Cattle Stampedes are Good for Speed Work

No races this post to tell you all about.  Awwww.  Don't worry, I'm running Mt. Washington in less than 6 days, and that's the US Mountain Running Championships and the qualifier for World Mountain Running Championships, so regardless of how it goes, the next post should include something about that.

Anyways, I'm into a bit of a taper before Washington.  I had my last hard interval session last week and did a short long run today.  The interval session went very well.  I felt tired when I started today's run, but as the run went on, I felt better and ran faster every mile.  I also got myself into a little cattle stampede.

Somebody's cows got out onto the road I was running on.  Cows were on both sides of the road, and I prepared to run the gauntlet on the yellow line.  The cows on the left side of the road didn't like that, and I ended up hugging the left side of the road as the cattle stampeded down the right side of the road.  Luckily there were only about 10 or 15 cows and they stopped after maybe 100m.  But I did run faster to try to get around them so they didn't stampede into town, so that's why cattle stampedes are good for speed work.  I've been in worse.  A few years back I got caught in the middle of close to 100 cattle that stampeded for much longer.  I was literally surrounded by stampeding cattle that time, so comparatively this wasn't too bad.

Later in the run, when I was almost exactly half a mile from the finish, I came across more cows.  I'm not sure if they were the same ones or if somebody else' cows got out.  If they were the same ones, then apparently the cows wandered unaccompanied through town.  I couldn't see any broken fences or anything, so I'm really wondering if they might have been the same ones.  Luckily, this time two cows got a little nervous and I passed without further incident.  So hey, I survived my long run today.  Woo.  Or in this case, maybe moo.