"The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly; who errs and comes short again and again; because there is not effort without error and shortcomings; but who does actually strive to do the deed; who knows the great enthusiasm, the great devotion, who spends himself in a worthy cause, who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement and who at the worst, if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly. So that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat." -Theodore Roosevelt



Thursday 28 March 2013

The Tw@ts you come across whilst on a run

We all cross paths with them, the scrotes of the universe who think they’re Ricky Gervais/Michael McIntyre/Billy Connolly/Miranda Hart/Reg D Hunter/I’m running out of comedians now/delete as applicable, or just generally little $hits…

They normally fit into three categories:

Verbal abuse

‘Keep running’, ‘go faster’, ‘run Forrest run!’, ‘I could run faster than you’, ‘you’re $hit’.


Yes as runners we’ve heard them all, no matter what line they come up with, it won’t be original, and it certainly won’t be funny.

My reaction to this in the past has ranged from giving people the finger, shouting expletives, to lifting my top to show my wash board stomach (I’m joking – about the lifting my top, not about the wash board stomach, obviously !)

Nowadays I just ignore it – this is made much easier because I’m either with my running club, or when running on my own I have my earphones in so can pretend not to hear them.

Physical abuse

Hopefully this is something no runner ever has to come to terms with, but sadly, I hear stories of this from running friends all too often. One had a bottle of strawberry milkshake thrown at them (which hit them, causing pain and stickiness). I myself have had stones thrown at me by a gang of cowardly youths… It was a group of 4, and, standing on the other side of a canal I always run down they started to throw stones at me… Luckily I am the pint sized torpedo, so they never stood a chance of hitting me, but very dangerous none the less.

At the time I got really mad about it and shouted at them. I’ve no doubt if there wasn’t a canal between us they would never have had the balls to throw stones at me, or that I would have marched right up to them and done them some damage (one fit runner versus 4 runty youths is no contest).

Even typing about it now makes my blood boil; I can deal with it, but what if it was an older runner who couldn’t get out of the way and was hit?

So yes, physical abuse – the lowest of the lows form scum of the earth

Hired ninja

AKA dogs! Small dogs, big dogs, skinny dogs, stocky dogs… The silent ninjas who are there to ankle tap you or try and play with you. I find they are most prevalent towards the end of a long slow run, particularly a really difficult one, and when you’re on a canal path where the chances of taking a dunk are high.

Now, I’m a dog person, I love dogs, but if you can’t control your dog ‘you gotta keep that thing on a leash damn’. I must stress: the majority of dog owners are great, as with anything it is the small minority that are the problem… Even worse are the ones who are offended by me being annoyed at nearly biting the dust due to their disobedient dog. C’est la vie!!

No comments:

Post a Comment