A Kenyan professional runner living in Auburn, Maine, reportedly outran a pair of black bears last week Wednesday.
Moninda Marube, a 38-year-old student at the University of Maine, was out for an 18-mile run around 5 a.m. when he spotted two black bears in his path.
“I saw them crossing [the road]. When they spotted me, they stopped and I stopped,” he told Sun Journal.
“I had to think very fast.”
“I had to make a quick decision: either to climb up a tree or run into the lake,” Marube continued.
Because he cannot swim, Marube opted to run for his dear life and sought shelter in a vacant camp building.
“I cannot say it’s my feet that saved me,” he told local television station WCSH. “It’s God that saved me.”
Marube, who finished third in the 2012 Maine Marathon and won the 2013 half-marathon, said he’d once encountered a leopard perched in a tree while alone in Kenya.
“I don’t fear lions,” he said. “But a bear is scary.”
“I’ve been running this road for four years. I’ve never thought of meeting a bear here,” Marube told the Sun Journal.
Watch him narrate the incident in the video below:
