Black bear upstages Olympic runner Kara Goucher in marathon

Olympic runner Kara Goucher did her first trail race on the Leadville Trail Marathon in Colorado, overcoming altitude sickness to push through for a fifth-place finish.

But she was almost upstaged by a massive bear that lumbered across the road smack in the middle of the route, stopping runners in their tracks for what might have felt like an eternity.

The road was packed at miles 12 and 13. That’s when runner Quentin Genke of Colorado Springs, glanced over to see a bear running along the course. He grabbed his phone and yelped, “Bear!” he told Runner’s World.

“My good friend Quentin Genke and I were a couple of hours into our race when this huge black bear made his appearance right in front of us,” wrote runner Stephen Peterson on social media, reported CBS4 Denver. “Imagine our shock!”

It took 15 to 20 seconds for the bear to scoot across the road, but they were perhaps the longest seconds in the runners’ lives.

“Everyone froze,” Peterson, of Colorado Springs, told Runner’s World. “We let the bear do what it was going to do, and it found a gap in the runners to cross and then took off into the brush.

"Everyone just looked at each other like, ‘Did that really just happen?’ It was so casual. That was what was funny about it. In trail races, we see wildlife all the time, but you never expect a bear to jump out in front of you when you’re in a mountain race.”