roisin whyte

13.09.2020

I run in a park. It is a big park with a general parky-bit. A circular walking track with walkers, cyclists, dog and/or baby walkers, ducks swans and a family of Herons that took up residence during the lockdown. There are Jolly Joggers too. I say jolly, because they manage to conduct seemingly jolly conversations as they run.

I am not a jolly jogger. A big part of what I like about running is getting to do it on my own.

There are wilder parts of the park too. Dirt/gravel paths that are narrow  and winding and that came ever more leafy through the Lockdown Spring and Summer. The season of our dis/content. This is where I like to run.

I don’t listen to music when I run. I have had a lifelong fascination with sound. That mostly manifests as music obsession, but playing music when you have the opportunity of a natural soundtrack is odd. I am from the West of Ireland. Nothing will ever beat the sound of the Atlantic for me, but I’ll take a wood in the middle of Belfast.

I have wondered if there is another reason I don’t listen to music.

Am I a bit afraid to?

It was unusually quiet in the park this morning. I had a nice run. I encountered 3 men in the wood. Nothing untoward happened. Except in my head.

The first man had a mask, a stick and a dog. I rounded a corner and he was there. Were we not in (still) grappling with a global pandemic, I may have turned and run the other way. Below are just some the thoughts I had in approximately 10 seconds, and the conclusions I came to.

• Why does he have the mask on here, where there is no-one else around?
• How near am I to the car park/people?
• Am I going to seem like a psycho if I turn and run the other way?
• Will he be offended/insulted?
• He gave me a pleasant hello.
• He is wearing a mask. The scientists tell us “My mask protects you, your mask protects me”. Maybe he is a man of reason too.
• His little staffie dog is beautiful. The dog is off the lead, calm and friendly. It looks like it wants to say hello to me. This dog is not afraid of people. This dog is not afraid of the man. The man is kind to the dog.
• I run on. But faster.

Almost immediately I come off high alert when the man and his dog go on their way and I go on mine. I instantly return to whatever little fantasies I had going on (these distract me from the general discomfort of running sufficiently, so that I actually keep going!).

Shortly after I come to a narrow bridge over a small water feature. A man is coming towards me. I see him long before he sees me. He has headphones on and seems lost in his own world. He notices me as we approach the bridge and beckons me to come across ahead of him. It is a polite gesture. It is the running equivalent of meeting in our cars on a too-narrow street. He would  have flashed his lights to let me through, and I would have waved to him as I drove by. I crossed the bridge, and said cheers! He said mornin’, and ran on. I ran on too. But faster. And I checked twice that he hadn’t changed direction to follow as I was running into the most secluded part of the wood.

I don’t want to be like this. 99 times out of 100, I don’t/won’t need to. But it’s like insurance, is it? We pay for it, in case the thing that probably won’t happen, happens. Those men probably couldn’t imagine the micro thoughts I was having about them. They might be horrified/offended. They might think it was so daft as to be comical. It’s not though. It’s any number of things but it is not funny.

I don’t want to change where I run. I don’t think I should have to. But as winter draws in, and days grow shorter, I do think I may have to make changes. I have one idea below. Loosely, it’s a kind of run club. We meet in the park, I run in Victoria but it could move around, I guess. Folk can run in pairs/wee groups if they want. I would want to run on my own, but knowing that I had running buds nearby. We could go for coffee after, once a week or something. I don’t know. It’s just an idea. Open to men and women.

I would call it The Silent Run Club (which let’s face it, is why I want to do it. It’s an awesome name and if you steal it, I’ll ‘ave ya).

But this is probably one of my fleeting notions. Mostly, I want to start a conversation about this. I think.

****************************************************************

Thoughts/Observations on/whilst Jogging:

20.04.2020 – 24.04.2020

I jog in the morning. A very wise woman once told me that folk need a “wind-up” for their day, to get it started. (Think “wind down” but the opposite, and without gin). I do find jogging a good way to start my day that now consists mostly of homeschooling, despairing at the structural and aesthetic state of my house and garden, and contemplating the various forms life might take post lock-down.

Anyway, thoughts and observations…

– I see a few people regularly on my jogs now. 4 people, currently – 3 Men & a Lady. We’ve started to acknowledge each other. Well, one of the 3 men won’t respond when I wave/shout good morning. I will wear him down though. It’s nice. I’m always slightly disappointed when I don’t see these folk. I sometimes wonder if we would/could/should be friends. If you’ve seen me a 8am jogging, you’ve kind of seen the worst of me. It can only get better.

– Have birds gotten harder? As is hard-man harder. I’m sure that the birds in the park where I run take far longer to fly off as you approach, if they bother at all. The beautiful blackbird I ran past today didn’t fly and had a definite look of “well I ain’t moving” about her”

They seem to know that we colonised their space. And they’re taking it back. I hope I’m not imagining it.

– I’m only willing to jog at all because I can get close to trees, water, birdsong etc.  And because I get to do it alone.  That little bit of fear though. It never quite goes away. The fear that is peculiar to the lone female jogger, even if the reality of risk is very small. Below is a list off some of the things I do, at some point, pretty much every time I jog.

As soon as someone; (ok, a man), walks/jogs past me I instinctively turn my head to the side to see if he’s turning back.

I tend to run on dirt paths where I can. I like them more, but it’s also because I can hear whether there are other people near me more easily.

If I see 1 or more men going to a particularly quite stretch of my regular route, I will often, though not always change my route, even if I don’t want to.

Worst of all, I do these little things because a bit of me thinks it will be at least partly my fault if anything bad happens. I do all these little things because the absolute truth that I have the right to run where I want to free from fear, will be cold comfort when making a statement to the police. I do all these little things because I haven’t yet worked how I would advise my daughter if she asked me whether she should run in the woods on her own.