- I'm Sarah. - And I'm Frank.
- We're gonna be filming ourselves running at night.
Yeah, I can run at night.
No biggie.
I'm not scared.
- [Frank] Of course not. - [Sarah] Of course not.
- So it's kind of like shady and dark at night.
It's New York City so anything can happen.
Dreams can come true, and nightmares too.
- [Sarah] There was this recent survey in Runner's World
that found that 58% of female runners
were harassed while running.
Does that sound high to you? I'm surprised.
- Yeah it's outrageous.
- [Sarah] Another Gallup poll showed that 50%
of women polled were afraid to even walk at night
in their own neighborhoods.
- That's wild.
- Yeah, after hearing about all these women being assaulted
while running at night, I don't know whether
that's a fear that I should have.
I first emailed out, looking if anybody would run at night.
I was surprised at how many men responded
and how no women responded.
- You were the only one.
- It was my video, so I was like, well if somebody
has to do it, I guess I have to do it.
Before you started doing this experiment,
did you tell people, "Oh, I'm doing this?"
- Yeah, actually I took an Instagram poll
for my followers to see if it's a smart idea.
A lot of them said that it's not a really smart move.
Why run at night and put yourself out there in that risk?
The ones that were like interested for drama definitely
pushed me towards running at night.
- When I started to tell some people I was doing this,
everyone was like, no.
What are you doing? Don't do it.
I had friends that were texting me,
"Sarah, you're so stupid. It's not worth it."
And my husband in particular was very freaked out by it.
He thought that by doing this and doing it because I was
interested in the experience, I was going to be somehow
inviting negative things to happen to me
while I was running.
- I usually run three to four miles every other day
at the treadmill.
- Three to four miles?
- Three to four miles, sometimes five when I'm pushing.
- Shut up. But you usually do treadmill.
- [Frank] Yeah, always doing treadmill.
- I prefer to run outside or on a track when I do run,
which is admittedly not as often and not as far.
- I'm going to start running tonight.
As you guys can see, it's midnight.
I'm kind of nervous because currently I don't see anyone
in this place, and I'm just kind of worried if I were
to scream for help in case of any emergencies, I'm not sure
if I would see anyone come to the rescue.
It's freaky.
I felt relatively safe because my first time was in
a very well-off neighborhood.
It's like by west side.
So there's water and there's the highway and buildings.
- I looked up tips for running at night
and somebody said run with your dog.
I'm gonna go for my first run tonight.
I think I'm gonna try going with Lucy.
I think having her with me maybe will make it easier.
They probably meant like a big dog, and I have a tiny dog.
So that's not what they meant.
They also said run with pepper spray.
These were all for women running, like women running
at night, and I did find an article that was an article
from a males perspective.
He thought males shouldn't run at night because you might
fall and injure yourself.
I just thought that was really funny.
I was actually super surprised at how many
people I saw running.
- [Sarah] There were so many people at the park
that were running late at night.
Sorry, sorry.
And it made me feel much better.
Like oh my God, so many people do this.
There's no reason to be afraid.
At night, it's so cool.
It feels so much better to be outside running than it would
be in the middle of the day.
I see other people run at night, and they're women.
So that also makes me feel better.
I understand why women would be afraid to run at night.
I 100% get it.
But also, from the experience feel like if you have a place
that is safe or there's a lot of people, I don't think
you should let that stop you.
I'm hearing all this music and I'm running in the park.
There's some event going on.
Anytime you feel less alone when you're running,
I think that's a good thing.
- Surprisingly, there were only a few people around.
I just ran two miles and I only saw a total of three
people during the whole entire journey.
- [Frank] To be honest, I was kind of shocked because I was
expecting more people who are suspicious
or people selling drugs or something by the water.
I don't know, I don't know what I was expecting.
Something weird.
So the second trial, I decided to run closer to home.
That was a little bit dark and shady, and there were
not as many streetlights.
There were moments where I felt really unsafe.
I definitely took precautions.
Everything I wore was as neutral as can be.
So sometimes at a gym I might wear a pink tank.
So just to be sure that I don't invite hostility
for any reason, I just chose a neutral color.
- For females, you don't want to invite cat callers
and harassers, so that kind of idea of trying to wear
neutral things that don't make you stand out in some way
to invite attention.
- I think about it too.
- Yeah, it shouldn't have to happen for either of us.
The park's nice. Let me try a different route.
So I actually went to bar class, and I decided that
I was gonna run home.
Instead of being just like pleasant neighborhood,
I ran down Atlantic Avenue.
It's busy.
Honestly, the fact that there were so many people,
that made me not feel that uncomfortable.
There really is safety in numbers.
My concern was less about my physical safety
and more of the safety of the equipment.
Because like I said, I did feel like yeah you were
inviting unwanted attention because of that.
- [Sarah] It's a Go Pro.
So as you can see, there's this like blinking light
that's following me everywhere I go.
Like, you're not wearing this bright colored shirt
so you don't get attention, but you're wearing a camera
that has a red light, that's unwanted attention.
- A human flashlight running around.
- I felt scared at points, but I was expecting
to be more scared.
And then the weekend happened.
I wasn't running, didn't have the Go Pro on.
But I parked our car farther away from our house
than usual 'cause I drove back from somewhere.
It was late at night, like one A.M.
I got out the car, had my dog, big bag.
And there was a guy there and he started talking to me.
He was obviously drunk, and I felt very uncomfortable.
He started talking to me, asking for my number.
I was trying to be gracious or whatever, I don't know.
I was trying not to make him mad.
I was just kind of like, no, no, I don't think so.
I don't do that.
But then he followed me.
He followed me towards my apartment.
At this point, I'm thinking okay, well don't go to
your apartment and let him know where you live.
But I had my dog with me and she was like...
I tried to walk by my apartment, and my dog was like,
what are you doing? It's right here.
And I was like (bleep). This is obvious.
I have coded entry, so I was like I don't want him
to see me putting my code in.
Or if I said get the hell away from me, go away,
he's obviously inebriated, I don't know what he's gonna do.
I made it inside and I shut the door.
I literally had to lie down because I was so on edge.
When I start to think about it, I'm like Sarah,
what are you doing? Is it really worth doing this?
'Cause I think before that happened, I was gonna kinda say
these fears are overblown.
If you wanna run at night, run at night.
But then after that happened, I changed my mind.
I felt like okay, I don't know the solution,
I don't know the answer.
If you had warn like a bright pink shirt, what's your worst
fear of what would've happened?
- I would be worried that this person could be potentially
homophobic if they were to attack me or harass me.
And that's the last thing that I would want.
- Do you think women or LGBT or anybody,
do you think they should be running outside at night?
- Even though it might be an intimidating environment,
if you want to run at night, definitely take precautionary
measures and just have a back up plan.
- My recommendation probably would be to run with a group.
Safety in numbers, but also it's a group activity.
Makes you more likely to keep doing it.
And I understand the fear, but I think I would rather
live in a world where we all can feel comfortable
running at night, and I would like to work in that direction
because bad stuff does happen, but I don't think
we should let it rule us.
I think we should take control of it.