A Lack of Running Etiquette

To my knowledge, there are etiquette rules that apply when males are using urinals in restrooms. (Please bear with me here.) My older brother A is emphatic on this, and I asked IP to confirm it yesterday: when you walk into a bathroom and see one of the urinals occupied, you attempt to put at least one empty urinal between yourself and the already-present user.

Men, why doesn’t this apply to workout equipment?

It never fails. The treadmills at my gym will be empty with little old me going 6.2 to 6.5 miles per hour on one of them during a training run. There is a vast row of treadmills, empty, waiting to be taken. And what does a guy do, without fail, every time I run? Clamber up onto the treadmill next to me, attempt to sneak peaks at my current pace, and punch up his pace at least two tenths while I’m gradually progressing by just one tenth. Guys, what is up with this?

I really suspect that, given the languid paces of most women at my gym, men see a woman who is actually going faster than 5.2 miles an hour as a challenge (I am sure that some men see it as an impingement on their manhood). I tend not to compete when training—the run is for me and no one else. Yet it is annoying, hugely annoying, when a man feels he absolutely must take the treadmill right next to me and proceed to attempt to “beat” me during the remainder of my run. What joy is there in this? Why must you antagonize me when all I want to do is get through 30 minutes successfully? Why must you run clumsily close to me (never mind the big handrails that separate us, right?) when trying to see how fast I’m actually going? I know that I go fast for most women in that gym—one of the employees there, also a runner, always tells me so—but must you take that so personally?

It’s been happening with some frequency since I returned to my running full-time; yesterday was another incident in this happy set of occurrences. One man in particular is very fast—no argument about that here—but he always seems to choose the machine next to me and furiously pumps his little arms faster when I punch up the speed in order to challenge myself. I try to give him the raised eyebrows of disbelief through the mirror, but he never witnesses this since he’s too busy trying to look at my treadmill’s readout. Forget that I cover it with a towel so I don’t have to see my pace and progress. I think he thinks he has x-ray vision.

This isn’t the first time I’ve experienced such competition as I run, nor will it be the last. At one time, I had compiled a list called “The Running Book of Memories” for a post, but I somehow never got around to publishing it on Sonnet87.com. Behold, though, the fragments of the post from January 11, 2006 (still in Michigan at that point):

**I think that the mailwoman was racing me yesterday. I was running in the subdivision, and the mail was actually delivered at a reasonable time (we have gone to bed on Saturday nights with our box empty—our mail magically appears before dawn on Sunday. I ask, why not just get it over with instead of wasting your day off?). The car was a few paces ahead of me, and I had no intention of trying to catch it, because let’s face it: Even at my fastest (around 6.8, 6.9 mph), I’m not going to catch the coasting car. I swear, though, the woman started to race me as soon as I came into view. I’d approach the car on foot, and she’d fumble like crazy to get the mail into the box, and then zoom ahead. I was amused, of course, and slightly puzzled since there was no way I was going to catch her. But aha, catch her I did when she fumbled a bit too much at one stop and I passed her. At road’s end, where the stop sign is, she gave cursory pause before zooming ahead once again. She then went into a cul-de-sac and I left the subdivision, running home to the tune of 5.22 miles. I was resting on my porch when she delivered our mail. I went to go get it, and lo and behold, all we got was crap. Blah.

I’ve definitely raced the newspaper dude before, and I actually did engage in a spirited footrace with some old guy in Toronto who decided that I would be his pacer (grrr, I hate that) and would pass me, staying at the most two steps ahead of me—that was quite annoying. Towards the middle of my run on that day, I just thought “Ah, fuck it!” and picked up the pace, passing the guy for good. Funny thing is, he always tried to do it when we were at the track at the same time—sometimes he won, sometimes he didn’t, but it was always annoying. I’m trying to get in a run, not let you prove yourself a man against the lowly graduate student, sir. Anyway, yesterday was amusing, though, because I’m never, ultimately, going to beat a car.

