This strange and terrible urge to kill or maim strangers

  • Wednesday, August 09, 2017
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I wanted to run today but the rain has been sheeting down since the early hours. In the past I would have stuck to the plan and shrugged off the wet but now I can't be arsed.
Instead I have paced restlessly over the cheap laminate floorboards that I laid in the crumbling rented house in the dead end street where I have lived for 17 years. When we moved in the carpets stank of stale dog's urine and were so rotten that I was able to poke my fingers through them onto the floor beneath. 
I can't stand the silence so I'm listening to the Bhundu Boys, still Zimbabwe's best and most famous band. They took the UK by storm in the Eighties but typical of many who are uprooted from home and placed in an alien culture they fell apart through bad management, sickness, the tragedy of Biggie Tembo's suicide and disappeared. 
 
I am also waiting for an email from Annie that never arrives, she is meant to inform me when she has returned from holiday so that we can make plans for some August running.
While I pace, listen and wait I have been reading about Jogger rage. The media is full of the story of the Putney Bridge jogger who shoved a woman into the path of a Red London doubledecker bus.
There has been a lot of opinion both on written and social media and on talk radio about why this fool acted in the way that he allegedly did.
I'm completely baffled, if you watch the video he passes a man and then seems to alter his trajectory enough to seemingly shove the women into the road. He then runs on almost pathologically and without emotion or remorse.
It's weird.
There is a lot of speculation that he hates women/ they were stunt actors/ he was a hit man and even that she tried to trip him first! The prevailing theory though, is that he was exhibiting 'joggers rage' a previously unheard of affliction causing aggression brought on by running. Many members of the public are coming out and saying that they have been targeted by hostile runners and that this is a growing affliction of modern society. 
The Independent humorously asks whether people have been suffering in silence from this strange and terrible urge to kill or maim strangers once they pass the 5km mark on their morning jog.
I've searched myself as a long standing runner to see if I've ever felt this urge to become violent towards innocent members of society whilst running but I can't think of any. I don't think runners are always angels and concede that they can be conceited and rude but I think they are a boorish minority. I've seen runners who are undoubtedly absolute pricks and sadly they are almost always men but I haven't seen any violence apart from last year when I was shoved at the start of a race by a foul mouthed idiot who felt I was holding him up - but it's the only time in a decade of running where I've experienced anything like violence.
Mostly I think we just want to run and enjoy it but I hope that this will make some runners pause for a moment and think about how people perceive us and perhaps try a little harder to make eye contact, smile and greet people.
We are not, after all, gods.


The Putney Bridge jogger.

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