Any scary/weird running experiences?

Like fisky, I love this thread and while I've already posted one experience, here's another one.

I was running on a quiet, rural/residential road near dawn on an extremely foggy morning. Visibility was maybe 10 meters. I heard something moving, looked over and saw a giant black Rottweiler-ish dog charging at me out of the fog--very Hound of the Baskervilles-esque. I have been bitten by a dog exactly once in 40-plus years of running alone in all kinds of places and my normal response to an aggressive dog is to meet it with a very aggressive posture, but something told me that might be a bad idea with this dog. Instead I stopped, froze in place, and avoided eye contact as the dog charged. He stopped a few feet away, hackles up and growling, and walked slowly toward me. I stayed frozen as the dog began to sniff at my feet, still stiff and growling. He slowly raised his sniffing to my shins, knees, thighs, and hips, and as he sniffed his hackles gradually went down, he stopped growling and his posture became more relaxed. By the time he reached my waist he looked almost friendly. Then, in a remarkably gentle and delicate way for such a big dog, he stood up on his hind legs, put his front feet on my shoulders (this was a BIG dog!) and began licking my face. I gave him a big hug and gently pushed him down, and then my only problem was trying to stop him from following me. Eventually he did decide to go back to his own home. I ran down that street from time to time later on and never saw the dog again.

Fresh mountain lion tracks after a night of rain in the am, going both ways near where I was camping on a fast pack run of three days. About a half day hike run to any road crossing. Luckily there were deer tracks as well.

fisky your story sounds like the beginning of a horror film.

Were there wolves around?

My one is more tame but it reminded me of another:

I used to do a long run in a loop on some fields. There was a stream crossing that was always fine. Id get to it, throw my keys over then jump across. I didn't want to jump with keys in my hand or on me so it always seemed easier to do that.

One day I went to the fields and I was trying to beat my previous time. I approached the stream and without really looking properly as I didn't want to stop threw my keys over... then realised the stream had risen a lot and it was more like a long jump over two metres or so. The bank was steep so you had to run up to jump.

I stood there for a bit and wasn't sure whether to even try it, but my keys were on the other side and I didn't want to leave them there. People walked their dogs over on the other side. I also would've had to run about twice as far to retrace my steps, run around to the other side and then run back.

I wasn't sure if I would land in what was really quite a fast moving river now but I decided to stop thinking about it and ran and jumped. My feet hit the grass right by the edge of the other side and I fell forwards onto my hands but I was over.

I never threw the keys over again.

Nothing awful has ever happened but there have been a few occasions on trail where a woman is walking a dog alone and you can tell that she is fearful of me running towards her. This has happened so many times that I'm past caring. If you get scared then don't walk alone on trails. Simple.

On a serious note, I made a wrong turn off LSD (not the drug though) during the height of the summer of love of 2020 at dusk. Heard a shooting

-In 2013, bandited the last 5 of Boston (I know, I know, was a BC student), went through the finish line and cut over a few blocks to come back, and by the time I came back to campus I found out the bombings had happened between when I crossed the finish and my miles back.

-Hypothermia in Boston 2018

- Breaking my hip twice on a gym treadmill

That’s it? I spent over a decade in Chicago and ran solo on the South Side. I’m a woman. You are a pathetic pu$$y.

only teenage boys voluntarily type out "pu$$y" using dollar signs

Ran through Roland park. Simply terrifying

It’s senior year of high school ‘92 and I’m running a hard 6-mile loop around Point Lobos State Reserve when I quickly come up behind two older ladies talking loudly and walking side-by-side, taking up almost the width of the entire trail.

Since the trail was twisty, I had just enough time to say “Excuse me!”, but apparently they didn’t hear it, so I end up having to side skirt past them almost off trail into some intense poison oak. As I blast by, I hear gasps of surprise, so I call out “Sorry!” and keep going.

About thirty minutes later on the other side of the park, as I’m nearing the end of my run, I encounter the same two ladies, but by this time it’s getting dark they are coming toward me, so I’m not 100% sure who they are, especially since it would’ve taken an aggressive hike (and possibly a drive) to beat me to the spot coming from the opposite direction.

As I run toward them, I’m debating this and whether to stop and apologize again, when suddenly one of them lunges at me, grabs the collar of my shirt, and with spit flying out her mouth and her face twisted in a furious mask, screams “YOU G*DDAMN C**KSVCKER!!!!!” and attempts to drill me with a full roundhouse punch to the head.

Mind you, this b*tch was approaching 70 years old, so I was able to duck in time, but it was very startling to a 17 year old. I ripped myself from her claws, backed away and said, “You. Crazy. C*NT!!!”, then turned around. As I run away, I hear them screaming about getting the park rangers, calling the cops, and whatnot. Lol!

This is a true story and I am so happy it happened. It brings me comfort knowing those ladies are most likely dead by now.

A bird shiit on me once during a team run in high school. I grabbed a coupon mailer out of someone's mailbox and wiped it off my shoulder the best I could.

Once in a storm a branch hit my head, it left a cut on my scalp where hair no longer grows.

I've been running since 1977, so I have had a few. So, in no particular order:

1. Teammate and I had a shotgun pointed at us by a guy in a 4x4. He thought he was being funny.

2. Jumped over the grassy area between tire tracks on a dirt road. Had a small rattlesnake jump up at us. Fortunately, we surprised it as much as it did us.

3. Being attacked and bitten by a large German Shepherd. Trip to the hospital.

4. Other dog encounters too numerous to mention.

5. Caught the toe of my running shoe on a raised portion of concrete on a trail in a park in Tucson. Lots of bruises and road rash.

6. Fell through a "fake" utility cover in a sidewalk. They used painted particle board instead of the real thing. Got a settlement out of that.

7. Nearly being run over dozens of times, especially in crosswalks.

Had a horse poke its head through a hedge when I was running at night. It snorted right in my face. It scared the life out of me as it was so unexpected and I couldn't really see its body, just a looming horse head appeared. It was misty too!

I once drank a half gallon of green tea with honey before a long run then had so much gas I thought I was going to die in the woods.

Got diagnosed with schizophrenia at 25 and the 6 months leading up to that were some of the weirdest runs of my life. Most of it was the stereotypical unpleasant hallucinations and intense paranoia, but once in a while I'd get something so ridiculous that I found it kind of funny in an "Oh sh*t I've finally lost it" kind of way. At one point I think I wandered off down the lake during our club's Christmas run convinced I'd just seen the next coming of god, though I somehow managed to pass that one off with some excuse about getting lost because it was one of those scavenger-hunt type events.

There were also a few times where I felt like I had no instinctual familiarity/memory of places or routes I'd run a million times before- I could navigate my way around if I thought about it, so I guess I technically knew where everything was, but in the moment I could swear I'd never seen any of it before. First time I thought I had some kind of brain injury or selective memory loss or something.

I stopped to pee on a single track trail ounce. When I finished I took a few steps and heard rustling. Turned around and a black bear was coming out of the bush to sniff where I just “marked.” Dropped a pretty quick mile after that.

I was warming up at a track meet in Portland a few years back. There was another guy in the warmup area acting a bit zoned out and also staring for an uncomfortably long time at some high school girls getting ready to run a mile race. I then recognized him as a frequent and quite infamous LRC poster.

Not kidding.