Monday 9 April 2012

The coyote

On good friday, as it was a public holiday I did my scheduled 5x 6 minute tempo run in fish creek park. I had literally just finished the last interval and was a few hundred metres from the hill to exit Chaparral Valley (close to the location of the burnt-out car found a couple of weeks prior).

Quite a way off, I saw 2 cyclists coming towards me. Then to the right, racing down the hillside, I realized a coyote was coming towards me. While I've seen them before, it's been either to eye each other from a distance or old Wiley has ducked for cover in the bushes.
He crossed the path in front of me and down the bank on the other side, he kept on running towards me, parallel to the path. "Remember your training," I said to myself, as if I'd once been in the SAS or something. So I stood still, turned to face him, and lifted my arms out a bit to look wider. He simply sprinted past and turned to look at me as he did so, then kept on going.
I said to the cyclist and her son, "the coyote must've been spooked." "What coyote?" I don't know how they missed it. Like most coyotes, this one was trying to avoid people, especially being all by itself. I wish I'd had time to get my phone out for a photo, but this National Geographic pic will have to do. Cheeky chappy.
Photo: A coyote finishes its meal
I did a 26k run on sunday, no big rush about it though. My right hip felt stiff afterwards, but was much better after monday's slow 10 k recovery run. I'm sure this is well-known to some, but I've found the solution to post-exercise soreness is rest right after, then mild-exercise the next day seems to stimulate the body into extra efforts at repair. I hope this pattern repeats itself for the next 7 weeks :)

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