Strangers who try to “race” you during a run: How often does this happen to you?

Once had someone latch on and run 5 metres behind me for a full 13miles, that was weird.

We don’t know that he was trying to befriend or socialize with you.

You might not be a total stranger to him, and maybe he uses how long he can keep up with you as a yardstick.

Animals like dogs do it too for fun, so it might be a natural fun thing for him to do spontaneously, or a bit more plannedly like a fartlek criterion.

You really have no reason to feel annoyed, so yes, you are overreacting because it can’t possible hurt you.

I think the most annoying are the folks that don't want to let you pass, so they speed up to try to prevent it. Had a guy one time keep speeding up and then slowing down over and over until I eventually passed after several miles of it.

But anyone that thinks its 'fun' or 'fine' or 'not annoying' to bother strangers in public is suspect in my book. You must be one of those people that races other people to the register at the grocery store and thinks 'I am not hurting anyone so who cares'.

It’s more than a little weird to follow someone on the same route for “several miles.” I’d be concerned if I were him, too.

Heh, it was a trail. There was nowhere else to go. So yeah, more than a little weird in fact to continually speed up to prevent a person from passing on a trail where passing and getting passed is a very common occurrence.

You’re annoying when you do stuff like this. Stop being annoying.

It’s not me doing it. Last time it was someone who sped up when I was about to pass him. The time before that it was someone trying to keep up with me after I passed him (and horror of horrors! He was older than me!) I can’t remember the time before that.

Unlike some of you all, I don’t hate everyone and find that other people reacting to my pace can be fun.

Guilty as charged. I recently was out for a general purpose 14 mile longish run. No goal whatsoever other than completing the miles. I was slogging along at ~8:30 pace on mile 2 when someone passed me. I picked it up and followed them for a couple of miles until they turned onto a different trail. It ended up shaking me from my doldrums and I averaged about ~7:30 pace for the run.

9 times out of 10 I ignore people passing me or people I pass but occasionally I use others for inspiration/motivation.

3 times a week a do a "stalker run" workout. Jog around until I find somebody who looks fast, then I just try to follow them for as long as possible.

Ask them if they have accepted Jesus as their personal Saviour.

That's excellent! but i rarely if not never find someone running at a pace that's close to mine, so i chase old bikers

Occasionally it has / had happened to me. The funniest time I was out running at night and out on the beach some random guy tried told me he wanted to race me and said he was a state champion miler in high school. He didn't last very long but he was also really intoxicated.

During the initial months of the pandemic, I was running out on a local running trail with a couple of buddies. The trail is essentially a mile long woodchip trail that borders a municipal golf course. We were running at probably 8:00-8:15/min per mile pace and were coming up on a young early 20s runner. He was likely running 9-10 min per mile pace by the time we approached him. He looked the part, not particularly athletic looking with a cotton t-shirt and pair of basketball shorts on.

He had heard us coming, likely by the sounds of our spirited conversation as that was back in the days you didn't socialize as much and we were just happy to be out and about. Almost instantly, he picks up his pace in an attempt to stay ahead of us. This was clearly an all out effort for him to maintain and after maybe 60-90 seconds we finally decided to be done with it and sped up around him. The dejected look on his face told the whole story. This young man had pinned some egoic hopes on holding back the 30 year old hobbyjoggers about to overtake him and it blew up in his face.

As for why... it's like anyone who "tries too hard"... it's an ego thing. Rudy sucked at football and shouldn't have been on the ND Football Team where his obsession put the health and careers of other players at risk.

9-10 min recovery run on really sore legs I managed to creep on an overweight gentleman that tried to race me….on a recovery run. It happened also with a much older guy, maybe in his 70s.

I passed on older guy one day whilst running along a popular trail. Didn't really pay much attention until I heard his footsteps behind me, so I picked it up, but it didn't drop him, so I picked it up again to about 6min/mile pace, when he pulled up along side me and started chatting, not even out of breath. Turned out he was a damn good runner, sub-4 back in the day when there weren't so many. He turned into a good friend and we would run together whenever we bumped into each other. Sometimes we did track work together. You'd tell him what pace you wanted and he hit it like clockwork. So sometimes it can be a positive experience, othertimes, if the guy (or gal) is not friendly it's annoying, especially since it can interrupt your workout.

A long time ago, a few years after college when I was not in great shape I was running a 9 mile loop and caught a dude on a big hill. I wasn't racing, simply running a bit faster than him. He responded with vigor, so I tried to drop him. He was probably 35 or so, I was 23ish. He was having none of it and slowly pulled away from me while I was giving it my all. I was quite proud of him, because that dude randomly gave his all on a Saturday morning run.

Haha, yes it does go both ways. Sometimes I do workouts like 1 minute fast followed by 1 minute slow. There is a good runner I saw on the path running and I would pass him on the fast part and he'd catch up to me on the recovery. I remember thinking that the guy probably thought I was one of those annoying runners trying to race him.

Cyclists are worse.

Almost never happens to me but I do most of runs starting at 4AM, so there is no one else around