Runners World On-Line via Outside Online: Not Today...

Seattle Runner Attacked Midrun Fought Like Hell to Defeat Her Offender
Jenny McCoy//March 15 2017

Kelly Herron used self-defense techniques she'd learned just three weeks earlier.

"Not today, motherfucker."

Kelly Herron, a 36-year-old Seattle runner attacked in a public restroom last week, repeated that battle cry while fighting -- and ultimately defeating -- her offender.

Herron was four miles into a ten-mile marathon training run in popular Golden Gardens Park on Sunday, March 5, when she paused for a bathroom break. As she was drying her hands, she realized something was off. She turned to see a man who had been hiding in one of the stalls.

In an ABC News interview she recounts: "He immediately took me down to the ground, hit both my knees and legs, and then it was a fight on the bathroom floor." As Herron explains to Runners' World, adrenaline then took over. "Time stopped, the room became bigger and my life flashed before my eyes." Herron began screaming her battle cry -- "not today motherfucker" -- over and over.

The self-defense techniques she'd learned in a class offered through her work just three weeks earlier quickly came to mind as she realized, "this doesn't have to be a fair fight." (link)