A middle aged man sprinted to stay ahead of me on my run today - is this common?

Fed-Up Old Runner wrote:

... I invariably always seem to encounter rude "hot shot" elite/sub-elite type runners (you know the cats with their shirts off, ultra-short running shorts, pricey sunglasses, ballcap on backwards, etc.). As I see them approaching at their sizzling pace, I always move out of their way ...

I know these guys! Except their pace is not so sizzling. One might even call them poseurs.

I miss living and running in the city where stories like these always makes a run entertaining. I once had a overweight middle aged guy try to race me on a recovery jog, and when I say jog I'm being conservative.

Did he call you a bitc* under his breath? If not it's probably just because you didn't hear him.

Happens to me all the time when I'm running on the indoor track at the nearby university gym during the winter. I run my easy pace (6:30's) and some idiot will run balls to the wall for several laps and then die or step off the track right before I pass them. I just maintain my pace. Expect for the time a guy was running from behind, sped up to catch me, and then cut me off with almost no room. For that I threw the hammer down. I could tell he was exhausted just trying to catch me so I decided to crush his dreams right then and there.

This is not normal behavior; it is d-bag behavior. As a middle-aged guy who trains mostly at or around 7:30 pace, I would never think about speeding up to prevent someone from passing me on a training run.

It is a different story if a fast younger guy or the hs cross-country team or an attractive female is coming the OPPOSITE direction. I'm going to pick up the pace, quicker turnover, make sure my form is optimal, etc.

I'm not elite or sub-elite but I don't want to look like the sale rack either. 50-year-old age groupers have pride too.

I'm middle aged and to be honest I do not like to be passed in any training run, race, or under any circumstance.

Just being honest

Transcontinental wrote:

I'm an old guy who normally runs 9:00 pace. Yesterday as I was doing a 4-mile harder tempo at 6:50-7:00 (yes, I'm slow), a younger woman who is a sub-5:00 miler in my town happens to merge onto the path maybe 20m ahead, going just a bit slower than me, for her normal pace. I started to close the gap, but realized that if I passed her, I would not really have the breath to even say "hi". We used to train at the same pace, ten years ago. I chose to slow my tempo until I could break off and avoid an embarrassing moment. Age happens.

Let the guy have his last gasp at youth.

I've been in similar situations doing speed work on the paths near me. I have taking longer rest intervals because someone just passed me and if I go when planned I will pass them back again. I'll let them get to a point where I can't catch them just to avoid the situation.

Like many of you, I have lots of experience with this situation. My normal rule is that if I'm coming up behind someone, I'll slow down a bit just to make sure that I didn't subconsciously speed up when I saw them in the distance. If I'm still gaining on them, I'll speed up and pass them decisively and put a big gap on them quickly. I find this helps to discourage people from trying to stick with me.

Similarly, if I notice someone coming from behind me in the distance, I'll do a self-check to make sure my pace is where I want it to be. I admit that maybe I'll err on the side of speeding up just a tiny bit. But if they're still gaining on me, then I make absolutely sure not to speed up, and once they pass me I slow down to make sure I don't catch them again. (It really sucks if someone passes me and then dramatically slows down. In that case, if staying behind them is really starting to interfere with my run, I'll finally lose patience and bury them.)

However, all these rules go totally out the window when I run with my wife, who's a former D1 All-American. It blows my mind how many jackasses of all ages decide to race her when she passes them, and apparently it happens even more if she's running on her own. All the things that people have described here--short sprints, then jumping off the trail and hiding in the bushes, etc.--have happened to her repeatedly. It's annoying.

I will admit that occasionally, if someone throws down the gauntlet, I can't resist responding. Back in college, a teammate and I were out for a run, and someone tried to latch on to us. By unspoken agreement, we started ratcheting the pace down, while ostentatiously chatting and keeping our breathing controlled to make it seem easy. The guy turned out to be way tougher than expected, and we must have been close to 5:30 pace for a mile or so before he finally "turned off," at which point my teammate and I had to pant like dogs for a few minutes to catch our breath.

I get this all the time. I think guys of all ages take it as an ego deflator when they get passed by a woman.

Its worse when it's a group of women running together. Guys get their panties in a wad big time.

Wow if you think a 5:30 pace is "sprinting" you must really be slow......

hold the phone wrote:

I will admit that occasionally, if someone throws down the gauntlet, I can't resist responding. Back in college, a teammate and I were out for a run, and someone tried to latch on to us. By unspoken agreement, we started ratcheting the pace down, while ostentatiously chatting and keeping our breathing controlled to make it seem easy. The guy turned out to be way tougher than expected, and we must have been close to 5:30 pace for a mile or so before he finally "turned off," at which point my teammate and I had to pant like dogs for a few minutes to catch our breath.

I've already chimed in but I couldn't resist this tale as my teammates and I experienced the same in college, with the caveat that the guy who tucked in with our group of six had actually been on the xc team but quit (this was during indoor I think). Same unspoken agreement and we too had to ratchet the pace but we were down near 5 minute territory the last mile to send him whimpering. Again, sometimes it just seems you have to punish the dickish behaviors of others.

MJT wrote:

I get this all the time. I think guys of all ages take it as an ego deflator when they get passed by a woman.

Its worse when it's a group of women running together. Guys get their panties in a wad big time.

It doesn't bother me in the least. I'm getting old, but any woman who can pass me on a run is probably pretty good, and I respect that.

I still think it possible that the guy who annoyed the OP might have been doing some kind of repeats or long intervals and everything got all wrongly synched up with the OP's pace.

It can get tough if you're old and slow but you still like to train in certain ways.

Last Sunday I was out along the coast on a hilly winding mostly one-lane road. I was doing walk/run, because that's what I wanted to do. At my turn-around point there were 3 youngish women by the side of the road. We nodded at each other and smiled and said the usual stuff one says. At that point I was running.

So a couple of cycles later I'm walking and they go by me, again all very pleasant. However now we're all headed down a fairly steep, curving part of the road and it's time for me to run. I was afraid that I'd blast around a corner and even at my slow speed would appear to be trying to pass them. When I saw them I figured I'd be OK at my current pace, so I maintained. I'd have slowed if I thought I'd catch up.

Another cycle and they stopped to look at the view while I was running. So I did what some other poster did, which was to finish my run and then ostentatiously look at my watch and start walking.

I mean, everybody was cool. But it was just the kind of thing that could have led to misunderstandings, meaning that I could have looked like a dick, which I wasn't.