This morning I went out for a leisurely 6-mile recovery run on a couple of different cross-country fields in Percy and Edwin Warner Parks. As I was rounding a clump of trees about midway through the run I noticed a man standing about 100m away coiling up what looked like a rope. I then noticed a medium sized dog right in front of him and realized it was a leash.
As soon as the dog saw me, he took off toward me in a full sprint. He left the ground a few feet in front of me and hit just at the top of my quads. Thankfully this did not knock me down (or hurt me), but the dog continued to jump up and claw at me frantically. Needless to say this scared the daylight out of me, but my fear quickly turned to anger when the owner came over trying to calm him down.
Instead of trying get control of his dog, he started fussing at me!
“If you stop moving around so much he’ll calm down”
Ummm…running generally requires “moving around”
“We never see runners out in the morning”
Really? On a cross-country course? Never see runners?
Anyway, he finally came over retrieved his dog. I simply said “thank you” and continued my run. Other than being really dirty and having a few scratches, I came out unscathed. It amazes me that the guy never apologized, but I guess that really shouldn’t surprise me these days.
Oh well…got in the run anyway and generally felt good after the hard effort on Saturday.