I'm a woman who runs alone. I'm furious about Eliza Fletcher's killing.

“Look at them nice legs.”

It wasn’t so much what he said. It was the way he said it, the look in his eye. He was leering, his voice crackling.

It was a bright Saturday morning in Washington, D.C. I had just left my apartment and was walking toward the National Mall for my long run.

As a longtime solo runner, street harassment was nothing new to me. But this man, the way he said what he said, how it made me feel – all of it – really bothered me. For once, I shouted back.

I don’t remember what I said but he screamed back at me, made a threat, acted like he was coming for me.

I ran fast and hard toward the U.S Capitol building, propelled by rage and frustration.

In the middle of that same run I got a “Hey, baby!” As I was nearing my apartment in the last mile, a group of apparently drunken men driving around with a video camera started filming me from their SUV, laughing hysterically and shouting lewd things.

By the time I got home I was in tears, overwhelmed with the knowledge that I didn’t have the same freedom as most male runners, that I could never just walk out my door and get some exercise completely free from the indignity of street harassment or the fear of one day, something worse.

When I read about the kidnapping and killing of Tennessee runner Eliza Fletcher in the early-morning hours of Sept. 2, I felt a familiar fury and helplessness.

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The 34-year-old mother of two and married teacher, who also went by Liza, should have been able to finish her run in Memphis that day. She should have arrived home to kiss her husband and her boys good morning. She should have been able to drive to work at St. Mary's Episcopal School and teach her classroom filled with adoring 4- and 5-year-olds.

Instead, police say she was kidnapped and killed by a 38-year-old Memphis man. Her body was discovered Monday in tall grass at a vacant house roughly 5 miles from the University of Memphis campus where she was kidnapped. Police found what they suspect to be her running shorts in a trash bag a quarter mile away.

Eliza Fletcher should have been able to go on a run alone at any time of day in her neighborhood and without worrying about being attacked.

So should have Alexandra Brueger, gunned down on a run in the Detroit area in 2017. And Vanessa Marcotte, sexually assaulted and strangled near her mother's Massachusetts house while on a visit in 2016. And Karina Vetrano, whose father found her half naked body after she didn't come home from a run in Queens, New York in 2016. And Mollie Tibbetts, stabbed to death during an apparent rape attempt in Iowa in 2018.

Their deaths hit women runners particularly hard because almost all of us have felt fear on our trails and paths, the places we go to escape, to feel empowered, to stay healthy, to just be.

Any one of us could have been Eliza Fletcher.

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Finishing Liza's run

On Friday morning, thousands of women and their fellow supportive male runners hit the streets to "finish Liza's run" as a way to honor her life and declare that women have the right to run in their communities alone without fear for their safety.

The event began in Memphis with a plan to run on Fletcher's favorite 8.2-mile path at 4:20 a.m., the time she was last seen alive. Similar events have popped up across the country, with at least 20 such runs, from Washington and Colorado to Oklahoma and North Carolina.

Katie Robinson, a real estate agent and 30-year-old mother of one in Arvada, Colorado, decided to organize a run in her area because she saw so much of herself in Fletcher.

"I know what it's like trying to get things done before my daughter wakes up at 6 o'clock in the morning," Robinson said. "I just truthfully thought of it as being myself. That could have happened to me."

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She recalled the time while on vacation in Thailand when a man on a bike started following her while she was out on a run. It got so scary she felt like she was running for her life before she got to the safety of a public building. That's on top of the countless times she's been subjected to street harassment.

"When I'm running, I feel powerful," she said. "It's a time for myself where I can feel invincible. It's my therapy.  And for somebody to threaten that, for all of us, it's just so unfair."

Sarah Wolf, a 37-year-old Presbyterian pastor and Memphis native, is organizing a "Finish Liza's Run" in her community of Staunton, Virginia, after seeing Fletcher's photos fill her Facebook feed this past week.

"Everyone should be outraged by this," Wolf said.

She said she hopes the run both honors Fletcher's memory and starts important conversations about everyone's safety in public.

"It's already started a conversation over here in Staunton about ways that we can make Staunton safer for runners and for women," she said, adding that a man in her running group proposed adding an emergency call box in a popular local park.

Robinson said she's now considering carrying some sort of self-defense on her runs. But she resents even having to think about it.

"I am not a violent person, I don't own weapons, I don't have a gun in the house," she said. "So for me to even make a comment saying, 'I feel like I need to carry something,' it's intimidating. Like, we shouldn't have that feeling."

Like Robinson, running has made me feel invincible at times. Strong, healthy, fearless. But one leer, one sexual comment, a threatening lunge, can take that away in a split second.

No one should have to feel like this. No one should be attacked on a run. No one should forget Eliza Fletcher and the run she couldn't finish.

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This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: After Memphis runner killed, others, infuriated, finishing Eliza's run