Wildest Training Run Encounter

1) running along a very remote beach in a national park on the east coast of australia, i was alone with nobody in sight. a pack of 4 dingoes come tearing out of the woods straight at me. i'm thinking they don't like water, so i think about heading into the water until i realize that you can't go near the water because it is box-jellyfish season and the water is full of them. a sting by one of those is lethal. also, the place is known for tiger sharks. so i go in up to mid shin and the dingoes come right at me and surround me in the water. i'm stopped at this point and am growling and screaming at these things ready to kick some ass. we had a 15 to 20 minute stand off until i work my way towards the beach again and these guys lose interest and run off into the distance. no more than a month later at the exact same spot a 6 year old was eaten by a dingo.

2)running deep in the woods with a friend, we hear screaming and a whole lot of jibberish. we have no idea what the hell is going on or where its coming from and are pretty scared. the guy sounds like he's dying. we get off the trail(it ended up that we circled him) and looked back at this big marshy area and this hobo is sitting in the middle of the marsh screaming his head off.

3)any one of the runs i did this winter in -40 degree weather, -50 with wind-chill. one day i forgot to wear the usual 6 layers over my johnson, so i ended up having to stuff the t-shirt i had wrapped around my face down the front of my tights. so i got back to our athletic centre with my face actually frozen and covered with a layer of ice from the vapor in my breath. my skin is now hypersensitive to the cold, but hey, you gotta make sacrifices for the boys.

A friend of mine in Charlotte, NC was running repeat miles in McAlpine Park and was shot by two teenagers with pellet guns. He had to have two pellets removed from his legs. They caught the 17 year olds. My friend was instructed by the judge to attend the trial and told he would participate in the sentencing. After the judge gave community service and probation, he turned to my friend and asked what he wanted. He made the boys return to McAlpine the following week and run 3 X Mile. They had to keep up which was 4:50. The boys actually tried their best although they were in sorry shape. Afterward, they told the sherriff supervising that they "had a new respect for these runners".

This doesn't touch most of the other stories, but here goes. My parents sent me away to prep school after my sophomore year. I never bought into most of the "proper behavior" stuff and one of the the things that really bugged me was having to keep our shirts on when doing distance runs near the school - it was ungentlemanly to go bare-chested. Luckily, there were some trails in woods near the school and we would get on them once or twice a week and it was okay to dump our shirts. As an act of rebellion (weak, I know), we all started taking our shorts off on the trail runs and putting them on our heads as "hats".

We had done this several times on runs until one day we had our "hats" on and came around a bend in the trail and ran smack into the Headmaster's wife out for a stroll in the woods. One of my buddies, who was, and still is, the epitome of cool was first in our file and simply said, "Good afternoon, Mrs. Olsen," and kept running. The rest of us mumbled an appropriate greeting and continued on. When we got back from the run, we were certain that we were dead meat, but nothing happened. In fact, nothing was said about the incident for 3 days until weekly chapel. That was when the Headmaster said, at the end of his other comments to all the students, "And to the track team, we do have caps for sale in the bookstore. Buy them." Since this happened 30 years ago, before shorts with liners, and we all had on jocks, etc, I can only imagine what would have been said if his wife had been confronted with a bunch of bouncing johnsons. Still makes me grin.

I went to a small university in New Mexico. This was back in the days when I was a smoker. There was a very dyke-y, stern-faced, moustasched, militaristic PE teacher named Mary who taught a jogging class during the lunch hour, and she'd be out on the sidewalk every day with her clipboard, exhorting her troops to jog faster. I never took Mary's jogging class, so she didn't really know who I was.

Upon leaving my lecture hall around 12:15 one day, early on in the semester, I noticed Mary out on the sidewalk with her clipboard, checking off the names of her joggers as they jogged by. Sometimes, it seemed like she was unsure of who her students were. Like I said, it was only the second or third day of the semester.

Seeing a classic moment ahead, I back-tracked a block, lit up a smoke, jogged toward Mary amongst her other joggers, and jauntily said to her as I jogged by, "How am I doing, Mary?"

Maybe you had to be there, but the look on Mary's anal-retentive face was priceless.

Our team was at a pre-race function at the appartment of one of the host-team's runners. Apparently things got a little wild, because someone called the cops, who surrounded the apartment building and raided the place. Me and a few teammates (both sexes) jumped out of the bathroom window, only to be chased down by cops wearing 40 pounds of body armor, handcuffs, guns, etc.

