Believe It Or Not: Four Tales Of Running

For anyone who has run almost daily for years, the benefits of running are not restricted to being physically healthy and mentally sharp. It's the stories that you can recount about your experiences running that serve as conversation ice breakers or just entertain the hell out of family and friends.

When you run a few miles every day, stuff just happens that interesting, odd, or outright bizarre. For many runners who hit the asphalt on their own, there are stories told where people will say, "Come on. Did that really happen?"

Submitted for your approval are just four stories I'd like to share. Sure, I have no written affidavits to prove any of them. But as runners, I believe you've had similar experiences and will understand the endless possibilities whenever you hit the road for a four- or five-mile run.

Hit Then Stop Then Run

It's 1983. I'm running in an industrial park in central New Jersey. It's about six PM in early October, so the sun is quickly dropping out of the sky. I am running with traffic on the shoulder, which is spacious enough that I can hug the manicured lawns that spread out in front of similar-looking warehouses. There's a steady flow of traffic with people anxious to get home.

Suddenly, instead of running, I am thrown in the air and flip about three times like an acrobatic act. I land on the cushy front lawn of a cosmetics warehouse. Naturally, I'm stunned as I lay on my back and stare at the darkening sky.

What just happened?

You've been hit by a car, I answer myself.

Then I do an inventory.

Legs. Check. Arms. Check. Pain. No. I think I'm all right.

I begin to sit up when a man approaches. His car, a Datsun B-210 is parked on the shoulder.

"Oh my God," he says. "Are you okay?"

"I think so," I answer. "What happened?"

"You were hit by a car, and the car just took off," the man answers with the appropriate disgust for someone who would hit a runner and then drive away.

As the man, middle-aged wearing a brown, nondescript warehouse, offers to help, a woman comes into my fuzzy field of vision, and she's yelling.

"You should be ashamed of yourself. What were you thinking?"

As she approaches, I realize that she's yelling at my rescuer.

Outrage is carved on her face.

"He’s trying to help me,” I manage to say.

Hands on hips, the woman unleashes, “Help you. This is the guy who hit you.”

The man in the warehouse uniform now freezes.

“You hit me with your car?” I half-ask and accuse.

He freezes for about 10 seconds and then begins to run toward his car.

He jumps in and takes off, cutting off several other cars during his escape.

The woman looks at me. “Did you get his plate number?”

“I thought he was helping me. So no. How about you?”

“No,” she responds. “I thought he might attack you.”

The woman offers – and I accept – a ride home.

On the brief drive, we can’t help but laugh at man’s inhumanity to man.

Does A Bear...In The Woods

In 2010 on a chilly November day and I am running on a country road with no homes in sight. After about two miles at my tortoise-like 11-minute mile pace, I felt the urge to go to the bathroom. For runners, this is a common affliction. The very act of running promotes bodily evacuation.

On the road's left side, the trees and underbrush are incredibly thick, and I quickly detour through a few bushes until I’m sure that I can’t be seen from the road. Squatting to do my business, I hear a rustling sound in the woods about 30 yards to my left.

As I glance over in that direction, I am confronted with the sight of a woman crouched in a similar position. We make eye contact. We can only see each other’s faces because the bushes are effective screens.

With a look mixed with embarrassment and humor, she waves.

I wave back.

Then I make a snap decision. I have to get back on the road before she does. So I quickly get myself ”road-worthy” and dash through the bushes and back onto the shoulder of the country road.

For the remainder of the run, I kept looking behind me to see if she was gaining on me. I never spotted her so she must have been running in the opposite direction.

Marathon Melissa

It’s my second marathon, and it’s on Thanksgiving Day in Atlanta in 1993. I’m about halfway done, and I am already struggling going into mile 14. My marathon time goal was modest – about 4:40 – so I wasn’t that worried about my time as much as I was just finishing. When it comes to marathons, I don’t monitor my breathing and continually assess my fitness like smart runners. No, I use the avoidance strategy. I just talk to other runners when I run to distract myself from the pain.

