Wildest Training Run Encounter

one time i was running with a group of guys, just doing an easy 8 or so at about 9:30 in the morning. we were in this park that's got a reputation for gay activity, it's actually been a real problem, the police have gotten involved. so this morning, we were running by the river, and we came to a corner. the guy next to me just starts pointing up ahead, and another yells "holy shit!" and i look, and see some dude's bare pale ass. he's scrambling to pull up his pants, and there's this other guy pulling up his pants and running away. one of the guys on the team saw the dude's junk, but i tried not to look to hard. all this at 930am

this may not be wild to some of ya'll but I was in Ft. Collins at a camp for a week & I wanted to run to the top of a mountain. Well to shorten up the run I went off the trail & decided to head straight up instead of around & 100 yards later I came upon an area w/bunch of rattle snakes rattling at me & I was about 5 ft from one. Me never seeing a rattler before jumped about a mile! & got back on the trail.

Here's another one...

Returning home from a run with my two dogs, we had to pass the same little Amish cemetary that we had run past on the way out. The cemetary is on a narrow dirt road, with very little traffic, and is only one acre. Most of the headstones are dated from the early 1900's. I was suprised to come upon a funeral service that had just begun. Not wanting to just run by and wave, we (dogs and myself) stopped and paid our respects. What was I to do? There was no other easy way home.

I was running a 10 miler with a friend on a country road. Then a dog jumped out of the bushes (I swear it was waiting for an ambush). It almost landed on my right leg. I did my best impression of Barry Sanders to avoid tripping over the dog and we bolted from running 7:00 pace to 5:00. I swear, a dog with saliva drippin down and a pit-bullish demeanor will make even dead tired legs into fresh ones.

my sophomore year in college we went to maryland for xc camp before the season started. me and my training group, about 10 of us, we out doing a trail run that took us on some open fields and wooded trails. we come running up over this peak and we see this massive black dude giving it to this tiny white chick doggy style. we all just stopped and started laughing. it was the craziest thing i have ever seen on a run

two stories, not too wild, one was my boss and I out for a run near our work, in a bad part of town, when suddenly we hear and almost FEEL a sound behind us. I turned around to see him facing a rottweiler (or a pitbull, memory is weak, all I know is I was scared shitless). All I could think of was that I was faster than him, and a just a weak-armed distance runner. Eventually the dog's owner called him back, the owner being half-drunk on the porch, at noon.

The other story was running at noon at another location, and the park nearby was said to be a gay hang-out, which of course I couldn't believe, until I ran past some 70 year old's ugly old Cadillac, and he made a hole out of his mouth. Almost punched him, it pissed me off so much, but just decided his lonely life wasn't worth the pain to my hand. Needless to say, didn't run near any cars in that park.

Oh, just thought of a third story, had a dog follow me for a good six miles or more, when out in the country for a run. Never seemed to care, just enjoyed the run, don't know what happened to the dog, could've be a good training partner.

Fourth story, swear it is the last, some guy tried to convince my girl and I to help him push some van up a snow covered hill for a quarter mile or more, we just ran on. Five miles later the guy jumps out of his car and threatens us because we didn't help, fortunately he was on the other side of a snowy median. I thought he'd nail me with a crowbar, my girlfriend told me later she'd have kicked him in the nuts from behind him if he'd tried. I knew I had to marry that girl if she has an attitude like, and I did, almost 20 years ago. Still married. Saw that guy's car, engine idling, a week later, with no one inside. Worst temptation ever to drive it off into the nearby river, but did not.

I am not sure if this classifies as a wild encounter, but I a previous teammate always way a base ball type of cap, so this one day it is really windy out and we decide to go around the broadwalk on the lake..It is like 45 degrees out and the lake is probably 40 or so...anyways my teammate's hat flies off into the frigid water and before I could say "thats to bad" he dove into the water sporthills on and all just to save his hat! That was pretty funny..needless to say he did not finish the run..he had to run a mile back to the college all wet!

Too many crazy moments that are difficult to put in words?but my 15 minutes include finding a dead guy while running, it was in the middle of January and since we found them had to wait in sweaty shirts out in the cold. The crappy part was they refused to give us a ride home (it was 3 hours since we initially set out for the run) and the newspaper called us ?joggers? the next day.

