Our Hills Have Eyes Too

I was running around 10PM yesterday’s night on my home trails along that power line that goes through Ladera Ranch.

On my way back I saw yellow eyes looking at me from the trail ahead. Although I knew who it was my imagination was picturing someone big and dangerous. This time the coyote was not as afraid as the last time (I bet I look a way more dangerous when I listen to Apocaliptica on the run, but this time it was just a news podcast) and I had a chance to have a good look at him.

Yup, it was a coyote, and a pretty small one. He looked more like a prey than a predator in a pale glow of my headlight – especially when he fled into bushes.

The picture of a coyote in this blog is not an actual shot I made - I did not have my camera with me yesterday. Still this one looks exactly like the one I saw: pathetically harmless and well-natured :)

Another remarkable thing about yesterday’s 10K was that it was the first (and the last) run in my life on O’Doul’s :) I am not sure how I even came up with such a crazy idea. Probably it all came from Ben’s ramblings about his experience with Cascade Crest 100. One way or another when I was trying to pick between Gatorade and Mountain Dew to load into my hand bottle, all of a sudden I reached for O’Doul’s and poured it in instead :)

At first it was kinda cool – the beer was cool – and even cooler was the bare idea that I drink it on the run. My headlight was creating a tunnel effect when it all looks like as if you have a black-&-white TV right in front of your face. Plus I was listening to podcasts. So it all was like sitting with a bottle of a cool beer on a sofa and watching TV.

The downside of it was that around mile 5 remaining beer warmed up and foam-ized in my hand bottle. It is not just that the warm beer foam is barely drinkable and enjoyable, but also that due to the foam generation effect I lost my last 2oz of water (well, of beer in this particular case) - those same 2 last oz I always treasure most of all :)

Legal disclaimer:
O’Doul’s is a non-alcoholic brew. The coyote I saw on the hills has nothing to do with my O’Doul’s experiment, and cannot be considered a side-effect of O’Doul’s consumption.