Attack of the Cows

Soooo, yesterday afternoon I didn't really feel like a run. I must admit. But after supper (we had some curried chicken), I felt this little nudge from my conscience and myself and Andy went for our run. We only planned to run for 30 minutes...

We started on our run, heading up Bull Hill lane to do our normal run on the Cloud trail, but for some reason, I decided that we needed to turn right instead of our normal left and this started one of many little mistakes that I made - our run turned into a classic one of climbing over hedges, trying to find the public footpath, chasing sheep and fending off murderous thorns. After 14 minutes we managed to find the road again and as could be expected, some hills was there to greet us. We enjoyed it though and after finding the road, the pace turned up quite a bit.

Our turnaround point was near a gate, and we pushed the pace, finishing the 30 minutes at about 15km/hour - which is a lot faster than we normally run.

Now, our normal cooldown consists of stretching, walking a few 100m, jogging a few minutes and then walking till we find home. Today was to be no different. After our run, we walked a bit, climbed over a hedge onto a public footpath and then stood in the field, stretching. 5 minutes later Andy noticed that some cows were jogging our way. No problem, right? That's where you're wrong. These two cows were of the male species and shortly after they reached us, they started jumping in a threatening way... I screamed a little, and they seemed to back off.

During this time, a third and fourth one had reached us... and the one seemed keen to engage in battle with me. I walked 3 steps backwards, he bounded three steps towards me.

"STOP!" I shouted. He stopped. Then he realised that I was about 10 times smaller than he was and came for me again. I looked at the hedge where we climbed over. Two more cows had blocked that exit, meaning that if we were to leave the field, we were doing it via the gate, 500m away on the other side of the field.

I looked over at Andy.

"Do you think you can sprint 500m?" I asked.

"Can you?" he asked.

"I don't know. Want to try?" I replied.

"Sure... " came the answer.

So I turned around and sprinted, the cows following us ...

I have never been that afraid. Never. I didn't think we'd make the gate, but we did... greeted by a horse who luckily had no intention to scare us even further.

And that... was our first speed training session since we started running....