Outside of that experience the ?beer mile? is always a fan favorite at my University. Our assistant coach would always come to practice with booze on his breath and we would talk trash back and forth. Good times?especially since it was a private ?Christian? University (funny, but no one on the team was religious?) Anyways we all chipped in for the beer and put one guy in charge. Well he comes back with ?Hams? which I have to say is the most disgusting beer I have ever tasted (my apologies if you like that crap). Anyways when we were finished we had a bunch of beer cans and some unfinished 12 packs so we put the beer on his porch and spread the 40-50 can all over his on-campus housing lawn across the street from the church. Funny, he didn?t mind the joke but he came to practice the next day because it was shity beer.

Between those and the mud wrestling fight between two girls on the cross team who were consequently in white shirts, That was the time of my life? I beleieve my coach's words were, "What the hell happened to you two"

1. I used to run along a dirt road that ran next to a creek between a couple of hills. For several days there was a pile of debris that hadn't been there before, rocks, dirt, brush, etc. One evening, back from a run on that road, the TV news was showing the "debris pile" being removed. it was the remains of a murdered woman who'd been missing for several weeks.

2. On the "dead" theme, I also used to run through a big graveyard. There was a mausoleum that I'd always go past. One evening I heard pounding coming from inside the mausoleum. That persisted for three or four more times that I ran there. The time after that the pounding had stopped, but the mausoleum's window was shattered and the glass was lying on the ground OUTSIDE of the mausoleum, which means that whatever broke the window should have been inside.

3. Staying at a youth hostel in Turku, Finland, I went out for a run on a Saturday evening with a couple of friends. Somehow we got separated and I got lost and ended up running along a footpath next to a small river. There were trees and bushes next to the path and the path was just littered with passed-out, drunken Finns. I had to hurdle them constantly. Some were lying unconscious with their heads in a pool of vomit, there were little streams of urine running down the bank to the river, and every now and again, one would roll out of the bushes and into my path.

I have 2:

1.) Stopped by the French police b/c I am a chick & they were wondering who was chasing me.

2.) Witnessed the police in DC catch 2 men who had robbed a gas station.

Once I was doing a track workout on a highschool track after dark. A fence ran right along lane one. While cranking out a quick quarter a rabbit kept trying to get through the fence and kept bouncing out into the lane (I don't know why he didn't just go to the outside.) This progressed for about 30 meters before he suddenly stopped and I stepped on him. The rabbit got squished and I tripped and scrapped myself up and wacked my leg bad enough to end the workout.

personal expereince, running through some trails at school a bunch of us on a morning run came around a bend to see our coach who was also out for a run squatted over wiping his ass.

other interesting one is yesterday out on south boulder trail a poor lady got attacked by a cow and broke her pelvis in 2 spots

One Saturday afternoon I return to my dorm at Wake Forest to discover a rooster outside the front entrance....The rooster is kind of playing around the dorm and I chuckle to a couple of other guys about how this rooster might have gotten to the dorm....I think nothing more about the rooster...

Next morning I'm on a run around the trails on campus which happen to run adjacent to my dorm for a couple hundred meters....I notice from far away that someone is chasing an object with a large stick...I get a little closer and notice that the object being chased is the rooster that had been spotted the previous day....I also notice that the guy chasing the rooster happens to be a teammate of mine from Alabama....

I finish my run at that point and ask my teammate what he is doing? "Just messin", he says....I take a shower and go back outside to see what my teammate is up to....He explains that he is a little short on meal money and that he is chasing the rooster for sport....I tell him he is crazy and to leave the rooster alone....Later that morning I leave the dorm to go grab some grub....My teammate has gotten the rooster cornered in the bushes out front of the dorm and is clubbing the rooster to death.....

Later that day, my teammate plucks and cleans the rooster, stuffs the bird with some vegetables and cooks the bird in the dorm oven.....Later that night two of my teammates and my next door neighbor, along with my rooster-killing teammate, proceed to eat the bird as I take pictures with my roommate Stuart Burnham's camera.....They tell me it's tender meat but I don't have the heart or stomach to eat the rooster....

The next Thursday in the school newspaper, a picture of the rooster ran with this text: "On Saturday this rooster was spotted outside of Palmer dorm...On Sunday, a Piccolo resident killed it".....

The PETA people were all pissed off and my teammate gets called into the dean's office....Upon closing the door, the dean starts laughing and asks my teammate why he killed the bird....My teammate tells the dean that he caught or killed 50% of his family's food growing up and he thought that the bird would meet an untimely death as it was.......

