What are some strange or unexpected things you've come across on your runs?

Found a dude in a full gorilla suit doing tai chi at 5am in the park. No explanation, just peaceful gorilla movements in the fog. Made my whole week.

One time, I was running on a neighborhood street and some guy saw me from down the block, pulled a dollar bill out of his pocket, and ran up to me to give it to me. I'm still not sure what that was about.

I was at my parents' during the week between Christmas and New Year in 1974. A woman had been in a fight with her husband at a night club about that time and left on foot probably planning to walk the five miles to her house. That was the last anyone saw of her.

I had a course I ran a lot that started behind a dead steel mill and went along a creek between two hills and then up to a dam. It was a dirt road and very isolated. As I got close to the dam along the side there was a good sized pile of debris, dirt, rocks, a tree branch or three . I ran that course a LOT and knew the pile was new. Turns out her body was underneath the pile. I'd probably run past her two or three times and not known what was under the pile.

A gumbee

I believe I posted these all on a similar thread but a great thing about running is the weird. Here are the top few.

1. Dead body being removed from the green belt. Very sad, silver alert senior citizen got out and was lost. It was winter as well.

2. Lingerie photo shoot next to some spray paint art. Very exciting for a 18 year old boy.

3. Running through the woods and a full police sniper school emerged out of nowhere. They were practicing their camo outfits.

4. Yelled at by hillbillies to get off the dirt road because they were cooking crank up there.

Dude going down on his girlfriend in the back seat of his car

Two identical ghosts, faces pointed directly at the ground, riding side by side on bicycles

... but I saw two Hawks today on my run. Very nice.

You live in Baltimore?

I remember you writing about those experiences because I recall the sad first one.

I wrote about mine way back then. It was unmarked graves in a desert. Think I talked about it about 10 years back.

I moved to Berkeley for graduate school and would run on nice residential streets up in the hills just east of town. One fall morning I looked out to the west and saw what looked for all the world like a giant flying saucer sitting on the shore of San Francisco Bay. It was kind of foggy and I couldn't see it really clearly, but it was oval in shape and lit up with bright lights all around. I told myself that if it was really a flying saucer there would be some huge activity with emergency vehicles and aircraft around, so there had to be another explanation for what I was seeing, but I couldn't imagine what it could be. I was too embarrassed to tell my housemates when I returned, but later that day I figured out that it was the Golden Gate Fields horse racing track that had been there all along but had just opened for the season and turned all its lights on.

That explains it all.

You see a lot on trails. At least a half dozen instances of people having sex in the woods, a guy riding his mountain bike completely naked, and a young bear just hanging out at a trail junction.

Was running with a friend one night at the University of Oklahoma golf course (back when you could). Ran down toward the southwest corner of the course and there was a car on the edge of the fairway that had rolled down from a rarely travelled street that bordered the golf course. Cop cars were on the course with lights flashing... and we steered clear of the scene and changed our route a bit.

Turns out that two guys were up on the street in the car. One guy had picked up the other one ostensibly because he thought he was gay and had taken him to that quiet street for some action. The other guy was planning on robbing the first guy. The robber guy stabbed the other fellow and pushed the car of the road and down onto the golf course.

The stabbed guy didn't make it.

At least that is what you told the cops.

Keith Richards watching the sun rise as I went on a lake front run in Chicago. From a distance I thought it was a homeless women

Ex UC-Berkeley runner 1980s here. Two other guys on the team and I were cooling down at 7-8 minute pace at Redwood Park in Oakland and all of a sudden a really fit, attractive but 51/50 older topless woman (in her 30s?) spun around and 'chased us' for a couple hundred meters while attempting to sing opera.

27 Jamaicans and Deno.

I think I know what you're trying to say here.

That being said, I'm glad you didn't discover the contents of that pile because I believe necrophilia was a crime even way back then.