Helen Martin: The arrogance of middle-aged fitness hooligans

Being fit, healthy and taking regular exercise is a good thing.

How dare runners pee on a public lane in Portobello

But for some with a pride in their athleticism, it brings about a strange attitude of arrogance and blamelessness, as if keeping fit excuses them from wrongdoing.

Motorists may think I’m going to rant about cyclists (there are a few like that). But the middle-aged, allegedly “middle-class” women on the Portobello Parkrun who choose to drop their pants and pee on a public lane really take the biscuit. No wonder local residents, and even the run organiser, are outraged.

Runners around our way don’t, as far as I know, urinate on the streets. They do, however, mess up the area with piles of flour, powder, or other suspicious looking piles of strange substances, apparently to define a route.

Wearing shorts, vests and running shoes, they think they have the right. If they were 14-year-old jeans-clad kids, they’d be accused of littering or vandalism.