We started zig-zagging down the road, hopping through parking lots, drive-throughs, etc, with the cops behind us, but losing ground. Soon we hear the sirens as they scrambled a car to chase us.

We finally make it back to the hotel, but with the hotel being a horseshoe, there was no way for us to run up the stairs, unlock the door, and get in the room before the cops showed up and saw us.

So in a flash of brilliance, we all stripped down to our underwear, hid our clothes in the bushes, and jumped in the hot tub. The cops rolled up on us, asked us if we've seen any college students run through the hotel. We pointed them toward Clovis, and they took off like a bat out of hell.

What was worse was trying to hide the chubby I had after watching a few female high jumpers get out of the hot tub in their wet bras and panties. Oh, GAWD!

What a great thread . . .

One of the weeks after Thanksgiving and before Winter break I was running during dusk on some trails near my college. This particular trail is about a mile long and borders a farm- not exactly wilderness.

Anyways I'm heading back to the road on the trail when I round a bend and am blinded by the high beams of a truck parked in the middle of the trail. I squint and continue on. It's only when I jog past the truck that I notice there is a hunter on either side of the truck, resting their rifles on the sideview mirrors.

About 50 meters down the trail I get the dry heaves after realizing I was a few ounces of finger pressure away from being mistaken for a deer. I wish I had gotten the plate number of the truck because I know jacklighting is illegeal. Those hunters were so @#$%^ing lazy they decided to hunt next to a farm on a place they could in drive to. @#$%^ers!

More

Several years ago, I was in Italy for a couple of races. Out on a training run in the countryside outside of Florence when I come to a trail, decide to follow it, eventually it leads to a pond/lake. I continue running, not really paying attention until I hear catcalls(at least they sounded that way/don't understand a bit of Italian) and whistles. There were 4 nice looking ladies motioning me to join them. I didn't, just kept running. What a dumbass, been kicking myself ever since then.

Here's one worth re-posting, originally posted by "Haywood Jablome" in August 2002 on a thread entitled "Scariest encounter during a run". I've never forgotten this one, and it always puts some extra pep in my nighttime runs.....

I was about a mile from finishing a training run on a warm summer night in 1975. Suddenly, a heavy-set man leaped out of the shadows and tackled me from behind. He ended up sitting on top of me in a leg-scissors, and I was staring up at his face.

"You want to come to my house and party? Smoke a joint?"

"That's not my thing," I replied, fighting for breath.

I chucked the guy in the side of his head just enough for him to lose his balance, and I squirmed away. I ran home very shaken up, and I didn't mention the incident to anyone.

A couple years later, John Gacy was arrested with 33 male teenage bodies buried under his home. It was John Gacy who nearly made me his victim that night.

Swear to God--true story.

Just found this thread again. Some of these posts are awesome.

One time when I was running at night, a car pulls up full of hotties coming to a party. They get the idea to all flash me, and by the time time the car gets close enough to recognize the faces in the dark, I realize that one of the girls is my cousin. She soon caught on and let out the weirdest sounding scream I have ever heard. The car peeled out and drove away after that.

Needless to say we avoided eachother for a while after that.

bump

I was running a 12.5 mile hilly long run with my friend in a town about 45 minutes from my house (Barrington, IL). It was definitely below zero windchill and neither of us were exactly dressed properly. After cruising along for a while we both were complaining but we thought we were numb and stupid enough to finish it.

About 7 miles in just after we had turned for home my friend stops and keels over, moaning in pain and grabbing his nuts. We were in a pretty rural area but I had to do something because he was in trouble. I grabbed him and pulled him with me to this random house and rang the doorbell. Luckily a woman answered and I scrambled to explain while my friend ran for the bathroom. After about five minutes of him moaning loudly with me trying to make small talk with this lady and her kid his nuts thawed out and he came out ok. The lady called her neighbor he gave us a ride back to our car. Hopefully my 17 year old friend can still father children when we get older.

I have done many weird things/ and seen many weird things.

One was in Mexico

another was in greece

i saw sex in london

100

YES

i saw, during my junior track season 3 sets of couples having sex the final was a young fat lady give an old man a hand job on a bridge, it was was suppose to be a closed trail in a state park. i calmly said "im calling the police"and i looked back to see them get up and run...i hope he had the worst blue balls of his life.