1. Too much body spray. Nothing takes my breath away like a lung full of Someday by Bieber (if I had a dollar for every time someone said that...). I don't understand, why would you hose yourself down with perfume and body spray before a run? You're around someone for at most a few seconds, so it isn't as if you're going to gag them (and let's be honest - how many of those heavily scented people have you seen that are really working up much of a sweat?), and you end up leaving this trail of daffodil-scented diethyl malonate that steals the life of everything behind and takes away a much needed gulp of oxygen. I don't even wear deodorant before I run, since sweat can prevent underarm chafing. This is the one time you should not have used Odorono.
2. Passing. It's like driving: run on the right, pass on the left.
3. Dog or cellphone. It's odd that this is a problem. People on cellphones are fine, people with dogs are fine, but when the two combine they create this distracted, twenty foot leashed menace that tripwires the path like that flying creature scene in The Crow. I take it back, it isn't odd at all that this is a problem.
4. iPod Reverse Red Rover. This is where an O-line of gals will go for a walk with either ear buds or just Jersey style speaking volume (de facto death metal). Your calls of "on your left" will be in vain, and you'll have to run behind them until someone approaches in front and you can sneak in through the hole they open up like a linebacker filling in a fullback's gap. Will they learn after the twelfth person pulls this move? No, they will not.
5. Just friends zoners. I feel for these people. Here's the thought process. I don't want Steve to think I'm interested, so we'll hang out and talk, but it should be around people. We'll go walking! That way I can hit two birds with one stone! But I don't want people to think we're together, so I'm going to keep a good four feet between us, maybe even walk on the other half of the path. Here's why it'll fail. When I come running by, and Steve hears my heavy footsteps (I always make more noise when I'm coming so that people will hear and move, and I don't have to say anything), he'll move over to Jill so I can get by on his side, trapping Jill on the other side of the path subject to his ever closer encroachment. Nice try, Jill, but should have just gone for coffee.
6. Speed-workers. This isn't so much for etiquette as it is amusement. At the busier trails or paths, there are a lot of guys in their 20's that see running as a way to pick up "tha ladiez". This makes them competitive, and when a skinny guy with a sub-7-minute mile passes them, they feel the need to show their value by sprinting ahead of him a short distance and coming to a stop, as if they just finished their run and the question of who is faster is still up in the air. After all, they were just doing some speed work today, training for the flag football game and toning some of the mass they squatted onto their thighs, you know bra?
7. Bicycling Hasidic Jews. I lift them up as model path users. They populate the trails in the hundreds, yet have never once breached a rule of etiquette. Do as they do, and good things will come.
8. James Deans. Rebels without a cause. These are the fly daddios that go against the grain and bike towards traffic on those paths that specify a direction. I don't need to explain why this breaches etiquette. And your glares only fuel their BMX bike pedals.
9. Brady Bunch biker gang. Who am I kidding? Etiquette doesn't apply to you folks. Biking four across + training wheels? No worries, it'll give me an excuse to tighten my shoelaces as I watch the dying remnants of Americana spin by. Bless their hearts, I'm glad they're out there, I really am.
10. Bridge trolling. I can usually dodge around lines of people, but trail bridges are barely wide enough for the average American, let alone two of them. If they refuse to go single file I'll be sure to brush my sweat frosted left arm against their scarlet Rutgers sweatshirt.
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