I was halfway through my mile warmup, an easy jog down to my sons’ elementary school and back, hugging the curb of low-traffic neighborhood streets, when it slammed into the quiet morning: the honk heard round the world.
It happens occasionally. Someone will see me—a friend, the parent of my sons’ friends, someone I met recently at a school function. They’ll honk a greeting, short, friendly, if still startling enough to shoot my heart rate into sprint zone. It might not be the sort of sound that startles everyone while out running, but it definitely shakes a woman out running alone.
Maybe they don’t think about it. I can forgive them that.
This honk was different.
The driver, whose face I didn’t see (though I assume it was a man), honked for a good three seconds, maybe longer. It was a calculated honk. A mean-spirited one. A threatening one?
It would be foolish not to consider that possibility, that it was a honk meant to scare me. Or warn me. Or make me feel small and afraid.
Get out of my way, it said. Get off the street, it said. Or else, it said.
Or else what? He’d return to make sure I moved, got off the street, ran through grass and rock and all sorts of dangerous tripping hazards? He’d run me over with his big white truck’s giant tires or his black Ford F-150 with windows so tinted you can’t see inside or his blocky silver Kia Soul (sadly, this is not the first time I’ve experienced this sort of harassment from drivers; I memorize all the makes and models, commit them to memory so I know what to look out for).
Or else he’d do worse?
Who can ever tell? I am, after all, a woman running in the dark, alone.
Running alone’s not safe at the best of times, and these definitely aren’t the best of times.
For a split second, I think about chasing the offending driver to the stop sign less than a tenth of a mile away, demanding to know why he chose such a hostile gesture to express his contempt of me.
But I’m a woman, it’s dark, and no one else, for now, is around.
So instead, I spend the rest of my 7.5-mile run flinching at every passing car; watching for his return; sweeping my headlamp over every neighborhood T at each sound that could be footsteps, which could mean danger; and remembering.
It’s the remembering that burns me up inside.
I run to be free. But no matter what safety measures I take, no matter the precautions I practice, no matter where I run or when I run or what I wear while I’m doing it or the weapons I sneak into my belt, my pocket, between my fingers—
I am not free.
•
Maybe he didn’t mean anything by it.
Or maybe he meant everything I think.
When you’re a woman, you don’t have the luxury of believing the streets are safe, you are safe, a three-second (was it longer? Maybe.) honk meant nothing. It’s not fair, but there it is: every footstep, every car, every person, every noise, every strange sight, every leaf twirling on wind, caught in the peripheral vision, is a potential peril.
There are trails that run through my neighborhood. They would get me off the roads, away from cars. They’d be easier on my joints and bones, too, as I increase mileage and prepare for longer races. I wouldn’t have to deal with drivers honking, disrupting the peace of my run.
But you won’t ever find me back there, removed from civilization, as nice as the experience sounds.
That’s a line I won’t cross, because I want to make it back home.
•
Runner’s World reports that 84 percent of female runners have been harassed at least once while out running. Some of those harassments have ended in death.
We have rules: Don’t run in the dark, don’t run in isolated areas, share your route—but not with everyone, change your routes, ditch the earbuds, carry pepper spray (and whistles and weapons and phones), always stay alert to what’s around you.
I can’t get tired. I can’t drift off into my own world, let my mind wander. I can’t take a single step without keeping my guard securely in place.
It’s exhausting.
I am not free.
•
A few days ago, a friend texted: I dropped off a safety whistle, hung it on your front door.
A woman’s body was found dumped on the highway, in a construction zone, less than two miles from my house. I run a route right past the location where she was found. Rumors say sex-trafficking activity has increased in the area. A man from one of the neighborhoods I pass nearly every day has been apprehended for streaking. Multiple times.
I know you go out alone, she said. Make sure you take the whistle.
It’s another necessary thing weighing me down. Already I no longer go anywhere without my running belt, which carries my water, identification, pepper spray, and a personal alarm. I never leave the house without my phone or an easily-retrievable key in my pocket. Maybe I should get a Tigerlady self-defense claw? A stun gun? A Go Guarded Ring?
