This is no Winnie the Pooh!

Ever since I can remember I have had this fear of being abducted by some wild beast while out training. When swimming laps in Queensland many years ago I was terrified a crocodile would scale the fence, pluck me from the pool and take me home for tea (albeit it was a fully fence enclosed pool). The same goes for the great snake fear. And then there are the never ending shark fears when open water swimming (granted this is fear is warranted as there actually was a shark in the water this one time that nearly had a meal...whole other story). So when I decided to come and train in Boulder for 3 months, the first thing that entered my mind was the non-hibernating, food deprived bears and mountain lions that were longing for their next meal.

For the first 6 weeks in Boulder I stuck to the heavily populated running trails with readily accessible escape routes. However, for my long run this morning I thought it time to venture to some more challenging terrain and put my wildlife fears to rest once and for all.

I had envisioned a nice relaxing run on rolling trails in the cool shadows of the trees, with not a worry in the world...how wrong I was. I tried to ignore the signs at the beginning of the trail advising what to do in the event of a bear or mountain lion encounter: "stay calm, remain eye contact and walk away slowly. In the event that this doesn't work...fight back." (It actually says this!) However I somehow convinced myself that today was not bear weather and they would much rather eat a hiker than a runner.

So off I went with my positive thoughts and a spring in my step for my 20km out and back trot. The first 5km were perfect, great views, open trails, hikers every few hundred metres and plenty of escape routes. However, as the miles progressed the trail began to narrow and the people around me were rapidly decling, until I hadn't seen anyone for about 5 minutes. I began seeing signs pointing to 'Bear Cannyon', 'Bear Mountain', 'Bear Trail', 'Beware of the Bears'. Everything was bear, bear, bear! At this stage it started to get rather eerie. I convinced myself that every dark shaped object (tree) in the distance was a bear waiting for the attack. I was in true bear territory with no way out. I could hear rustling in the bushes and at one point I swear I heard a growl! At any moment I thought I would come face to face with the great grizzly that haunts me daily. It was then that I decided that I couldn't take it any more and today was not the day to conquer my wildlife fears. I swiftly turned around and sprinted back to the car faster than you could say Winnie the Pooh and vowed to stick to the bear-less trails for at least one more week!