T minus 32 days.   Running day.  I promise tomorrow will be a swimming day.

Set off for a nice six mile run to give myself a much needed boost of "take that, swimming and biking days, at least I can run" confidence.  Headed off into the bright, warm, summer evening.  One lesson I learned tonight is that blue skies and bright sun can be misleading.  Another lesson I learned tonight is that thunder, lightening and an impending torrential downpour can be great motivators in shaving time off your mile pace.

Ok, so in a sort-of nearby town this past week a car struck and killed a mountain lion.  Did you hear what I said??  A mountain lion.  As in claws, fangs and ROARRRRR.  Many Connecticut residents have said for years we have mountain lions but the DEP has always denied their existence in our state.  I guess they think we have all we can handle what with the bears and don't want to stress us out any further.  Even after identifying the mountain lion this past week as a true mountain lion the DEP is insisting it had been a "captive" mountain lion that had escaped.  Captive?  Okaaaay.
So keep the mountain lion in mind.....
I'm out there running, running, running.  Getting further and further away from home.  And for some reason it's getting darker and darker and darker.  I am on a long, lonely stretch of road that eventually turns into a dirt path running through the woods.  It's very, very quiet.  I am the only person for miles.  Now, I am used to sounds in the woods.  Animal sounds.  And as I run along I hear quite a bunch that I recognize.....squirrels, chipmunks, birds. Small. Ordinary. Nothing much.  But then....something different.  Something bigger.  Stealthy.  Not dainty like a deer or lumbering like a bear.  (sidebar:  I am used to bears by now. We have many bear tales, like the time our sweet old westie charged a bear when she thought he was about to come after Mike or the time a bear came up to our side door as if to knock and come on in or the time I was home alone and three bears come to our yard at once and I insisted on being called Goldilocks for the next week.  So I don't freak out at bears anymore).  No, this was not an animal in the woods sound I recognized.  And I know now we have mountain lions in Connecticut.  And I have read that mountain lions like joggers.  And I am a jogger.  And I am jogging right now.  And the noise is getting closer.  And closer.  And....

Let me pose the following question to my 7 followers:  Don't you think if your heart rate accelerates excessively during your run it counts as an addition to your workout?  I mean, the extra cardiac effort  is worth something, right?  It doesn't really matter whether what you thought you heard that caused your heart rate to skyrocket wasn't actually what it turned out to be, right?  I mean, theoretically, a beagle  could  just as easily have been a mountain lion and so the increased heart rate still counts, right?