Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
Bears chase, can’t catch up to LR winner
A former Little Rock Marathon winner outran two black bears on a training run Wednesday in Maine.
Moninda Marube, a Kenya native who won the 2010 Little Rock Marathon with a time of 2:29.40, was out training on a nature trail in the woods near his home in Auburn, Maine, and said he encountered two charging black bears but was able to outrun them during a frantic sprint to a nearby vacant house for cover.
Marube, 38, said when he saw the bears early Wednesday his instincts kicked in and he did what he does best: run.
He told the Sun Journal in Lewiston, Maine, that the bears were 20 yards away from him and a vacant house was 20 yards away in the opposite direction. So he made a run for the house, with the bears closing to within 10 yards by the time he found safety on the house’s screened porch.
The bears stopped, not realizing they could’ve easily crashed through the flimsy porch screens, Marube said. They sniffed around for a while before wandering away.
Marube, who is currently a student at the University of Maine at Farmington, said he’d once encountered a leopard perched in a tree while alone in Africa — but the bears were scarier.
He said he learned an important lesson from his close encounter with Maine’s wildlife: “Just make peace with people. You never know when your day comes.”