The amazing part of this story is not that a mugger was run down by a group of runners, but that a mugger was up and at 'em by 6 a.m. But he was no match for a group that was already shuffling at 5.
On June 29, the running group, from the local Pacers Running Store in Washington, D.C., passed a woman clutching a large bag and followed by a man "close behind her," group leader Kayla Nicolay told RunWashington.com.
"I had this really weird feeling when we passed them," Nicolay said. "The man looked at all of us so I thought, 'okay, he made eye contact, he knows we're all here.' But then we made it to the corner and she screamed."
One of the runners in the group threw her water bottle at the mugger, and then Nicolay and the rest lit after him. The mugger, already running, tripped, allowing one of the runners to grab the boosted bag.
"The whole point was to get her bag and we didn't know what was on him," Nicolay said, explaining why the group then backed off, allowing the man to flee (albeit at a slower pace) while one of the runners called 911.
"We've been running the same areas for years so you just sort of pick up on what's normal and what's not," Nicolay said. After all, it just gets old finding all those dead bodies.