Rocky Racoon

Another easy goal goes down! I finished this week with 53.6 miles making it the most miles I've run in a week.  I expect to increase this through out the year, but it's nice to follow through on my plan this week and finish with such a nice run.  It was also my first time doing back to back weeks of over 50 miles which is not a goal, but still cool.  It was absolutely freezing this morning. It was 19 and a bit windy which made it feel like 10. I was smart to wear my ski gloves with liners because my hands are always cold.  Despite the frigid conditions, I saw quite a lot of people out running on the towpath.  Probably 10 - 15 individual runners and then a team of high school girls and maybe 10 more walkers.  What are these people doing out running today?! They must be crazy :) When I returned from my run anything liquid on my clothes like sweat or my water/gatorade mix was frozen.

At the end of my run I had an interesting animal encounter.  I could see about quarter mile ahead of me a fat looking squirrel scurrying on the trail in a way that didn't look like a squirrel.  As I got closer I realize that's probably not a squirrel because it's seriously fat and then when I was about 20 feet away I realized it was a raccoon because of its striped tail.  I have a fear of raccoons when it's day time and they are just going along the trail and aren't running away into the woods when they obviously should because a much larger animal (me) is approaching them from behind at 7.5 mph.  Who does this raccoon think he is?  When I got about 10 feet away, I stopped and yelled "HEY!" expecting him to run off into the woods and I could run by.  That did not happen.  He immediately turned around to face me like it was some kind of western shootout.  I didn't have a camera on me, but he looked kind of like this (but his front paws were up higher, and he looked a lot tougher):

He was looking right at me with a "Come at me bro" expression.  I was a bit intimidated, but I was not about to turn around and after all I am an adult so I took a few steps but he kept his ground.  Then I stomped and he decided I wasn't worth it and finally scurried off into the woods.  As I ran by I yelled out to him that he made the right choice, and then I quickly ran away. Needless to say I had "Rocky Raccoon" stuck in my head for the remainder of the run.