Funny story, thank goodness he wasn’t behind the wheel

[Brendan von Buckingham]

So I’m riding home my normal commute in yesterday’s wonderful evening. Just got on Independence towards Lincoln, taking the right lane of the 3 westbound lanes. Long and flat enjoying a 20-25 mph spin to get the blood flowing. Cars actually obeying the 30 mph speed limit, changing lanes around me safely. Tourist families on the sidewalk making the final slog of the day to just one more landmark, with joggers and bikes picking their way through.

Then about 200 feet ahead in the dirt path worn by runners I notice a runner coming at me fast. Looks like he’s making that final kick and heading for a personal best. His arms are above his head. He must have just won the 10,000 meters in London. Good for him! At 100 feet, no wait, those are two middle fingers. He’s not saying woo hoo, he’s screaming f*** you loud enough that they really could hear him in London. Before I could wonder who his lucky friend was, at 50 feet he veers into the gutter of the road heading right for me, screaming at me, “Get out of the road! What are you thinking!” Me? I should get out of the road? And just like that he was past me in the other direction, he never broke stride and I didn’t slacken my cadence. Like the Letters to the Editor page you flip past when you’re looking for the good stuff, he was gone.

My curiosity wasn’t gone though. So I pulled over, hopped over to the sidewalk and doubled back to catch up with him. I caught up quick since he had returned to runners’ comfort zone of head phones and an easy pace. I passed him to see if he’d recognize me, built some distance, and pulled over in front of the tholos memorializing Washington’s World War I soldiers. This is where the tone of the story changes.

As he passed he noticed me as much as a tree, so I hailed him. “Excuse me, what the f*** is wrong with you?” With earbud midway out, recognition registered in his eyes, and a long hard day, or year came pouring out at full volume, “You can’t be in the road like that. Don’t you see the cars. You have to follow the regulations. I’m a lawyer.”

“A lawyer? well hang on, let me get out my regulations. Do you want to double check them?”, I asked. He probably couldn’t hear me over his yelling, but he understood when I held up the typed up pages I always carry with me.

“F*** the regulations. It’s about common sense. Don’t you know the speed limit on that road?”

“Do you know the speed limit on that road?”

“I don’t care what the speed limit is…”–“It’s 30 by the way,” I slipped under his by now full-throttle rant–“…don’t you see the cars.”

“Yes, they were all changing lanes and passing nicely.”

“You’re the 1%! You’re the 1%!!” and something about Vince Foster. I’m not sure. His words were machine gunning out, shredding any kind of coherent conversation.

I finally got my shot during a pause for him to gasp a breath, “What happened to you that you’re so damaged?” The earbuds popped back in and away he ran.

Starting with a long head-shake and a perplexed smile, I got on my way too. Traffic was still light and calm and I built back to my cadence on Independence. It didn’t take long to find a spot for him in my mental catalog of bizarre encounters with people who just can’t compute how cars and bikes can co-exist. Nothing new really, except for the runner part. Never had that happen before. Thank God he wasn’t behind me, behind the wheel with that mental shakiness. The truth is, he’s probably behind me every day.

Topic

[brendan]

@txgoonie 20136 wrote:

Isn’t the runner actually in the correct spot, i.e. running against traffic? Salmoning is really a term reserved for bikes going the wrong direction, no? I’m not saying that moving into the road was the correct thing for her to do, but at least she put herself in the right position to be able to see what was going on.

Would it still be the right thing to do if she was running in a standard traffic lane with oncoming motor vehicles?

Brendan

[dasgeh]

@brendan 20137 wrote:

Would it still be the right thing to do if she was running in a standard traffic lane with oncoming motor vehicles?

Not if there’s a sidewalk. And if there isn’t a sidewalk, the runner should still stay as far to their left as possible, so the cyclist would have pulled to his/her left to ride by.

I don’t know what it is about runners in Arlington ditching the sidewalks to run in the road. I find the sidewalks here pretty nice, and I just don’t get it.

[vvill]

@txgoonie 20136 wrote:

Isn’t the runner actually in the correct spot, i.e. running against traffic? Salmoning is really a term reserved for bikes going the wrong direction, no? I’m not saying that moving into the road was the correct thing for her to do, but at least she put herself in the right position to be able to see what was going on.

Yeah, I guess. I was using the term just as a descriptor. Nothing about right/wrong.

I do still find the incident puzzling though. There definitely is a sidewalk down that whole stretch (I rode on part of it this morning in the rain!), and using earbuds doesn’t seem to make sense if you’re going to run on the road and then get p’o’ed at cyclists for not moving out of your way into traffic with more than a few seconds in advance. I guess she expected me to take the lane for her as soon as I saw her. From the way she shouted it sounded like she had the volume up high (like how some people talk too loud on phonesets when they can’t hear well).

Anyway, it’s all forgotten now every day is another commute!

[brendan]

@dasgeh 20139 wrote:

I don’t know what it is about runners in Arlington ditching the sidewalks to run in the road. I find the sidewalks here pretty nice, and I just don’t get it.

I suspect that in the busy sections, it ends up being (again) about slower vs. faster traffic. Plus the sidewalks have more, well, sidewalk furniture to dodge. Once the density gets high enough, a combination of not wanting to run into people/kids/pedestrians/parking meters/benches/newspaper boxes/lamp posts/cars-exiting-alleys/swinging-doors-to-businesses/milling smokers/entrance-lines-into-business/etc. (that’s just on my block) and not wanting to slow their pace (sounds familiar to us, no?) lead them to short-cuts/parallel-routes. And it might get habitual to the point they do it during times of less pedestrian density.

On a related note, I asked a friend once why he preferred to run along the crowded main artery vs. back in the neighborhood and he said “people watching”. Heh.

Brendan

[baiskeli]

@txgoonie 20136 wrote:

Isn’t the runner actually in the correct spot, i.e. running against traffic? Salmoning is really a term reserved for bikes going the wrong direction, no? I’m not saying that moving into the road was the correct thing for her to do, but at least she put herself in the right position to be able to see what was going on.

No.

I don’t mean legally, though it’s very likely illegal too. And I don’t know if runners do it because they think it’s safer. But it’s not safe in an encounter with a bike going to right way, because you don’t know which way the runner is going to move to get out of your way. To their right, like they would on a trail? Or to their left because they’re hugging the side of the road and don’t want to go into traffic? I’ve had salmoning runners go either way.

[thucydides]

@dasgeh 20139 wrote:

Not if there’s a sidewalk. And if there isn’t a sidewalk, the runner should still stay as far to their left as possible, so the cyclist would have pulled to his/her left to ride by.

I don’t know what it is about runners in Arlington ditching the sidewalks to run in the road. I find the sidewalks here pretty nice, and I just don’t get it.

Let me answer the question why road and not sidewalk. (I’m not defending running in the lane, let alone salmoning in the lane.) There are multiple reasons for running in the road. First, many many blocks in Arlington lack sidewalks. Second, concrete is harder on the legs than asphalt. Third, sidewalks are often obstacle courses with toys, debris, low-hanging branches, small children, and uneven surfaces. Finally, after any sort of major snow in the winter sidewalks aren’t passable, often for weeks.

So I run in the road all the time but in my view it’s the runners job to not obstruct cars or bike and I stay out of the bike lanes unless absolutely necessary.

[Author]

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