Ever been nearly killed while running?

Doug E wrote:

yes, good thread that hasn't been replied to in over 4 years.

I like how it made the front page.

hasn't everyone?

hit by a van trying to jet through the intersection. smashed my face on the windshield, flipped over the top and landed on my face. meet joe black style. 40 stitches in face and broken foot. everything healed back all fudged up and havent been able to really run since(4years ago). Hit and run btw and since i didnt die chicago police didnt deam it a prioraty.

i got stabbed during lap 23 of the 10k at a low-key meet in Northern Ohio last year.

sucked, 3 months recovery.

5 guys from my college team were shot at by some red necks in the woods near campus. They thought we were several dear, at least that was their story. Fortunatly they were terrible shots.

I was running a trail once and I came around a turn and there was a hunter in a perch pointing his gun at me. As I came into view he lowered it, but I mean, I was wearing bright blue and an orange hat. All I said to the guy was "do I look like a deer to you asshole?"

Plus, the ever popular running against traffic and almost getting hit or getting hit by the person making a right turn, that one sucks. I try to run behind the lead car at an intersection but sometimes I don't and have had a few close calls.

sometimes, facing traffic--even when you're not coming up on a turn--isn't foolproof. that's because some morons like to drive in the wrong lane for a few seconds (or longer). I was out on a long, open road one time and some idiot in a truck came flying from behind me to my immediate right...I'd say there was only a few inches between my leg and the vehicle. my teammates seemed more freaked out than me, perhaps because they had a better view (it happened so fast I almost didn't have time to be afraid).

thinking about it afterwards freaked me out, though. anytime I'm on a road like that now, and I hear a car coming from behind, I make sure it's in the appropriate lane. (this is one reason why no-one should ever run with headphones.)

I'll take "Things to never say to a guy with a gun pointed at you." for 100 Alex.

njmatt wrote:

I was running a trail once and I came around a turn and there was a hunter in a perch pointing his gun at me. As I came into view he lowered it, but I mean, I was wearing bright blue and an orange hat. All I said to the guy was "do I look like a deer to you asshole?"

.

someone wrote:

I'll take "Things to never say to a guy with a gun pointed at you." for 100 Alex.

njmatt wrote:

I was running a trail once and I came around a turn and there was a hunter in a perch pointing his gun at me. As I came into view he lowered it, but I mean, I was wearing bright blue and an orange hat. All I said to the guy was "do I look like a deer to you asshole?"

.

hahaha! touche. He actually felt really bad and was very apologetic, but well played

I got up at 4am once on a Wedndesday to do a long run in Kansas City and beat the heat while I was there interning during a college summer. Anyway, a gang was returning from a liquor store on the other side of a wide & grassy median, rowdy as could be after a long night of whatever it is gang members do at night. I moved over into the shadows, but they saw me anyway. "You gonna die white boy!" "We gonna get our guns and do a drive by!" Needless to say I picked up the pace and was looking over my shoulder for the remaining 10 miles.

Other highlights:

* Lightning missing me by 50 meters when a thunderstorm opened up on me during the middle of a run

* Wiping out on ice in college and sliding into the street in front of a snowplow. If the light hadn't turned red that exact instant...

* I was running through a crosswalk when some asshole taxi driver decides to roll through the stop sign at 20 mph. He saw me at the very last second as I leaped over the car and landed standing upright on his hood. If you ever saw Karate Kid 3, it was exactly like that. I stared down at the jackass through his windshield, returned the profanity and then took off. (He was actually pissed at me for being on his hood, as if I had a choice).

Oddly enough, any time I have been hit by a car it's been on a sidewalk or an intersection - never once in the street. I run over the hood of any car I can that's parked in a crosswalk.

--I run over the hood of any car I can that's parked in a crosswalk.

I tried that once. The driver went past and waited for me about .5 mile up the road. I was about a 100m away when I realized he and his passengers were waiting for me. Needless to say, I turned around and hauled ass out of there.

I won't be doing that again. Motherf*cker was in the crosswalk, though.

"Killed," maybe not, but "injured," definitely! I've been incident-free for several years now, but about 9 years ago I was crossing an empty street in a crosswalk on the left side, though against the red light. A car pulled up on the other side of the street I was crossing, to turn right. The driver saw me, and waited until I was about 20 feet from the curb, then made his turn, tires squealing, nearly hitting me. I had to stop and back up a little in order to not get hit. I slammed my left hand down on the back of his car as he passed, and he immediately pulled into an adjacent parking lot. I don't know if he thought he hit me, or what, but I didn't wait to find out. I took off like a rabbit through an alley and onto a canal, and ended up with my only case of exercise-induced asthma.

The older I get (almost 47 now) the more careful I am. I coach a high team, too, and make sure they don't do ANY of the idiotic things I did while running when I was in HS!

