British international athlete Verity Ockenden writes about a traumatic experience on a recent training run that underlined the safety issues female athletes still have to face
As I write this column on November 11, the reminders are everywhere. I open Instagram for a casual scroll and read La Repubblica’s latest headline; today marks one year since the Italian student Giulia Cecchettin’s death at the hands of her partner, one year in which a further 113 femicides have occurred in the country I live in.
My reels replay the viral clips of Saoirse Ronan reminding Paul Mescal that self defence is “what girls have to think about all the time”. I have experienced my fair share of cat calling in pretty much every country I have ever been to and learned to brush it off. I was followed by a cyclist in the dark a few years back and even had a driver swerve toward me once for a laugh before racing off again, but I had pretty much forgotten about all of that until Saturday.
When I say forgotten, what I really mean is that I had internalised all of the subsequent behaviours I had since adopted so that they became second nature and I no longer actively thought about the precautions I was taking while out running. I was lucky enough to be able to stick to daylight hours, I didn’t wear earphones and I automatically switched sides of the road to give myself a decent gap on passing strangers.
All this I had normalised, so familiar was I with the routes I ran every day that I wasn’t afraid when I passed the local farmer out with his shotgun slung over his shoulder, or the goatherd and his pack of dogs. We all knew and respected each other, just minding our business, doing our jobs.
On Saturday, I was one hour and thirty minutes into a long run that finished at tempo pace. I had waited for the fog to clear before heading out, and it had turned into a gorgeously sunny day. My husband had asked if I was going to take my phone with me, and I said I wouldn’t since I found it too cumbersome and distracting on faster paced runs.
I told him the route I planned on taking and left without a second thought, with only my watch on my wrist and a gel in my pocket. I was enjoying myself, feeling excited about holding my tempo pace for longer this week, and feeling quietly confident despite the burn with 15 minutes remaining on the clock.
I had hardly seen a soul all morning as I hammered the country lanes that stretched for miles into the distance, so I jumped in surprise when a horn blared behind me. Perhaps it was somebody I knew, or a “friendly encouragement”. I took no notice. I noticed, however, when the driver pulled over and turned the car around ahead of me, and thought perhaps they were lost.
They advanced slowly toward me with the window rolled down, and leered “ciao bella” as they passed. These kind of comments always made my skin crawl, but it was nothing I hadn’t heard before so I wrote it off and carried on, until seconds later I heard the rev of a motor again behind me and indistinct shouting as he passed closer and faster this time. This unnerved me completely, and I lost my cool. I threw my arms up in frustration and told him in no uncertain terms to “f*** off and leave me alone”.
Verity Ockenden (On Running)
It was a red rag to a bull, and the man turned his car again, this time driving his car straight at me. I dodged and he turned again, overtaking me and stopping the car in front of me to block my path. We had reached a fork in the road, and I feigned a left turn before doubling back behind the car and going right, screaming as loudly as I could to try and attract any kind of help, though I knew there were likely to be very few people within earshot.
I’m very fortunate that, at that point, another motorist passed by, and was conscientious enough to pull over and observe the scene from a distance. I ran toward them, and my aggressor drove off. I asked for a lift home as I was in no fit state to continue running and frightened that the man might return.
Reflecting on the incident, I have obviously put much thought into how better to protect myself in future and what I might have done differently. From now on, I’m prepared to be weighed down with both my phone and a can of pepper spray, to invest some time into practising self-defence techniques and to seek out company wherever possible.
Being well-equipped to respond to an attack does not prevent one from happening, however, and as much as I love running with friends, relying on strength in numbers for one’s safety does not solve the problem at its root, either.
One of the first things I said to the person who drove me home after Saturday’s attack was: “I thought I was going to end up like one of those girls you hear about on the news.” The sad part about the news that I have since read is that the promise made by the Italian government following Giulia’s death to provide structured sex education classes in Italian schools in an attempt to eradicate gender-based violence at its societal roots has still not been put into action. Emergency calls made by women fearing for their safety have also since increased significantly.
Hannah Nuttall and Verity Ockenden (Getty)
Though I got away unharmed this time around and I won’t let my unfortunate experiences stop me from doing what I love, I am angry that what has been taken from me is my freedom and my confidence. I am saddened by the simultaneous thought that what I see as a basic right of mine is actually a privilege that doesn’t even exist in some societies, for example in Afghanistan where women are currently forbidden even from talking about their daily experiences, let alone counting running as one of them.
Running is something that usually makes me feel great both mentally and physically and that is something I think everybody deserves to feel, but it feels far less empowering no matter how fit and fast you are when somebody else seizes it as an opportunity to make you feel completely powerless.
» Subscribe to AW magazine here, check out our new podcast here or sign up to our digital archive of back issues from 1945 to the present day here