I didn’t want to bring this up before the Anchorage Alaska Mayors Marathon, but now that it has passed, I can bring it to all my readers attention.  (I didn’t want to scare off the Team in Training folks I trained with.) It just serves as a reminder that there are still places in the West that wildlife is part of the landscape that we have to take into account in our daily activities.  There are cities in all of the 12 Western States where urban wildlife is a reality. 

From the Anchorage Daily News on June 18th 2008

On Saturday, the 50-year-old competitive skier and triathlete was run over by a grizzly as he and a running buddy were finishing a three-hour workout that took them from Hillside Park up to the base of Flattop Mountain and back.

Rogers happened to be wearing a heart-rate monitor for training at the time. He thought his maximum heart rate was 180. He later looked at the monitor and realized he’d hit 193.

“You hear about people dying of fright,” he said. “Well, this was scary, and I’ve the data to prove it. I think it aged me about five years.”

Rogers suffered no injuries, though

Read the rest of the story HERE