My teammate transferred back to his beloved Alabama at the end of our sophomore year and joined the water ski team....I haven't heard whether he happened to hunt any wild game while he was a student there.....

Kyle Armentrout

Here's another "coach running during school" story, I only wish the coach was me because it's damn funny...

My HS cross coach ran during his free period nearly every day. As he got more seniority and pull, he even had his teaching schedule arranged so he had his choice of free block.

Back in the '70s, the last time smoking pot was as popular as it is now, he was finishing up his run and came upon a kid smoking up in the woods outside an elementary school that was a quarter mile or so from the high school. He yells at the kid, who runs in a side door of the elementary school. My coach in hot pursuit. He's close enough behind that he figures the smoker ran into the school gym, which was empty at the time. My coach goes in there, sees no one inside. He quietly walks over to the supply closet and listens. Sure enough he hears the labored breathing of the pothead.

My coach opens the door on the kid and there he is, caught red-handed. This is where things get interesting. Instead of grabbing the kid and dragging him the 1/4 mile back to school, my coach makes him an offer. If he can make it to the back door of the school before my coach does, he won't tell anyone; if my coach beats him back, he'll get written up. And with that, my coach starts running.

Pothead takes a few seconds to realize what just happened, but soon my coach can hear his clumsy foot-slapping and heavy breathing getting closer. Mind you, my coach is intentionally letting him get close. When the kid comes even with my coach he picks up the pace juuust a bit. Pothead, already going all out, reaches down further but he's already rigging with at least 100 yards to go to the door. My coach (in his early 40s at the time) had to slow down again to keep him close. As it turns out, he had no intention of beating the kid to the door--he didn't want to have to fill out the paperwork.

Putting on a good show, pretending to rig himself, my coach lets the kid pass him as they cross the school parking lot. Pothead makes it back to the door mere steps ahead of my coach. He grabs the door handle...and pukes all over himself.

To top it all off, there was a PE class playing tennis on the courts next to the parking lot, and they all saw the tail end of this little race and its conclusion.

road kill wrote:Once I was doing a track workout on a highschool track after dark. A fence ran right along lane one. While cranking out a quick quarter a rabbit kept trying to get through the fence and kept bouncing out into the lane (I don't know why he didn't just go to the outside.) This progressed for about 30 meters before he suddenly stopped and I stepped on him. The rabbit got squished and I tripped and scrapped myself up and wacked my leg bad enough to end the workout.

I nominate this for the best story ever on here. I about pissed myself laughing. You've got to have more where that came from!!

Glad you liked the story. My reaction was similar to yours when I heard my coach tell it.

I have one other story. While not about a training run encounter, it is running-related, more or less.

When I was coaching indoor, we had our dual meets at a track about an hour's drive from the school. We were on the way home from a meet. As was my custom, I was sitting up front, in the coaches' seat, reading the bus driver's copy of the Boston Herald. Suddenly, a great commotion broke out in the back of the bus, lots of whooping and laughing. I turn around and it looks like a fight has broken out. Since kids are laughing, I figure it must be some sort of joke. Nonetheless I go back there to calm things down because the kids aren't supposed to be playing pigpile during bus rides. When I get back there I see right away it IS serious, one kid, kind of a hothead, whose shirt and face were wet, is really mad and trying to beat the living crap out of another kid, who's not putting up a fight. Others are trying to get the angry kid off the passive one. I have to grab the kid and scream in his ear to knock it off. I ask him what's going on, but he won't tell me. I ask the other kid, the one getting the beating, the same question, and get the same response. Meanwhile, the kids sitting around them are cracking up, which I find to be very odd. What's also odd is that the kid getting beat on is one of the quietest, most unassuming people I had ever coached. Deferential to a fault. For his own safety, I take the passive kid with me back up to the front of the bus, and tell both of them we'll be having a talk when we get back to school.

We get back to school, I have the quiet kid walking behind me. I get into my office, turn around...and he's gone. I go to the locker room, he's not there either. The hotheaded kid is there, changing his clothes after taking a shower. I make sure he joins me in the office so I can find out what the hell happened. Well, here's what happened: the quiet kid really, really, needed to take a leak. So he used an empty gatorade bottle. Apparently, some knucklehead freshman thought this was just too gross, and he convinced the kid that he should throw the bottle out the bus window. So the urinator cracks open that small rectangular window, throws the bottle...and it hits the side of the window and bounces back in the bus. And of course, the cap comes off, and his piss ends up splashing the hotheaded kid.

