Former Rare Staff
The participants of the “Garden of the Gods 10-Mile Run” in Colorado Springs, Colo., were in for a big and unwelcome surprise, as a brown bear seemed ready to cheat his way into first place.
Videos by Rare
Bear Attack Avoided, Run Still Awkward
Cell phone photos snapped by Donald Sanborn and posted on Facebook tell the story.
One of the pictures was perfectly timed and shows a couple of the runners breaking stride as they recognize that, you know, there’s a bear in the road.
“Why did the bear cross the road? To scare the runners and make me lose precious time in the middle of a race!” Sanborn said on social media.
Trail Running in Bear Country is a Good Way to Have a Bear Encounter
Fortunately for everyone involved in the ten-mile race no person’s leg was gnawed off and turned into a hungry bear’s dinner. The guy simply scampered across the road and went about his day. Also lucky this was just a brown bear and not a Grizzly Bear which, admittedly do not occupy that area of the United States so these people didn’t have to worry. A brown bear is still usually worse to encounter than a black bear, however. (Better than a mountain lion though!)
Presumably nobody thought to bring any bear spray with them so when this big boy popped u ponto the road everyone probably felt pretty helpless. You can see the fear of the runners on a couple faces. None of the trail runners opted to play dead though. They took the wild animal somewhat literally in stride.
This article was originally published June 11, 2017.
