Soooooo I got pepper sprayed on my run this morning.

Inadvertently. Indirectly.

Let me explain.

So we’re still in the “go run at 2 AM because it’s too damn hot during the day” period of the summer, and that’s what I did this morning. I did my usual route on the river path towards and through Bowness. Bowness is pretty quiet that time of night (I run through there around…3:00-ish?), but I do see one or two “regulars” walking around as I’m heading toward Bowness Park.

This morning, though, there appeared to be a confrontation going on in the parking lot by the Esso station. A man and a woman were arguing very loudly. There were two guys at the bus stop next to the gas station and I heard one of them say he was going to call the cops, so I figured I would just keep running and let the cops deal with whatever was going on.

I was running on the sidewalk next to the parking lot; there was no traffic, so I ran out to the other side of the road to get as far away from the confrontation as I could (the sidewalk, conveniently, doesn’t exist on the other side of the road across from that lot. Because why would it?).

Well, apparently I didn’t get far enough away, because at that moment she must have blasted him with pepper spray or something and I ended up getting the downwind gust of it right as I ran past. Right in my eyes, right in my mouth.

My eyes immediately started tearing up big time; I produced about a gallon of snot in half a second and I could feel the sting of the spray down my throat since I was breathing hard from running.

I had to stop behind the church about half a block away and just snot out the entire contents of my sinuses for about five minutes before I could see/breathe/function again.

So let’s pause for a second. Any reasonable person, upon getting (slightly) pepper sprayed during their run, would probably stop, right? Get a taxi or bus home and take care of the damage.

But remember: I am not a reasonable person.

So I kept running.

My reasoning was that I’d get to the water fountain in Bowness Park faster than I could ever get home regardless of transportation method, and I could use the fountain to wash out my eyes/mouth/etc. The water fountain was about a mile and a half away and it actually wasn’t too bad running down there. Once I got to it, I flushed the hell out of my eyes and mouth and even washed the insides of my ears a bit. I don’t know the physics of pepper spray so I figured I’d just try to stay away from touching my shirt/running pack as much as possible in case they got anything on them that would transfer to my skin. Then I continued my run for about three more miles, turned around, and headed home.

And took a proper shower once I got there.

So yeah. Not the ideal way to start the day and interrupt a nice run, but whatevs.

At least I didn’t get point-blank blasted with it, I guess.