Hillrunner32 wrote:
Last week I was running an easy 12 miles on a path when I was approaching a man walking. As I was getting closer to him, he started turning around to see when I was coming. As soon as I got within 5 feet of him, he takes off in a mad dash and was acting like he was racing me. I was thinking "WTF" but I kept quiet. My pace was nothing special, maybe 6:45 or so, and I decided to just keep going at the same pace because it was only a matter of time before he dropped off. He stayed ahead of me for maybe 2 minutes and then started walking again.
Has anyone else experienced something similar before and how did you respond?
Last year I had a guy do that. Well, he was running the opposite direction as I was, and I was at 28 minutes of an out and back 60 minute run, so I was going to turn around shortly after I passed this guy.
Sure enough, I turned around and caught up to him about 8-10 minutes after I had passed him the first time going the opposite direction. I didn't speed up or anything, just kept my pace which was probably 6:50 to 7:00/mile. Of course when I saw him up ahead, I figured he might pull something. Sure enough I was right.
I went passed him, no big deal, but about a mile down the path I hear this breathing and footsteps coming up behind me. I fiugure it is some other runner who is going for a bit of a harder run than myself, and wait for him to pass. Problem is he didn't pass, just sat on my shoulder for about 800 meters. I finally looked back and saw it was this old dude that I had passed 2 miles back and I veered off to the side of the path and slowed down. He went charging past me and muttered something unintelligble, and then proceeded to stumble up the next exit to the road. I was pissed, not so much because he made a fool of himself, but because I didn't like some a-hole sitting on my shoulder, breathing down my neck for a hal mile and not bothering to pass until I slowed down. Not to mention I had no idea who he was or what he may "try" to do.
Afterward I realized that it was just some old idiot who thought he was reliving his youth by running down a 20- something on an easy training run. Pathetic.