“Encouragement” from older men when I’m out running!

[Dubbin]

Out for a run in a local park today when I pass an elderly chap who shouts out “ooh well done!” . Now I know this isn’t the worst thing a random man can say to a lone female runner, BUT..... I have been a long distance runner for over 20 years, am now in my late 50’s, and run with confidence and ease. I don’t need encouragement; I’m not struggling! I’ve lost count of the number of (always older) men who feel they need to “encourage” me, and thereby distract me when I’m training. I always wear earphones but I can still hear them when they call out! I normally ignore them but today I stopped and asked the random man whether he “encourages” male runners too! He seemed taken aback and somewhat offended, but this (always male) behaviour has started to get on my nerves. The fact is they never do it to men. It’s always non-running men too; I’ve never had any problems with other runners who are male. What do the rest of you think? Am I over sensitive? Have any other runners experienced this and have you any advice?

I know exactly what you mean - I have experienced the same a lot. The difficult thing is that it's hard to prove it's sexist (I have very, very occasionally known older, unfit looking female onlookers to make comments, although they're more likely to say something like "ooh, you're really good, I couldn't do that"), but even if it's just patronising, it is really annoying. If anything I've always assumed it to be more "fattist" than anything else, as I'm a bit bigger than the average runner, but it doesn't sound as if that would be the case for you. It always seems to be people who clearly couldn't run ten metres themselves, so how do they know how easy or hard it is for me? I have occasionally answered someone who said "keep going" by saying "well, I've done 8km so far, I don't think I'll give up now" but then kept moving so I don't really know whether they were offended or not. I just wanted to make them think. I don't look particularly fit, so when I'm giving these commenters the benefit of the doubt, I tell myself they probably think I'm a beginner who is finding it hard, and they think they're being genuinely helpful. I just want them to know that this is not always the case - some larger runners are very experienced.

I used to get the "friendly" remarks as a teenage lad out running. "Smile" or similar. It stopped sometime once I was an adult bloke. There are genuinely friendly "Hellos" out there too still, but it isn't hard to tell the difference.

The ones with the slightly unpleasant but supposedly friendly remarks know they're doing it because they only choose to do it to women and people smaller than them. They pick on those they think are physically weaker than them with these remarks.

I agree with @HairyKitty
There are two ways to look at it. Personally, I would go with the second perspective.