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Brixton.
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There are a number of posts in this blog about alarming and interesting encounters I have had with animals while out running, but only a few about human encounters. Before going any further, however, I have to acknowledge that male runners face far fewer human threats than female runners. A number of females I know personally have been harassed and chased by men when out running, and we have all read stories about women runners assaulted and even killed. I have always felt fortunate to be able to run almost anywhere I like without fearing human interference, and those few bad encounters I have had don't amount to much.
A few scary incidents have already been mentioned in this blog including being stopped by abusive Russian police while out running near Smolensk (see ‘
No Visa’), being chased by two guys in a car and on foot while leading a half marathon (see ‘
Unexpected Hazards’), and being followed by a guy whose car I had banged when he cut me off at a corner (see ‘
A road rage story’).
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Bucharest, Romania.
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In the London suburb of
Brixton, I sometimes felt quite intimidated by milling groups of black youths blocking the footpath during my evening running commute in the mid-1970s. They never showed any inclination to move aside as I approached, and I always had to slow down and gently work my way through the group. One time I received a good-natured whack across the butt with a cricket bat as I passed, but that was the worst that ever happened.
On another occasion in the mid-1970s, I was returning to our campsite from an evening run through the suburbs of
Bucharest in Romania, when I met a group of loud young men and women walking towards me, line abreast, along a path. They showed no sign of letting me pass. I moved to the very left-hand side, where there just room to squeeze through, but as I passed one of the guys pushed the girl on the end of the line into my path. I just had time to drop my shoulder to absorb the impact and knocked the girl heavily to the ground. Pandemonium broke out and I didn't hang around to see if the girl was OK, instead accelerating off into the gloom.
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Swan Street Bridge, Melbourne.
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The only other physical encounter I can recall occurred when running across Swan Street Bridge in Melbourne one warm summer evening. As I passed an intoxicated young guy coming the other way, he suddenly and unexpectedly swung his fist hard into my stomach. Although briefly winded, I recovered and angrily approached him demanding to know why he had hit me. Putting his bag down, he struck a defensive pose. Rather than fight, I quickly grabbed his bag and ran further across the bridge. A small crowd gathered as I hung the bag over the railing, threatening to drop it into the Yarra River below. In the end, I cooled down, threw his bag back to him, and continued my run.
I have heard of runners being hit by objects thrown from cars, but that has never happened to me, although I did once cop a milkshake while out riding my bike.
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Elwood coastline with Melbourne skyline
in the background.
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Perhaps the most interesting human encounter I ever had was in the early 1980s during my regular Wednesday evening 20 mile run which incorporated a long stretch on paths along the coast of
Port Phillip Bay in Melbourne’s inner suburbs. One very warm summer evening, on a more remote stretch of the path in
Elwood, two young women were walking towards me along the path wearing towelling robes, apparently having been swimming or sunbathing. I saw them exchange words and then just before I reached them, they said ‘Ta Dah!’ and both flung open their robes to reveal nothing was being worn underneath. I must have looked shocked (and I was), and heard them laughing loudly behind me as I continued on my way.
I ran a slow and lethargic 15km this morning on the roads with a few hills. My legs still felt heavy and stiff from Sunday's long run, although I was moving more freely by the end. When breathing harder on the hills, I'm still occasionally getting a feeling of pressure in my chest at the base of the sternum, but there's no other evidence of a problem and I'm inclined to pass it off as just the result of breathing harder. My resting pulse rate is now back below 40, where it was before I had the
heart and
lung problems late last year.
