Momma Turkey at Wilderness Park

Everynow and then something absolutely crazy happens when your out riding your bike. Today was a new experience to add to the list. In Grand Island, the wind had picked up to probably 10mph and I really didn't feel like going out on the roadbike, or more likely I was just looking for an excuse to go mountainbiking, so I decided I had time to drive to Lincoln and ride my "home town" trail Wilderness Park.
Wilderness Park is where I learned to mountain bike, granted it's flat, but it embraces flowing singletrack like no other trail system I know of, the point is really not argueable with me anyway, this my "home field" and always will be, when riding at Wilderness the whole world disappears and I am transported back in time. It's not until the end of the ride that I realize I'm not in college anymore and instead of riding back to the dorm I have to go back to my car only to drive home and then go to work the next day...
So about halfway through the ride I am zipping along and I come to a small hill that I just can't quite see over, as soon as I can see over it I see there is something in the trail and flurry of chaos is exploding right in front of me, I'm on the brakes hard and basically come to a stop right in front of the scene. It was one of those times when everything was in slow motion, as I stopped I saw baby turkeys scattering and rolling, as I processed what was happening I realized the mom and her babies must have been taking a nap or feeding right in the middle of the trail. When the mom saw me she jumped up which either flung her babies off to the side or they went running too. Thankfully I did not hit any of the babies and as the last one ran into the grass I immediately realized I had a critical decision to make, the momma turkey was about 4 feet to my left and she was staring at me, I needed to proceed forward so I made the decision to make a run for it and keep on going. To pass her I had to get slightly closer to her than I was at the moment, I really didn't know how agressive turkeys could be but as I ran by (carrying the bike) I thought about the fact that they could fly and had claws. My run quickly turned into a sprint as the momma turkey was not happy and was now in hot pursuit, you can only imagine my surprise that she really was following me! Besides running faster several things crossed my mind, the first was maybe I could fend her off with my bike, so I tried to keep it behind me to block her eventual attack, next I wondered how fast she could really run, my guess was that she could probably out run me without even trying, so then I thought well I'll bet she just trying to scare me away from the babies, because if she can run faster than me I bet she would have already caught me by now. That was a comforting thought, but as I looked back again she was still chaing me, really I didn't need to look back because I could still hear her chirping at me. By now I had sprinted at least 50 feet and she was not losing anyground, and I was really starting to wonder what it was going to feel like when she started beating me with her wings, pecking, and clawing, it seemed inevitable... Despite all the training I'm doing, I don't have any endurance for sprinting and I was already getting tired, I took another look back and yep she is still chasing me, my only thought was keep on running maybe once she feels I'm far enough away she'll let me go. Thankfully that is what happened, the next time I looked back she had stopped and was just chirping at me. My heart rate didn't slow down for another mile, by far that is the craziest thing that has ever happened to me in the trails, I was just glad I didn't run a baby over or something terrible like that.

Click here to see my data on Garmin Connect
If you do happen to follow this link and look at the data, check out the HR, there is a huge spike where I encountered momma turkey, it's really obvious, and its right at the 50 minute mark.