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The Shooter/Lockdown in the Nat

September 18, 2013 (Afternoon)

Exercise Type: Run

Weather: 80 Sunny/Humid

Comments:
Engineering Hall to the Nat (alone), the Nat to Raymer's Cove and back (alone), the Nat to Observatory to Park to University to Prospect to Regent to Highland to Old University to Walnut back (with Running Club)-

Today started out like it was going to be a real blah day: I had pizza for lunch and my stomach was feeling kind of bad. The pre-run add-on was pretty ugly and I did it before because the Running Club organizational meeting for the semester was afterward and I felt I should attend. It also had pizza, so I had a pretty bad day of eating. Oh well. The running part was good, and we had a couple pretty rough hills in this week's route. It is always nice to have people to run with too. That was all well and good--and reasonably normal.

Then when we returned the the Nat, we got word that there was a shooting on Langdon Street and the gunman fled west along the Lake Mendota trail--where I would probably have been running about now if not for Running Club--and also where the Nat happens to be located. So we all quickly went inside and had our meeting to kill some time. After that, we, and the other couple hundred people who happened to be in the Nat, sat there on lockdown for a few hours. I eventually just ran for the bus.

It turned out they caught the guy about 3 hours later and no one was injured. Apparently it was only a mugging gone wrong, but these day when guns are fired in the street on a college campus, people freak out, and rightly so.