Curious

If you must forgo sand and field, run on asphalt. Not sidewalk concrete, but asphalt: they say it has more give. If you waive country roads flanked by miles of corn crops and ranch homes, commit to city bike lanes, subdivisions well-stocked with Priuses (or is that Prii?), and side streets with 50s-style, single-family dwellings safeguarded by corner stop signs.

A street jogging seminar would do well to open with a lecture on defensive jogging, an idea that parallels the philosophy of “defensive driving” in driver’s education training. A defensive mindset underpins a street runner’s route, training, methods, and form. I thought myself sufficiently trained to tackle the dangers of vehicular traffic with my textbook hand signals and personal safety precautions until the morning threats of a flash flood drew all of Frontenac Street outdoors to bag up loose leaves, twigs, and flyaway mulch. (Rubbernecking is a wilderness temptation for the inquisitive.)

On that morning I jogged out in front of a royal blue hybrid as it rolled to a stop at the half-hidden stop sign. What frightened me more than anything was that I saw what I suspect was a Spectra Blue Prius too late (it descended the short, steep hill in less than three seconds) and heard no hum, squeal, or whirring engine. Not a sound.

If you grow addicted to street running, you must learn to listen. With cars often parked along the sides of both roads, you can no longer trust the three-second glance both ways. What you are trying to detect, motion, cannot be recognized in the amount of time your retinal networks have to process visual images. No longer are you asking is there a car? Now you ask is there a moving car? In order to answer this question, you really must listen for sounds, the hum of an approaching engine or the whistle of the wind on a spoiler.

Apparently I’m not the only one to naively run out in front of the spookily silent hybrid. More pedestrians and cyclists are finding themselves distrustful of their ears on city streets. Hybrid vehicles moving at less than twenty miles per hour can be undetectable on clean-swept, paved roadways. Joggers, beware.