Attacked on my run

Ruff running

Today's run (street): 4.25 miles
Yesterday's run (street): 3.2 miles
Thursday's workout (elliptical): 30 minutes

This is not the post I expected to write today. I thought my theme would relate to our experience having dim sum with Runsketeer KWL this morning, or how much difficulty I had during yesterday's run. Instead, I'm going to talk about the curious incident of the dog in the run-time.

Earlier in the day, the Emerging Runner family got together with our buddy KWL for a delicious (and filling) meal at a cool place in Flushing, Queens. Dim sum (per Wikipedia) is a style of Cantonese cuisine prepared as small bite-sized portions of food traditionally served in small steamer baskets or on small plates. We had a great time, tried a lot of new foods and didn't need to eat again for the rest of the day.

Dim sum central

Our schedule was tight this morning and I wasn't able to run before we met up with KWL. Although I prefer running early, I was left no choice but to go out later in the day. As I'd mentioned above, Friday's run was tough. It was a combination of end of week fatigue, 19 MPH winds and real feel of 20°. Today was nine degrees warmer and the winds were somewhat less intense and I got off to a good start.

My goal today was to cover 3-4 miles depending on how I felt. I was inspired by something I'd read in Runner's World that suggested running your usual route backwards to keep things interesting, I did that for the first half and then settled back to my usual direction. It was shortly after I'd passed my third mile that I encountered my attacker.

There were a number of people walking dogs this afternoon and I saw group about a hundred feet ahead of me. As I got closer I realized they had two dogs, one small and the other a large standard poodle. They were walking with traffic on the right side of the road, on the same side as me. As I passed them by, the poodle jumped towards me and, although I shifted to the right, the dog managed to clamp its jaws on my left forearm.

Fortunately, I was wearing my ASICS running jacket that prevented the dog's teeth from breaking my skin. I pulled my arm away and yelled, "your dog just bit me!" The owner said "Sorry" and I went on my way, thinking that it was nothing more than a scare. About a quarter mile further I turned my arm and saw that the dog had ripped a big hole in my sleeve.

I was mad and decided to retrace my route in hopes of intercepting the dog's owner down the road. I really liked that jacket and I wanted these people to be accountable for the damage. The group wasn't where I expected them to be, and I kept running until I caught them on a connecting street.

Dog bite timeline

I was upset and told the guy that he owed me for damaging the jacket. He said, "Absolutely" and offered to pay, saying he'd bring me a check by that night. And he did! So now I get to buy another running jacket and that makes getting chomped by a giant poodle totally worth it.