The girls' coach (who was on the girls' bus and is just getting up to speed on all this nonsense) is the only other person in the office as hothead tells me this. I look over at him, and he looks just as dumbfounded as I feel. All I can do is apologize to the hothead. My coaching colleague asks me where the other kid is, and I admit that I lost track of him. He points out that we have to find this kid before he leaves the school. Realizing he's right, we both leave the office and start searching the school. We head over to the school lobby, where kids wait for their parents to pick them up. This is January, so the kids are waiting inside. I ask a track kid who's waiting in the lobby if he's seen our perp, and he goes "uhh, coach, he's uhh....outside." So we go outside, in the 10 degree weather, and see the kid standing behind a bush. I say his name, no response. Like he's hoping we'll go away or something. I say his name a little louder, and he sheepishly walks over. He won't look me in the eye, he's giggling uncontrollably, and he can't wipe the grin off his face. Knowing this kid's personality, I know he's doing this because he's so embarassed, but the other coach doesn't think so and it's making him very angry. I ask the kid what happened, and slowly, painfully, the truth comes out amid numerous apologies. As I'm trying to explain to him why this is not acceptable behavior (and trying not to laugh my ass off), his mother pulls up. She gets out of the car with a worried look on her face. When the coaches are standing there all-serious like talking to your kid in the freezing cold, something's up. Seeing her, I send the kid to wait a few yards away as I attempt to explain to the mom what has happened. Ever struggle for the right word? Ever really struggle for the right word? Imagine me trying to explain to this woman that her son had pissed in a bottle and then tried to throw it out the window. As the story slowly, painfully comes out of my mouth, I watch the shame and anger wash across this woman's face. She apologizes, profusely, and assures me it won't happen again. I point out that I have no doubt about that. After a few more apologies, she turns to leave. Doesn't say a damn thing to her kid except his name, he follows her to the car and gets in. As they drive off, I mention to the girls' coach that it may be the last time we ever see that kid.

To wrap things up, I had the kid write an apology to the aggrieved hothead. Whether the hothead ever exacted his revenge, I'll never know and I don't care to. When bottle-boy returned to practice, he got an ovation from his teammates.

hahahaha that one was pretty funny... i was thinking the hothead might have taken a sip of the "lemon-lime" gatorade... good times.

Many winters ago I was running up a long hill on a dirt road that was more or less glare ice except for a portion along the shoulder. I rounded a turn and was greeted by the sight of a gigantic roan bull standing calmly on the other side of the road. I noticed that the "fence" apparently meant to serve as a barrier between the bull's property and the public domain was a low stone fence (not that the theoretical value of this barrier or the lack thereof meant anything at this stage).

Gentlemen, a bull is an example of a truly big-ass, mean-ass-looking animal when viewed up close. He just watched me pitter-patter on by (for whatever reason this seemed a better idea than stopping and fleeing in the other direction) in the same detached manner I might observe a spider scuttle across my bedroom floor while knowing full well I could crush it given the proper motivation.

I thought I was out of the proverbial woods when I saw a fully loaded logging truck coming down the hill toward me (or us). I noticed something odd about its approach and after a few seconds I realized its wheels were locked and it was just sliding along the ice. I run facing traffic, so I was right in its path.

As much as I wished to continue putting distance between myself and the bull (known from this point in the story forward as Scylla), I just as strongly did not want any part of a truck-turned-toboggan carrying several tons of payload (known from this point in the story forward as Charybdis), so I eased into the ditch to wait out the storm. The oddest thing I noted during this entire hairy scene was that the truck's driver was beaming broadly and almost sleepily as he whizzed past, unconcerned as could be. The bull never moved from his post in the oppostite lane; somehow that did not seem as odd.

I continued running but glanced back to see that the truck's wheels had recaptured the crucial element of friction at the bottom of the hill. I glanced back again at the top of the hill, maybe 300 yards away, and saw the bull still standing there. He may still be there.

I've seen gruesomely ugly people scrumping in beater cars, one of my former history teachers cuddling next to a path with a girl who had just graduated from the high school common to all three of us, and once, a man with a very zitty ass humping what I believe was a stategically located hole in the a pine-needle-covered ground of a state forest. It amazes me that non-runners believe any wooded area more than 100 yards from a road is "isolated." They don't factor runners into their world view, that's for sure.