Early morning run

Today I woke up at 5:10 am so that I could run 8 miles before work (yes, you just read that correctly...I said 8 miles BEFORE work). Josh and I usually run together a couple of mornings each week as part of our marathon training and today was one of those days. We were moving right along doing a trial we'd done what feels like millions of times by now when something suddenly caught my eye. As we were running up Bear Canyon I noticed something on the switch back above us that was eating berries closely resembling a bear. As soon as this actually registered in my mind I stopped dead in my tracks and calmy stated "Hey Josh, there's a bear." He looked at the switchback above us and I think for a moment he was debating whether or not the bear was a bear or a big black stump. We watched it for a few minutes feeling giddy that we'd actually seen a bear. I mean we were in Bear Canyon, you'd think we'd see them all them time but no. Well, this bear happened to be right on the trail above us and we decided to continue running while making noise so as to "scare" the bear and clear our running trail. As we turned the switchback I noted, "well, this is where the bear was...." As these words trailed from mouth we found ourselves facing this big black bear (BBB as Josh would say) with about 40 feet between us. It was amazing. We all just stared at one another and it eventually began walking slowly towards us. This immediately crossed my comfort zone so I began walking backwards very slowly in response. Josh just stood there obviously more comfortable with the close proximity of the bear than I was. He was trying to give me tips and said, "If it does start charging just make noise and look big." My response was, "Can I get behind you and help you to look bigger?" (FYI: I was serious). After a few moments of slowly moving towards us and us moving back the bear decided that the nice meadow off the trail was more inticing than us (whew!) and went on his merry way. It was such a cool experience but I have to admit...I couldn't stop looking over my shoulder during the remainder of the run!