The Horror Of Running On A Dark, Rainy Winter Morning And Careering Into The Back Of A Gentleman.

I cannot sleep tonight so I thought I’d regale you all with one of my running horror stories.

It was 6am on my 27th birthday in January 2011. It was freezing outside and raining quite heavily. There was no sign of the sun rising whatsoever.

I’d just made it to the half way point of my usual run around the Downshire area of my home town and was heading back homeward.

I hit the main road back into town and a car shown its lights in my face. Since I wear glasses, my visibility is poor in rain and even more so in the dark.

Anyway I was jogging along and out of nowhere I felt this huge bump on my head and immediately suspected that I’d ran into a lamp post.

Since I could not see what was in front of me, I reached out and touched what I thought was the guilty obstacle.

I took my rain smeared specs off to check I hadn’t made a dent in either it or my head.

To my surprise, this was no light fitting.

A man in his 50’s was staring toe-to-toe with me with eyes that blazed ‘C’mon then you fucker!’

Not a real picture of the gentleman. But the grimace’s definitely accurate.

I was not out for a fight. I was only trying to run 5 miles without drowning in a puddle or getting mauled by a shit hound.

After an awkward moment of silently sizing each other up, I fled like a girl without saying anything to him.

I’m glad that I remained silent too for if I’d apologised to him, it would’ve seemed that it was my intention to run into the back of him and curiously paw at his head like an oversized cat on crack.

Fleeing was the only thing to do.

After this experience I investigating purchasing one of those miner cap lamps for night running.

I changed my mind when I rationally thought it through and realized that if I wore one whilst in my flourescent running gear, then some elderly driver all elved up on Horse Prozac would mistake me for a ghost, mount the pavement and hit his accelerator and the wipers.

Nowadays I just try not to run in the dark at all.

Much less hassle.