Not Your Typical Run

I had a much more interesting run than I'd anticipated today. I intended to go for 1:15 to 1:25 or so, on the trails up Flagstaff and Chautauqua.

We got our first snow here in Boulder last night, and I woke up this morning to one of my favorite sights out here: the Snow-Frosted Flatirons. The Flatirons are impressive at any time, but there's something particularly amazing when the get either just a dusting of snow, as we got last night, or it gets so cold here that they literally frost. It's particularly forbidding, and beautiful.

In any case, by the time I got out for my run this afternoon, most, but not all, of the inch or so of snow had melted. The trace that remained was just enough to have made the trails muddy and treacherous.

Regardless, I made it through the first hour or so of my run without any trouble or excitement. Then, as I climbed the limb of Flagstaff again, retracing my previous route, a couple of hikers who I had passed before said "There are four bears on the trail back there. Two adults and two cubs."

Naturally, I chose to bypass that route. Anybody who knows much of anything about bears knows that, when cubs are involved, you'd best steer clear. So I took the road instead of the trail. And sure enough, to my right, downhill, near the path, were three bears. The other had, according to three people who had been driving up, taken off down Flagstaff towards the Hill area.

It's not every day, even around here, you see that much wildlife with that many teeth and claws on a run from your house. The rest of the run consisted of warning runners coming up Flagstaff about the bear activity.

All in all, a satisfying, and unexpectedly interesting, run. I just wish I'd had my camera with me today.