Running is hard. If you’re not a seasoned Strava-ite, it takes much mental fortitude. Barrelling around a park and wondering when it will end is not an optimal pastime for the average person, but you do it because it makes you feel better, it makes you fitter, it makes you happier. Yet for many women, the harder part of a run lies not in the physical toll, but the inevitable and unavoidable catcalls along the way. I have never, ever been on a run without this happening.
A run, to me, means accidentally meeting the gaze of the man staring at you, mouth slightly agape, and preemptively wincing at the degrading thing he’s about to shout that will make you feel so, so small. It’s the lurid comments, the puckered lips shooting wet kisses at you from the windows of vans. It’s feeling cheap, demeaned, humiliated.
PC Abby Hayward, a police officer for Surrey Police, knows this feeling all too well. As part of the force’s new Jog On campaign, she volunteered alongside a number of female police officers to run in plain clothes in targeted locations. The goal was to catch catcallers, with uniformed officers stationed nearby to deal with the perpetrators.
The campaign, which is part of a wider commitment by the force to tackle violence against women and girls in public spaces, comes after a Surrey County Council survey found that 94% of female residents polled had said they’d experienced harassment while running, yet nearly half had never reported it.
For London runners, like Emma, 30, she’s never considered reporting catcalling, as she “believed it wouldn’t be taken seriously”. Catcalling left her “feeling mortified”, and says she still feels self-conscious running down the roads it happened on.
Phoebe, 26, too, has never thought to go to the police. “My trust in the police for women’s safety is not high at all. It also feels pretty engrained to me that putting up with being harassed is just a daily acceptance for women, so I have the mindset of ‘oh well, that’s just the usual’”.
I’ve had men on bikes ‘cheer me on’ and follow me until they got bored
Catcalling happens so often for Olivia, 26, that she’s resorted to running at 5 or 6am to avoid it, and often with someone if she can. “It makes me feel dirty and like I’m a piece of meat, and ultimately it makes me feel unsafe doing something I enjoy.”
A previous study has shown that 84% of women have experienced some form of harassment while running in London. Lizzie, 26, recounts being catcalled, shouted at, and followed on multiple occasions. “Once I was even flashed by a man who uncovered his genitals whilst I ran past just to see my reaction. I’ve had men on bikes ‘cheer me on’ and follow me until they got bored. I now avoid running in the dark, but I haven’t let it stop me running in general, as that would mean they win.”
Marathon runner Sophie, 25, says that catcalling is a depressingly routine part of her runs.
“The way that men in vans jeer and honk, or how they stop at the traffic light just a little too long so that they can whistle and whoop at you as you cross the road is disgusting. I feel small and vulnerable, and not as strong or self-assured as I left the house.”
“It throws me off and completely ruins the peace that I’ve otherwise created. I then feel so self-conscious, and it makes me wonder whether I invited it by what I'm wearing.”
Whilst the Jog On campaign has received some criticism from the civil liberties group Free Speech Union, which accused Surrey Police of “bizarre social-psychology experiments”, Olivia invites a similar scheme to be tried out where she lives in North London.
“It’s fundamentally a sad concept that those female police officers have to experience harassment as part of their jobs to stop a crime, but it’s also good to know things are being done to try and stop it.”
Personally, I have a particular run seared in my memory. As I puffed my way across Hampstead Health, a man flanked me and met my stride, reaching out to grab my hand and shouting to get my attention. After ignoring him for half a kilometre, red-hot tears burning my eyes as I blinked them away with a self-protective plea for composure, he swore loudly at me and veered off. No doubt to torment any of the other women trying to find some peace in their day.
Another time, feeling defiant and bolstered by a particularly zany track in my earphones, I stuck up a middle finger in response to an obscene comment. This resulted in a revving engine and the car trying to U-turn at the stop lights, and a feverish dash into a pub loo to wait out the storm.
Runner Phoebe, like me and so many others, has had a similar experience.
“Some guy on a bike cycled next to me as I ran, shouting and catcalling. I ignored him and he pulled the bike onto the pavement so I couldn’t get past. I asked him what he was doing, and he just started hurling abuse. I kept running and he kept cycling alongside me shouting awful things. I’ve never run so fast in my life, I was terrified.”
“I finally asked him to leave me alone. His response was, “You think you’re better than me? You’re just a f***ing s***.””
Cressida, 25, worries that even in the company of other people, you’re not protected. “I was catcalled while on a run with my boyfriend and his stepmum, once my boyfriend had run past. This was at about 10am on a sunny Sunday morning. They have no fear.”
I haven’t run in a while. Perhaps, if I knew some of my fellow joggers were undercover police, I’d feel a bit braver about getting out there. I wouldn’t care who was who; after all, the goal of running is not to be perceived. Maybe I’d even take off my protective exoskeleton, the jumper I keep wrapped around my waist, and hope the hard part of the run will only be the run itself.