Bruce in AZ

I was shot in the head by some sort of BB gun. It didn't nearly kill me, but sure scared me to death when I saw the driver point the gun at me. There were other times when my team was threatened to be shot with real guns. I guess that's what happens when you have practice at a shooting range. Then there was the time I barely missed gouging my eye or nose out on a wood stake. Of course I've also been nearly hit by cars at intersections. Why don't drivers look BOTH ways before pulling out into traffic? Now I make sure to run behind the car even if I think he/she saw me.

txRUNNERgirl wrote:

Why don't drivers look BOTH ways before pulling out into traffic?

Why are some runners stupid enough to trust drivers? Especially now that cell phones are so common.

Probably the most classic of all the posts on this subject.... hard to beat the story... harder still to beat the runner who told this story.

Alberto wrote:

Twice. Once at Falmouth, once at the Boston Marathon. Had the last rites read to me one of those times I think. Temperature plummeted to about 88 at Boston, went up to 107 at Falmouth. Yeah, almost killed myself.

Oh wait, I thought you meant ever been nearly killed while running due to pushing yourself too hard....is that what you meant?

Al

Most of us who tell stories of being almost killed have had to settle for humbler versions of this feat. ;) (Although I've gotta give Alfred Hitchcock suspense points to the John Wayne Gacy story.)

Mine is an instance when a running coach (indirectly) saved my life. I was out running with a friend, and did something uncharacteristically risky: started out across a busy road without checking for traffic. Heard my friend yell, "LOOK OUT!" But also heard that "inner voice" saying "sprint it out!" and instead of turning around to look toward my friend as I might have done in the past, I ran harder and when I reached the other side of the street a Ryder truck was speeding by so close, it almost brushed me as it passed.

Used to be if someone yelled when I was running, I'd turn in their direction. But my first running coach, who would yell things to me from the side of the track, never wanted me to turn toward him--"you can hear without turning your head. Stay focused!" he'd say... or some version of this. I think that he may have programmed the "speed up" reflex into me, so my first reaction was to run harder, not turn around when I heard my friend. Also, I think I may have set a personal best time in road crossing.

Is it safe to say that about half of the close calls that every runner has involve the car-turning-right-but-driver-not-looking-right scenario?

Nearly killed right after running: As I finish a run on the boardwalk in my hometown, Laguna Beach, CA, I pass within maybe ten feet of a group of six beach-camping semi-homeless types, three guys, three girls, sitting on the grass. I only notice them when two of the guys get up as I'm walking back past them; one says "What the F*** you doin' gettin' in our SPACE?!!" Baffled and half-outraged, I say "YOUR space? I didn't come anywhere NEAR you!" and the other guy pulls out a big knife, holds it pointing diagonally up at chest height, and scuttles toward me with little quick steps, like a parody of a fencer. I back up, and with some absurd bravado that I have no explanation for, I say "Oh, you're really tough--why don't you put down the knife if you want to fight?" Just then the first guy runs at me and makes a horribly inept attempt at a martial-arts kick--so bad that I just throw up my forearm and catch him under his ankle and he lands flat on his back on the boardwalk. As I'm marveling at this, the second guy does another little darting rush at me with the knife! I back up again--and a hand lands on my shoulder from behind; I almost faint, but a voice from above my head says "Need some help?" I look back and up: it's a Marine in a short-john wetsuit (lots of Marines visit our town from Camp Pendleton), about 6'6", 220, and well built. He's totally relaxed, smiling, and he says to the guy with the knife, "Come on, you wanna cut on me?" The two "attackers" slowly retreat, grumbling, with absolutely no desire to mess with this guy. I walk away with him, and as I thank him six times in a row I realize that I'm shaking, unable to stand up well, completely terrified after the fact. Maybe running had generated some extra adrenaline that lasted for those two minutes, but damn, after that I could hardly jog home.

Two instances.

The first, I actually almost died twice! My wife and I are running and we come up to an intersection where the cross traffic has a stop sign and we do not. As we are going through the intersection this guy in a big pick up truck goes right through the stop sign and almost hit my wife and me.

We both yell at him and he stops. We approach the truck and we are all exchanging curse words, but I could tell this guy was about to explode. He was extremely pissed, and I am not exactly a fighter. So I tell him to watch where he is f***ing going and told my wife lets go. She continues to argue with the guy and I can just see this guy is seconds from going off. He keeps saying that he is going to get out and beat the sh&& out of us, and of course I am going to be the one to take the beating as I assume he won't touch a woman. My wife keeps egging him on but finally I got her to drop it and finish our run.

Even as we were running away this guy was pounding his dashboard and just basically freaking out. I think my wife almost got me killed there.

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The second was a friend of mine. He was running and he said he felt something hit him in the side and thought he heard a "pop". He grabbed his side and looked down and saw red in his hand. He said he thought to himself, I have been shot! He then looked down and saw a half eaten hamburger and it was just ketchup.

Hopefully this guy got killed while training on the roads:

http://www.windstream.net/_1_RRFTNV02ERYENT__wind.main/broadband/mc/index.htm?channel=Entertainment+News&clipid=911110