I posted this in my local running thread and maybe i shouldn't be surprised but it was met with lots of misogyny and victim blaming and ultimately removed by mods, so posting here instead.
Apologies for the long post but I need to get this off my chest. For the most part I am always pleasantly surprised with how kind and wonderful fellow runners are but last night I had a pretty shitty experience that I just need to put out there.
I'm a woman in my 30's, living in a big city. Last night I had to do a speed workout but unfortunately the track in my area has been under construction for what feels like 84 years and so I do most of my speed work on an area of waterfront piers that are designated for exercise and that I've run on a million times.
On the piers it can can be kind of hard to see around the corners and it can be fairly crowded (but still lots of space!) so its common to have to navigate other people and throw out an occasional "whoops sorry didn't see ya coming!" On my last repeat I was looping the pier and kind of hauling ass, running perpendicular to --what i would soon find out--was the path of a middle aged man also running.
I come around the corner, I don't see him at first, --and while I in no way ran into him--I did perhaps cut him off slightly for about 4.5 seconds. Complete accident but maybe minorly annoying so I wave my right hand as I pass him and say "sorry! didn't see you!" Which I have done and witnessed many others do countless times. I finish my rep and slow to a shuffle and the dude catches up to me and starts shouting "DO YOU KNOW WHAT I WOULD HAVE DONE TO YOU IF YOU WOULD HAVE TAKEN ME OUT BACK THERE?!?" (mind you I'm 5'2 and he's prob a foot taller than me-- I was moving but I wasn't going 45 mph). I call after him and just say "my bad, we're all just doing our best out here and thankfully I didn't 'take you out'"
My minute of recovery ends and now I have to run a couple easy miles home and I catch back up to the guy and he makes a face at me. At this point I'm pretty pissed because did he really just threaten me? So I try to point out that it's kind of ridiculous that he's threatening me over something I didn't even do by saying calmly "so, back there you asked if I knew what you would do to me if I had bumped into you...what would you have done?"
He responds, "I would have called the cops on your ass," I was taken aback and said, "sorry you would have called the cops on me if I had accidentally bumped into while running?" to which he said "1000% I would have called the cops on you bitch." I asked if he had a wife or daughter or sister (since it seems like so many men need PERSONAL examples to experience empathy) and started to ask how he'd feel if a grown man was treating one of them that way but he cut me off screaming at me that I was a Karen (my tone was calm and I wasn't the one yelling about the cops). Just repeatedly calling me a Karen until I just stopped running so that he would pass me.
I'm so upset and angry at this point that I'm on the verge of tears but I collect myself and keep running. I hit the next pier -- the one with the soccer field--and cannot BELIEVE my eyes: he is with his WIFE picking up HIS TWO DAUGHTERS from soccer practice. I'm enraged and decide I'm not letting this dude just get away with this poor behavior. I try to get his attention but he beelines away from me. His WIFE however, does notice me. I tell her that her husband threatened me and at first she is confused but as I explain her face drops. I let her know I'm just a woman--like her and like her daughters will one day be--running alone, and being threatened by a grown man for hypothetically bumping into him made me feel really uncomfortable. I told her that I HOPE this was just a one time thing and that she didn't need help. I could tell by the sick-to-her-stomach look on her face she understood and also that she wanted the conversation to be over. And honestly, if someone told me this about my husband I'd be so icked out, I'd probably want a divorce.
In short: I am SO angry. These are the men that claim they are leaders, protectors and providers. The men that vote against women in leadership positions because they're just "too emotional to handle the responsibility." The men raising children with kind and strong partners who have to answer for their poor behavior. I am lucky to know some very wonderful men who I cannot FATHOM behaving this way but I also have had many an unpleasant, unsolicited, and unwarranted encounter with strange men who are just never held accountable. I hope the upstanding men out there will start holding these assholes accountable because they're making you look bad and the burden shouldn't have to be on the women who happen to cross paths with them (literally and figuratively).