Venus was bright in the sky overhead when I left the house yesterday morning, and the sun was just starting to light up the sky. After a full day, I headed out running and the evening sky looked just about the same — add some clouds, and take away Venus.
Towards the end of my run, I decided to head back home via the golf course instead of the main streets. The distance is about the same because of how the golf cart trails meander around. I like running on the golf course because it’s quiet and calm and somewhat scenic with the hills and the ponds. (The club advertises itself as strongly influenced by St. Andrews, so for those who know anything about golf — i.e. not me — it’s a Scottish-style links setup. Dunes and ponds and tall grasses.) But because it’s a golf course, I can only run on it at dawn, dusk, or after dark — when I know there won’t be anyone out there golfing. It’s a pretty big course with 27 holes. I only run through a portion of it, but even that is a bit over 1.5 miles of trail.
I ran intervals last night, so by the time I got halfway through the golf course portion of my run I was well into my cool down. I was jogging along at an easy pace when I looked up ahead and there, standing on top of one of the hills perfectly silhouetted against the sky, was a COYOTE.
Now, it COULD have been a dog… I mean, it was light enough for me to see where I was going and obviously see the shape against the sky, but dark enough that I couldn’t make out additional details. So maybe it was a dog.
But I’m pretty sure it was a coyote. There’s a large tract of empty land just south of my neighborhood, and I’d heard there were coyotes around here. I’d just never actually seen one.
The moment I saw it, it disappeared down the other side of the hill. Like I said, I was halfway through the golf course so I figured it made just as much sense to keep moving forward than to turn around. A few seconds later as I continued on, I saw a dark shape to my left and turned to see him running away from me across one of the fairways.
I figured he was more scared of me than I was of him…but my cool down? Yeah, the rest of my run wasn’t much of a COOL DOWN as much as it was me scurrying back to the relatively safety of the streetlight-lit neighborhood.
I think I’ll avoid the golf course for a while.