So far, I met a man who went from 400 pounds two years ago to a slim 180 now and entered in his first marathon. A woman who confessed that she told her boss she had a glass eye so she could snag a handicapped space. A man whose sole reason for running was to beat his ex-wife who got into great shape after she divorced him.

By mile 14, I was alone and in some pain. Then Melissa came long. In her 30s with a matching top, shorts, socks, and sneakers, Melissa was an attractive 30ish Atlanta native with a high-wattage smile.

Given that my calves screamed for sweet relief, I started up a conversation hoping that Melissa’s life story could distract me for a mile or two. Melissa told me that she was newly divorced because of infidelity, and I commiserated with her.

“Oh no,” Melissa answered. “I cheated on him. Multiple times. Want to hear more?”

Dear, sweet Melissa, and her sexual escapades kept my mind far away from my sore calves, exhausted lungs, and growing dehydration until mile 25.

My finish time was 4:28.

Next year, I needed to find Melissa to get an update on her life.

Trapped

It’s 1998, and I’m running a 10K race about 20 miles north of Atlanta in the affluent suburbs. It’s a race where the parking lot is packed with Benzs, BMWs, Jaguars, and the occasional Lexus. Because the clientele has high expectations, race officials have water stations at every mile with a porta-potty at every mile at the half-mile part, so there’s no traffic jam with the water station.

It’s a humid, northern Georgia September Saturday, and very quickly, the few hundred runners spread out based on skill and speed. By mile four, I am running 44 minutes, and I realize that no one is behind me. I think I’m dead last.

No other runner has shown up behind me by mile five, and now my neck hurts from all that turning around. How do giraffes do it?

I’m approaching the porta-potty about the five and a half mile mark, and I hear a female voice, “Help, I’m locked in the porta-potty.”

I don’t stop right away but look around to see if I’m on some hidden camera show.

“Are you out there?” the voice called out. Desperation cuts through the air.

I stop and walk over to the blue porta-potty.

“Hello,” I say, almost as if it’s a question.

“Oh, thank goodness,” the female voice cries out in relief. “I’ve been trapped in here for 20 minutes. The plastic lock is jammed and won’t move.”

“Did you call out before?” I ask.

“No,” she answers, irritated. “I was too embarrassed. Now I’m dying of heat in here.”

I look around one more time. There’s no one around. I’m on my own.

So I try trial and error, first pushing on the door from my side, then attempting to push open the plastic roof cover or even lift the plastic shell from the base.

Nothing.

“Please,” she implores. “I’m dying of sweat in here.”

“Okay,” I begin with a plan forming. “I’m going to try and slam into the door with a running start.”

“Do you think it will work?” she asks. “You could hurt yourself, or the door could fly open and slam into me.”

“Stand on the opposite side of where the door will open,” I instruct her as I begin to take deep breaths as if that hyperventilating will make me stronger.

I back up about 10 feet from the door and then explode into a run and slam into the door.

The door flies open, and my momentum carries me into the back of the porta-potty and the whole structure begins to shake.

Fluid from the receptacle begins to slosh out and onto both myself and the trapped woman.

I grab her arm and pull her up, and we escape the porta-potty and stand about 10 feet away, just staring at her recent prison cell. She’s been splashed, too.

Then she begins to laugh. Hard. Loud.

I start to laugh, and we begin to break into a trot as we run the last seven-tenths of a mile slowly.

At the finish line, our respective families see us and smell us.

Explanations are made to the race officials who are distressed about our experience. Since the number of runners was much less than anticipated, the woman – Gayle – and myself were presented with the leftover awards for our troubles.

So Gayle received first place in the 10-14 girl age group, and I was second in the boy 10-14 age group.

It remains to this day the only trophy I’ve ever received in a race.

I know what you’re thinking.

But I earned it.