“Take your mace,” my husband told me

We kissed then I went out the door, happily

The race was on a Saturday morning

So many familiar faces

Ones I’d seen almost every week

A few new ones

This time, hitting the trails in Chesapeake

A lot of cars in the parking lot

The placard in the Tesla behind me read, “Physician”

I saw a heavyset man in his 50s get out

The placard carried some clout

The young guy, dark haired, James, told me, “good job last week”

He closed his tailgate and laced his shoes

I saw a few women running in twos

I headed to the shelter, in the bathroom

There was Susan, who has been running forever

There was Emily, in line

She’ll probably win, I thought

She’s tall and thin

This one was a 10-mile race in the cold

The horn sounded and we were off

Signs said, “Look out for bear,”

I overheard the group behind me say “they’re everywhere.”

The group of 110 runners thinned

It was quiet out, I listened

At mile 5 a man yelled to me, “You’re the 6^th female,”

I was feeling tired but knew I could prevail

Squirrels rustled in the leaves

At mile 8 I started to feel my knees

Small inclines, little hills

Heart beating

Suddenly I hit the ground

Seemed like I tripped on a root

I had the worst headache all of a sudden

Then I was thrown into a chute

Underground

It was cold

I was in a pit

No way out

I yelled and yelled but no one could hear me

I was disoriented, likely far off the path

A lot of time passed

The sun was setting

A man emerged from the corner of the cell

He told me, “Look you runner, welcome to hell,”

I saw behind him a mound of running shoes

And strangely on the wall, a stethoscope

He came at me with a scalpel

I was short on hope

But I wasn’t about to lose

As he swung, I ducked low

Into his stomach I delivered a blow

I dug into my pocket – there it was

I sprayed and sprayed till the air looked like fuzz

It was hard to breathe and my eyes were tearing

I was fearing

Was I stuck forever?

Back at the finish line people noticed a runner was not accounted for

A group came out searching – runners and a dog

They followed a small trail coming off the main

Susan was already out for her second jog

Emily lead the way

Among jagged roots

Then they saw the chute

They saw the giant hole in the ground

They looked down

There I was

James had a rope that they all lowered down

They helped me out

The man in the pit tried to pull at me

His eyes were inflamed when he saw Emily

We heard a roaring growl

Standing near us was a giant bear

We opened up our pockets, unwrapped our offerings:

Cliff Bars, energy chews, and gels

Dumped everything then some into that well

The bear followed the trail as we took off running

We heard a yell

Emily was given a special award

She later told me, “The same thing happened to me years ago – I thought he was in prison

But it seems law enforcement didn’t listen,

We’re the .2 who made it out

His ‘patients’ are too many to count

He used to run but he got addicted to drugs

Had easy access at his job

So he turned on ones like us wherever he went

Full of resentment

But I keep running”