**Back in 2000, when I used the University of Michigan’s CCRB as my track of choice, there was always a morning crew, and I think we would be disappointed if we didn’t see one another. I remember there were two crotchety old men who would get mad if any newbies dared to run in the wrong direction on any given day, a blonde woman who had the cutest running clothes, an older woman who was so skinny and obviously sick it was saddening, and a guy who turned out to be a law student. Said law student once came up to me after a run and said, “Listen, you don’t know me, I don’t know you, but I just wanted to say that you’re awesome. Everyone else seems to miss a day, but you’re always here, setting the pace.” He was a pretty nice guy, but he ended up disappearing for a few months. When he came back, he had lost so much weight (and he wasn’t big before) and gotten very fast. He told me how his schedule had changed, but that he’d think of me and my constant presence at the track, so that made him do his afternoon runs even if he didn’t want to. Sigh—to have that kind of determination again. Actually, I think I’m getting it back. Yesterday was an awful run, but I finished it with flourish.

**Speaking of the track, I must say it. If you belong to ROTC (Rotsee!) at the University of Michigan and you head over to the CCRB for a timed run, please obey all the track rules, okay? You’re all very annoying when you start going in the wrong direction and talking loudly and trying to engage the regulars in conversation as they work out. Oh, and if you’re playing volleyball on the court and your ball bounces up onto the track, please don’t expect runners to stop. I know that sounds mean and uncooperative but I hate being interrupted during my run. And frankly, nine times out of 10, I’m not going to hear you because I’m pretty focused when I run. I’m not going to give you “a little help” when I’m trying to finish five or six miles, so please just drag your asses upstairs, okay? Thanks, ROTC and volleyball players.

**Going from moderately annoying to very rude: For some reason, on one Easter Sunday, a family took very unkindly to my run that morning. It was probably around 8am, 8:30am when I reached the halfway point in my old road run and turned back towards home. It was then that I encountered a family from probably the subdivision. As I passed their car (I was going east, they were heading west), the passengers proceeded to give me the finger. Whoa! What the hell? This was before my manic “You’d better not run me over, you turds” phase, so it’s not like they’d encountered my wrath before. I seriously think they were fundies who were offended that I was running on the day of the Lord’s resurrection. Because that’s the way to spread brotherly love on the most sacred of the Christian holidays, right?

**Outdoor runs at home led to outdoor runs at school. Towards the end of my time at the University of Michigan, I took to running in the streets only because I needed to get to work and the CCRB was not open early (in fact, I trace my running downfall to the moment I got a full-time job). I would run in safe areas, of course, but the place that gave me the biggest creeps was the student ghetto. Ugh, I hated running through there, and I probably shouldn’t have, but I just wanted to tack on as many miles as possible. It was okay when the streets were empty, but the few times when I saw guys, picking up cups from the night before, put me on edge, especially when they’d notice me and have to be crass and say something. However, the fun part of that run (though I didn’t know it at the time) was running past a certain bar I had not yet begun to frequent.

(Ed. Note: It’s now such a favorite that I’m focusing my search for wedding venues on the proximity of Dominick’s rather than the other important factors such as space and cost.)

Obviously not all dedicated to the impossible jerks who seem to think that racing me (or trying to race me) is a good ego boost, but the evidence still exists for past incidents. I think of the Toronto guy in particular and just fume—he was a Grade A asshole who somehow felt my being able to leave him half a track length behind was an insult directed solely at him. One time, we were joined by some Toronto undergrads who were a bit under trained. “Whoa, she’s fast!” a poor undergrad exclaimed of me (I’m really not—he was just really, really slow). Said poor undergrad then received a nasty look of contempt from the racing jerk (who was passing me on that day—what can I say, sometimes I felt sorry for him), who threw it over his shoulder with little grace and much assholery.

However, it cannot be said enough: there are much faster women in the world. Why is it that the idiots always end up on the treadmill next to me, or on my track?