What's the worst thing someone has yelled/thrown at you while running?

in high school in Indiana I was running on a somewhat busy road, a car coming up from behind me crossed over into the wrong lane, drove by slowly, a guy was sitting outside the passenger side window with a pellet gun and shot at me, it missed but sure scared me.

more recently I was running shirtless on a hot summer day, (something I rarely do anymore) and a group of high school kids drove past and yelled "you're FAT" to me, I literally stopped and just started laughing at them.

I was in college in rural Minnesota. One afternoon I ran along the highway heading out of town, and came to the overpass where the road crossed above the railroad tracks. An old woman was on the narrow sidewalk heading toward me. Her skin was weathered and she appeared as though she'd lived a hard life. I looked up to meet her eyes, ready to greet her as we passed closely. This was Minnesota, after all, and that's the nice thing to do. She looked straight at me and said, "If you'd worked in the fields all day long, you'd be too tired to do that."

I had no reply. Being on the receiving end of that remark has stuck with me for about 30 years, and is one of the most unforgettable things that's happened to me while running. Up until that point, I guess, it had never occurred to me that running, which I thought of only as a good or even virtuous thing, would be perceived that way, as a sort of luxury or indicator of social class. But there was some truth in what she said, and it hit me like a brick.

That's a well-put introspective story. Sad stories like that are going to deplete my pure-hate levels. I need stories to make me angry, not stories to make me think.

Regardless, that's in the past, son. Runners today are getting heckled, harassed, injured, and even stalked. There's no time for a pity party.

We get treated pretty badly by pedestrians and people in cars. I give props to people who heckle me if they're just alone. But I've only met trouble from people in groups. They're cowards.

"Progressive" state, ew. I just threw up a bit in my mouth. Enjoy your taxes!!

Not thrown or yelled, but had a shotgun leveled at my high school teammate and me on a training run. Guy in truck thought he was funny, but startled us quite a bit!

Ghost of Igloi wrote:

I ran cross country and track at Oklahoma State. We would do what we called "pasture runs" across farm land. One time a farmer started shooting at us. We avoided that location in the future.

Igy

Maybe you were trespassing 🤔

I was running in State College PA in mid-morning. Luckily for me I noticed these apparently drunk guys pissing off a balcony into the bushes and sidewalk just before I got in their range. Yes - not unusual for students to be drinking heavily Sat mornings before a football game.

You make a very good point. I live on the outskirts of a small city in central California, and my runs and bike rides often take me past fields in which farm workers are laboring. No one has ever sad anything to me, but as they watch me go by I can tell that they're thinking exactly what that woman said to you.

I wouldn't feel guilty about it; but don't forget to appreciate the fact that you can afford the luxury of physical exertion as recreation. Not everyone can.

Homeless guy chased after me with his own shit in his hand. He eventually threw his turd at me, but thank God it missed.

I was running on campus with the rest of

the xc team (I run d2 😃) we got hit by a bag of trash once when some lazy person decided to throw it out their dorm window instead of taking it to the dumpster. 😡

Fast Ass wrote:

Chicks find tanned guys hot....

The only heckles I get are usually from pasty-white guys. It seems like all the tanned dudes know what's up and they don't bother me.

I've gotten really tan. Like, do I come from California? But I'm actually from Boston, bro.

So true.

And if the pasty white guy is in a a moving vehicle, it's usually a Ford F-150 that edges onto the shoulder then guns the engine to blow some coal in your face.

Unless you're a woman, then it's wolf whistles and misogyny.

Alabama runner too, as non conductive to running the culture is in AL I can honestly say I have had no one throw anything at me. An occasional F*g and run Forrest run. Have ran in many different AL cities too.

Beer can on my head, but it was aluminum and

Diggie wrote:

Homeless guy chased after me with his own shit in his hand. He eventually threw his turd at me, but thank God it missed.

Maybe you should have caught it and sold it on the black market for anyone who needed a 💩 transplant....🤔

My name is actually Forrest, so when I get the occasional "Run , Forrest, run!" little do they know how accurate they really are.

I get called "fag" at least a couple times a year while running. Pretty sad and never really made sense to me, anyway. Maybe its just the running shorts. I had a conversation with a couple gay friends about this just to see if they had any special insight, and they didn't. Just stupid people yelling stupid stuff. As gay men, they get nasty stuff yelled at them all the time, so they didn't have a whole lot of sympathy for the stupid shit straight guys have to put up with once in a while. As a white man, my experience with this crap pales in comparison to pretty much every other person on the planet.

1974, Central Park, NYC. Running with 2 buddies, one of them a former Army Ranger. A beater with no plates passes us and I hear the car back fire. Ranger pushes me down to the ground my head in the dirt. It was no backfire, we were shot at by a handgun. It was in the "nice" part of the park west side mid 70s. Fortunately he missed.

Beer bottle hit me in the chest, I was very lucky it missed my face. As fate would would have it I saw the same car in a Safeway parking lot about five months later (it was a unique looking paint job and model). I waited until nobody was around and I went over and kicked in the drivers door panel and took off.

Damn, what a depressing thread.

Uncico C. wrote:

Ghost of Igloi wrote:

I ran cross country and track at Oklahoma State. We would do what we called "pasture runs" across farm land. One time a farmer started shooting at us. We avoided that location in the future.

Igy

Maybe you were trespassing 🤔

Oh - then by all means, attempt to murder them. After all, they were trespassing on a field.