Welcome to Rape Alley.

Being winter and all, I'm kinda stuck doing most, if not all, of my training indoors. There's no possible way to swim outside, and since it's dark before and after I get home from work, I've been relegated to using my bike trainer (in fact, I have and hour and a half before work tomorrow. Yay, me!). Now, I know you're thinking, well, she can at least RUN outside. And normally, I would agree with you.

One thing I get great pleasure from is running outside before work. In order for me to do this, I have to be home by 6:45 am in order to get cleaned up, eat breakfast, and get to the bus stop on time. As I am one of those annoying people that can go from sound asleep to wide awake in 2.6 seconds, I used to do this a lot. I even managed to get some 9 milers in while training for my first marathon this way.

Now, it seems, those days are gone. Why? Because I apparently now live in Rape Alley.

One morning in December, a woman out exercising about 6am was attacked, dragged into a back yard, and raped. Shortly thereafter, a woman was followed into her house and raped. There have been numerous break-ins, and an attempted abduction of a 14 year old girl on her way to school. The freak responsible for this wears a hoodie and has a weird high-pitched voice, according to the media. And just last night, the freak was seen peeping into a bedroom window, but split when the lady called the cops (this would explain the ghetto-birds I heard circling last night). All this has happened within 2 miles from my house, on roads that are part of my running routes.

So, in a nutshell, I don't venture out into my neighborhood by myself. I've even stopped walking up to the bus stop, having enlisted Ben to drop me off there every morning. I keep the drapes shut at my house. And if I want to go run, Ben has to go with me(and yes, on the weekends, we go run at the park or wherever).

It just really pisses me off. I hate to feel scared like this. I just want to be able to go outside of my house (hell, he's getting braver and trying to get people in their houses) and not be afraid that someone wants to hurt me. I know it's just a matter of time before he's caught (the police are taking this very seriously, they have officers and dogs and cars and helicopters all around), but it can't coome soon enough.