You are paranoid. Unless you live in a very dangerous place the statistics about being attacked clearly indicate negligible risk. You were raised to be afraid and paranoid by parents who wouldn't even let you run alone without trolling behind in the family wagon? You're simply spreading undue fear in this thread.
News flash: there are not frightening scary rapists and murderers around every corner waiting to attack you. It's just not the case.
No, not every corner, but there are plenty of sex offenders everywhere. When I was in high school, I'd literally get 20+ cat calls on a single run. I've lost count how many situations I've been in both while running and not while running. My friends as well. I've been sexually harassed and assaulted, as have many of my female friends. It sucks. Call me paranoid all you want, but you just don't get it if you're not a woman. It doesn't stop me from living my life or running, but unfortunately we have to keep our guards up even around men we know.
Guys, show some humility and listen to the females on this thread. I coach college women and you wouldn't believe the stories they come back to me with from their runs on a monthly basis.
Sorry to hear about this terrifying incident. You did the right things. I hope you can ignore the men on here doing victim blaming or calling you a troll, or dismissing your concerns.
Sadly, the founders encourage the ignorant trolling, blaming and abuse of women on here, so nothing is ever done about it.
Sounds A LOT more like a goofy prank than anything else.
Also, it sure is noticeable how many of the (presumably) female posters make comments here equating being an older man with being some sort of predator, 'creeper' being the word used several times. Maybe give that a thought the next time you consider the world unkind and dangerous. You get what you give.
This really has me wondering WTF is wrong with some of you. You think it's OK to see every older male out there as a predator? Even the way OP described the other runner at the track was dismissive and unkind.
What should OP have done? Let the guy get close and give him a chance to grab her?
Here's a different way to think about it. The ski mask dude should consider himself lucky OP didn't have a conceal carry weapon.
When this is happening to you in the moment, all of the rationalizations people are citing here don’t go through your head. I wasn’t about to go up to him and ask him to take down his ski mask and make small talk. My track is at lower elevation than the parking lot, you have to take stairs down to it. So in order to get out I could only leave through one entrance he was standing around. I did make a police report with my mom this morning and they take it very seriously. When this is happening I wasn’t thinking “I live in a nice area, I must be fine”...
Again, where is the track??
That's hella sus that you want to know where a teenaged girl, especially one who was harassed by a potential rapist and/or sex trafficker. What's your deal?
Assuming for the moment that the OP is not a troll, I would tell my daughters to deal with the devil you know. Maybe hobby jogger dude is a bad person, but in this case the probabilities lean toward one bad guy, and that's the one in the mask. If it's both, well, not much to improve in that situation if they're determined.
And to all the posters pooh poohing that this kind of crap happens (and thus OP must be a troll), I watched my daughter get harassed when we were running together about a week ago, as some guy started catcalling as she ran by and approached her. It was only when I caught up to where he was that he took off. (She got about 200 meters ahead of me on a trail because: faster.) This bullsh!t happens way too often (she has reported previous encounters that happened when I wasn't there, and there is zero chance she's exaggerating).
Says the unregistered user who refers to himself as an ape. The vast majority of high school tracks are not open to the public. The OP refers to it as 'the high school' not their actual high school, so WTF are they doing there anyway? I don't believe the OP, that's all. And if they say what track it was, maybe someone could catch this guy.......or stay away from there, if the story was true.
"Some high school tracks aren't open to the public. Therefore, OP should not have been there via transitive property."
You are grasping at straws. Do us all a favor and just admit you hate women. If she had mentioned what kind of shoes she was wearing you'd find a way to complain about that too.