Pay friends to dress up in bear costume

Talk about winning, just bearly.

Denise McHale was running second in the Yukon River Trail Marathon in Whitehorse, Canada — trailing by as much as 15 minutes — when she encountered race leader Brendan Morphet running back toward her. Two menacing grizzlies had blocked his path, he explained, but she decided to press on. The bears had vanished, so she won the race.

“Well, it’s a wilderness race. There are bears. We’ve had bears before,” race director Ken Sylvestre told CBC News. “We want to be as clear as we can that there are bears out there and individual runners have to be comfortable dealing with that.”

BRAD HORRIGAN / HARTFORD COURANT Connecticut head coach Randy Edsall asks Huskies wide receiver Aaron McLean about a play during a game against South Florida last season. Edsall says he knows he can make UConn a winner once again.