Barb T.

Well, it was one of those days. First, I do get up quite early to run since it is quite hot and humid here. My running partner is stateside, so I run very close to home as I feel safer. I run along the "Niger River road".  The road parallels the river and goes between the "old" bridge and the "new" bridge.  These 2 bridges are the only way to get across the river to the major portion of Bamako.  Usually when I run (start somewhere between 3am and 4am) I may see a total of 6 cars.  Well, this morning I lost count after 50 cars as they closed the "old" bridge, I suppose for repairs.  On one of my repeats I saw vaguely in the distance what looked like a crowd of guys.  Boy howdy did my antennas go up as a "crowd" any time equals trouble.  I was ready to turn around and put in a quick sprint back home.  But as I looked more closely and listened carefully I discovered that it was a sizable herd of cows trying to get to the other side of the river!  So, I carefully slowed down and walked off the side of the road and made sure that none of the big horned cows took notice of me.  This gave me a really good excuse to slow down for one of those VO2 max miles which turned into a marathon pace mile.

 Now, as far as my run went.  It was a sad attempt at some VO2 Max miles.  Did 2 w/u miles: 11:33 and 12:01 (did some walking in there too).  Then I was shooting to do 6, 1 mile repeats going all out.  Mile 1: 7:28 (not bad), Mile 2: started to go hard and I said FORGET IT!  Mile 2 ended up 8:25.  OK, forget the mile repeats.  Why not try some half mile repeats.  First half mile all out:  3:35 (not bad...though I do remember doing some 2:20's in High School but who's comparing).  Second half mile...FORGET IT!  Did another mile at 8:37 then one last one at 12:45.