This morning on my 7 mile run I came across a middle school gal riding to school on her big person bike. Her shoelace caught on her pedal and she took a nasty spell and ate some pavement. What would be your first reaction? Probably take a picture of her for your blog, right? No jerk, you don’t take a picture…at least until you know she’s OK.
Seriously, what I did was immediately run over to her, stop my GPS watch, and check on her. She said she was OK, but I know when people first get hurt, the adrenaline and embarrassment causes them to say they’re OK, even if they may not be.
Don’t worry you Damsels in Distress, here comes your lucky charm!
Luckily I had an excuse to hang around and make sure she really was OK…Her shoelace was still tangled pretty good. She was trapped under her bike and couldn’t get up. I was able to help her up and eventually unlace her Chuck Taylors from the pedal. After spending all that quality time together, I realized she really was OK. I told her to be safe and continued on my run.
This isn’t the first time I’ve helped people on a run. I’ve aided folks in pushing broken down cars off the road. I’ve stopped kids from running into traffic. Basically, I’m a modern day sweaty clothed super hero (JK).
And if you follow this blog then you know about my occasional run-ins with canines. But there have been times when the pooches weren’t aggressive, they were friendly and just happened to be loose. I’ve helped catch them and return them to their owners – one time even keeping the dog overnight until the owners got home.
So my point is to help give runners a good name by helping out others if you come across a chance to do so.
Have you ever done a good deed in the middle of a workout? Please share!
Piratebobcat 
Aww you just gained your cool points back. Actually, you get even more cause that right there is just awesome. I haven’t really seen people that needed assistance on runs so far. I did, however, help get a dog back to its owner. I was on my way to get frozen yogurt with my BF when a dog darted out into the middle of the road. I didn’t want it to get hit (it was at night) so we took it back to my boyfriend’s house and figured out who the owner was. I like to think that it was a super good deed because I gave up frozen yogurt 😉
Yay! I’m dope again!
That’s great that you gave up froyo to help a doggy out! I hope the owners were grateful!
Haha actually I never met the owners. Because we found the dog in my boyfriend’s neighborhood, they wanted to keep it at their house for a quick drop off when the owner called (plus his mom doesn’t work full time so it would have been easier anyways).
I was doing my cool down today and noticed a letter in the grass under a mailbox. I picked it up and put it in the mailbox. Most likely they would have gotten their letter or maybe someone would have taken it or a lawn mower would have chewed it up. Who knows
Good for you. Who knows what was in that envelope, could be something important!
Remember be being AWESOME and twisting/spraining my ankle the week before my race? I was definitely that girl on the bike. Ate pavement REAL bad, had a very nice couple come up to try and help me, before I shooed them away quickly, thanks to my pride.
Haha, I remember that!
I was surprised when she didn’t shoo me away, but when I got up to her, she really was helpless. Glad it happened while I was there, otherwise she might still be in the middle of the road!
That could be bad…
Sadly, not really. I’ve smiled and waved a lot…I like to think I look like a good ambassador for running. I flipped off a rude lady though, a few weeks back, so maybe I’m on the negative side. I’m going to be on lookout on my next run so I can be as cool as you!
Waving and smiling is good too! And I remember your encounter with the rude driver. They have to learn to share the road!
Good luck trying to be as cool as me! Haha
I stopped to do an interview with wlky news because of flooding along one of my routes. Other than that I just wave at people to show running is fun and not torturous as some may think.
So you paused your run so that you could get some air time? Haha, nice!
Waving, smiling, and offering encouragement to others is great! That’s a good point about them seeing that it does get easier!