gotten cut up by some thorns. The hill as I said was steep on this side but not quite cliff-like.

The next obstacle I faced was a massive tunnel, far longer than the ones I'd passed through before. It was so long and curving that there appeared to utter blackness straight ahead. I couldn't tell unless I turned around whether my eyes were open or closed. I was a bit worried about tripping over rocks or walking into the wall, but fortunately just when the entrance behind me had almost disappeared, the first rays of light from the far end burst into view. I'd never been so reliefed by the sight of trees rising in the sunlit snow.

Once I got out and started running again, I found my hands were numb with cold. Moreover, the rest of me was starting to get cold too. Given all the stops for tunnels and the snow-covered terrains, I wasn't going fast enough to stay warm. The scenery was still gorgeous, but I was starting to get a little sick of being so far from civilization with no sense of how long I had ahead of me. Just then, a bridge came into view. It was a railroad bridge, or at least had been one back in the day. The ties and rails were still in place on top of the steel girders but if there ever had been a "floor" there wasn't one now. No way I'm crossing that I thought. There were at least two feet between each tie, and I am not ashamed to admit that I'm a bit afraid of heights. This time, however, there was not clear detour trail around the ravine. It seems that hiking club really did expect that sketchy bridge to be used. Never mind, I thought, I'll make my own trail. There hadn't been any signs warning of landmines for the last hour and I was pretty sure that I was well past the former strip of no man's land that had been mined during the siege of Sarajevo. The bigger concern here was the slope. As I made my way gingerly up around the ravine, the dirt beneath my feet became more and more unreliable and I was forced to confine my footholds to the bases of trees. Eventually, when I saw there was no realistic chance of going around, I descended carefully into the gully, cutting my legs on various thickets and cursing as my cold numb hands gripped the frosted tree trunks for support. Grasping at roots, I made my way up the other side, whereupon I was faced with yet another tunnel. This tunnel was shorter than the last thankfully, the but the one after it had a huge pile of sand and rocks just inside the entrance that I had to climb over by the light of my slowly-dying cell phone.

As long last I came to the hardest obstacle yet. It still scares me to think about it. I don't want to talk about it.

Forty minutes later I was overjoyed by the sights of houses and the street of Pale burst into view. I found my way into town easily enough. The street signs in the Serbs parts of the country are all written in the Cyrillic alphabet like Russian is, but I remembered enough from my study abroad in Mongolia and my week in Serbia last summer to sound out the place names. It is the same language as Bosnian after all, with some minor differences in spelling and pronunciation, aside from the fact that Bosnian is written in our familiar Latin alphabet. The people I met were friendly and helpful, so thanks to them I had little trouble finding the bus station or getting to the correct platform 45 minutes later. I got home cold and weary, got into bed, and promptly fell asleep. It was just after 5 pm.