Should I brush up on my self-defense training?
Before I leave the house, I text my husband my route. If I get out on my run, feel good enough to tackle some higher hills or log more miles that day, I stick to the pre-planned route anyway, because, well, you never know.
I wear a headlamp, reflective gear, neon shirts, shoes with reflective pieces, a vest, a belt with all the above-mentioned items. How many extra ounces do I carry just so I can return home to my husband and sons, safe and sound?
•
My husband runs with two Apple earbuds, the world completely blocked out by whatever podcast or audiobook or Amazon playlist he’s listening to. I wear one Apple earbud, if any at all, because I have to be constantly, diligently aware of my surroundings—that car moving suspiciously slowly, seeming to follow me; a man on a bike about to pass…or stop?; a figure stepping unexpectedly out of the trees, right in my path.
Maybe they’re all innocent people, out for one innocent reason or another. But believing everyone’s innocent doesn’t keep a lone woman safe on a run.
My husband doesn’t even wear a headlamp in the dark.
“I don’t know how you run without a light,” I said during a recent Saturday morning recovery run, when my pace slows enough for him to join me.
“I wish you could experience it,” he said. “Feeling the ground underneath you, feeling one with nature, getting away from the lights. It’s like you can just fade into the darkness. Be, I don’t know. Free.”
Just the thought of that kind of darkness makes my skin crawl.
How many dangers wait for a woman out in the dark?
I am not free.
•
I deserve to feel safe when I run. I deserve to start and finish my runs focused on my breath, my steps, the way I feel, whatever’s on my mind, not anxious about the loud whipping wind and the dangers it might mask during the seven miles, twelve miles, twenty miles I’ll log for the day. I deserve to be free.
But that is not the world I live in. I’m reminded of that every time I text my route to my husband, every time my pepper spray thumps against my thigh, every time someone blasts a three-second honk in the middle of a still-sleeping neighborhood.
“Maybe you should stick to the treadmill,” my ten-year-old son said tonight at the dinner table.
For sixteen miles? Torture.
He nodded. “Yeah. That would be hard.” He sighed. “It’s not fair.”
It’s not, I agreed.
Maybe you should run with your husband, you might be thinking.
He runs at a slower pace than I typically do, and he doesn’t log nearly the mileage I cover. His longest run of the week is my shortest one. He prefers Camp Gladiator, high intensity interval training, strength sessions, not long meandering runs through our side of the city.
Well, maybe you should stop, then.
I won’t. I won’t let them make me.
I shouldn’t have to.
I deserve to feel safe when I run. I deserve to enjoy every minute of my chosen activity. I deserve to be free.
•
So what, then, is the solution?
I wish I could say I had a solution. But I don’t. There are no simple solutions to this problem.
But changing the conversation would be a start. Instead of asking, What can she do to protect herself better when running, ask, “What can we, as a community, do to help keep her safe when she’s out running? How can we make our streets safer for women who choose to run alone? What can I do to look out for female runners out on their own?”
Well lit streets help. Looking out for each other helps. Men being aware of the dangers women face, committing to doing their part in making sure they feel safe helps.
Beyond that? Let us run.
Let us run in the streets. Let us run in the middle of the road, if we want. Let us run on shoulders or in bike lanes or hugged up against curbs (did you know it’s safer for a woman to run on streets than on a dim-lit sidewalk flanked by trees? Attackers don’t usually venture into the middle of the street; they step out of sidewalk shadows).
Just…let us run.
•
I finished my morning’s 7.5 miles faster than I’ve ever run them before. A bright end to the less-than-bright beginning? Maybe. Maybe not.
I didn’t run alone today. But I could have done without the anger and fear that kept pace with me the whole seven laps through my neighborhood. I would rather have spent my energy on giving everything I had to that run, instead of checking over my shoulder, bracing myself for the honking driver’s return.
I run to be free.
I am not there yet.
