So I decided to take my dog to a popular local creek. I live in a fairly large southern city, so it being Sunday, there were many people around. It was about a mile and a half to get to the pool area and there were 2 mid twenties women with 2 dogs in front of me. They were fairly far ahead at first, but they walked fairly slow. I'm 6'2', have a big stride and my dog was pulling me to go faster so I inevitably caught up with them. Once I got 20ish feet away from them, one woman kept looking back with a somewhat concerned look, which I immediately got the feeling she thought I was a creep. Her 10lbs. dog at that point walked towards my direction to greet my dog. I made my dog sit because some people get worried about little dogs being around my 75lbs dog. I had him keep sitting after the little dog was called back to the woman to try and keep some space between us and them as she apparently felt uncomfortable by my proximity to them. This bought me about 10 minutes as the pace my dog was setting caught us up to them again.
Once I was about 20ish feet away from them again I thought, "Fuck it, I'm passing these slow walkers and proceeded to close the space. The women looked like they were taking snapchats, but kept looking over there shoulders at me. At one point, one of the women starts walking backwards, point her phone directly at me, as if she were taking a picture. I was still about 20 feet out, and knew at that point they assumed I was some sort of predator and wanted documentation of my face in case something happened to them? I was both hurt and kinda pissed that I made them feel threatened by simply walking faster than them. At that point I decided I needed to address the situation and announced to them, " Hey, my dog is pulling me through, is it alright if I pass you guys?" They said, "yea, sure." After I passed them, I could hear the one woman who turned to take a picture of me say, " well, I didn't even get a picture of him." I was absolutely mortified. Once we got to the swimming area, I made sure to walk to the farthest side of the area to ensure I was nowhere near them. There were probably about 100 people there and I found myself sitting on an uncomfortable ass rock because I wanted to keep my distance from them. I felt uncomfortable the whole time and kept thinking that if they felt that way, maybe I'm making others around me feel that way.
I am 32 years old, I had sunglasses and a backwards hat on with my beat up vans. I looked like pretty much every other hipster dude in my town just trying to enjoy some solo adventure with my dog, but apparently I either gave off a creepy vibe, or they were a bit overzealous in their actions. I really wanted to confront them about the attempted picture taking, but due to my shy nature and their discomfort, I felt it would have probably made matters worse.
Edit: Thank you everyone for the responses and advice. My shyness comes off as awkward or sometimes creepy in the right situation; I get it. I'll be more assertive and vocal of my passing women on the trails. Talking to strangers is hard for me sometimes. I got told I'm TA a handful of times, fewer than I was actually expecting. I received a pretty shitty message from a lady telling me to take a different trail and then it ended by her calling me a creep. https://imgur.com/a/SpimhZg
And although the general verdict is NAH, I still feel like the action taken against me was a bit extreme. I really think it's more hysteria at play here than rational reactions especially given the foot traffic on the trails that day. I mean, did the ladies really think there wouldn't be men walking faster than them behind them? I heard some pretty gruesome stories and was told statistics about women being assaulted anywhere from 1 in 4 to 1 in 6. After googling it myself, there seems to be a lot of conflicting numbers floating around out there, I'm no expert, but I'll take the advice given here anyway to avoid being in the predicament I was that day.
there doesn't seem to be anything here