[quote]debraD wrote:
[quote]on edge wrote:
My wife goes out trail running in the very early hours. This time of year it’s still dark when she goes out. I often worry about something bad happening to her then, as my mind goes with it, I start worrying if something bad does happen if ‘they’ are going to be looking at me. Probably means I watch too much Dateline.[/quote]
I probably shouldn’t speak because we live in different countries and different cities (probably differently sized too) and different crime rates…
I do believe the rape stats, but most rapes are not the dude lurking in the bushes type. Those rapes are incredibly rare and I don’t worry about that at all. The park where I run has areas where there are all sorts of hobos and drifters literally hiding in the bushes, because they camp there and you don’t even know they are there unless you really look for them but they are harmless. I worry when I see a group of young presentable guys though. There’s a new bar that has a douchbag vibe on the edge of the park and this gave me pause about midnight runs on Friday & Saturday nights, but I got over that. Locally though, the teens and young men here are good kids it seems are surprisingly wholesome. They’re even polite when they sexually harass. A couple of times there have been a group of rowdy drinkers in the park that seemed like trouble that upon closer inspection were coworkers 
I figure that unless your area has a known serial rapist, then it’s fine. Even then, if there hasn’t been an attack in that spot or very near, it’s not a risk. But then again, I forget to lock my door at night sometimes. Pisses my guy off because he’s not around at night during the week. I got a baseball bat and he feels better =)
This reminds me of when I was a teen, and we had the ‘Scarborough Rapist’ and we were always on the lookout for the rapist and his van. It ends up that was (perhaps) statistically kind of silly since we were in the suburbs of Toronto, which is a huge area and a large population and the odds of being the victim of that particular rapist were still ridiculously low and our other behaviours were way more risky, such as getting drunk with any group of strange guys that seemed like they would be fun to hang out with that day. But as teenage girls will be, we would see a van slow down near us and we would OMG SCARBOROUGH RAPIST AHHH RUN! But it was a lot of joking too–I mean we still took rides from strangers as long as they weren’t in a van.
I personally never took it seriously and considered it a bogey man, but my best friend did. Thankfully for me she was reckless enough to go along and not get in the way of our fun and games Everything I had ever heard was second hand and never seemed real. I was actually quite shocked later on the hear how real it was. (so perhaps I should re-think my position ) One of my friend’s-friend did go missing and we were sudden slapped with a reality that it wasn’t a joke. It ends up she ran away from home and hitchhiked to Montreal and met a bad fate that way that had nothing to do with the Scarborough rapist.
Anyways, the way I see it, sure it could happen but what are the odds? And what becomes of your quality of life if you can’t live because of the fear of such a small chance? I love to run too much and it does so much for my health in so many ways that it is worth the risk. It’s such a waste too to live thinking every dude is a rapist. Most likely the other guy in the park at that hour has snuck out for a smoke or is just walking his dog.
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Hey Deb, do me a favor and ask your boyfriend if in the event you came up missing from one of your midnight runs if he would only be concerned for your welfare or if also, in the back of his mind, he would be thinking "can I prove where I’ve been over the last X hours?
I’m just curious.
