Eyes in the night

It's been hot in Sacramento the past few days and I needed to get in a 20+ mile training run 4 weeks before the San Francisco marathon.
I decided I'd get up early and start in the dark.  A good chance to break in my new headlamp.

There's a lot of animals running around in the dark and my super bright headlamp let me see all of their eyes glowing.
The following is what I saw and what it actually turned out to be.

First off was the Honey Badger:

You know, the ones that eat cobras!
I'm not sure if we have cobras in the foothills around Folsom but I did see a second pair of eyes.








What it actually was?

A cute mama skunk with her baby.












Next was the pack of Mountain Lions!

Probably eating that guy who passed me running up the hill.  Serves him right for passing me.












After about 3 seconds I realized it wasn't mountain lions, but a little family of deer.

I actually felt bad for scaring them off the trail into the bushes.












Then I thought I was in for it!
Eyes all over the place!
What the heck was it?
I swear this is what I saw.

They were all over the place in the bushes and tall grass.  I guess I shouldn't look off to the side of the trail when I'm running in the dark.

I knew this was it.  My last run on earth.  These things were going to kill me or take me to another planet.







What was it?

A family of Jackalope!
I wasn't even sure they existed until now.

Oh wait a minute…













It's just a bunch of little bunnies.

Then I saw this!

OR-7 the wolf that made its way to California, and I'm going to be it's first human meal.












Thank God it was only a little coyote.

Cute little guy.  I wanted to take him home for Rocket and Annabelle to play with.












I really did see all of these animals before the sun came up.
The scary thing is that when I saw the coyote come out of the bushes onto the trail I actually thought it was a mountain lion.  I wasn't scared.  My first thought was to try to get closer and get a picture, the exact response both times I've seen bears in the wild.
What a great start to the day.
Can't wait to get out there early in the morning again.

BELIEVE

I am going to believe that the rest of my life will be cancer free.
If I find out in the future that cancer has returned I'll deal with it at that point.
But… in the mean time I'm not be going to be anxious or afraid.

I'm not saying that I'm going to start eating hamburgers made from cloned cows with buns made from GMO wheat, with high fructose GMO corn syrup catsup.
I'm going to continue to eat well, exercise, and reduce stress to fight cancer.
And if it doesn't actually do anything to fight cancer, at least I feel good when I eat well, exercise and attempt to live as stress free as possible.

3rd Place

Last year a group friends and I decided to do one last ½ marathon together before I had my surgery.  We picked a trail half that was just a few weeks before I originally planned on my surgery. (Surgery ended up getting moved back another month.)

I felt strong and pushed it throughout that race and ended up in 4^th place for my age division.

Missed 3rd place by 1 second.

This weekend I went back to the same race with a couple friends.

I’ve been fighting a tough cold for the last two weeks and didn’t know how it would affect my run.

I was a little slower than last year,. but...

It was good enough for 3^rd place in the 50-54 age group.

A physical, and mental victory!

Now on with training.

San Francisco Marathon in 8 weeks.

I’ll be hitting the hills hard between now and then.