A runner who was spontaneously serenaded by Ed Sheeran as she ran into him while out for a jog has spoken about her decision to film the moment.
The singer-songwriter took to Instagram on Tuesday evening to share footage of himself sitting aboard a canal boat in the U.K. as he noticed a lone woman running on the path.
"Hi," Sheeran said while waving at the passerby. "Any requests?"
As she slowed her pace, the runner asked: "Can you do 'Tenerife Sea'?" The 2014 track is from Sheeran's second studio album x.
Strumming his acoustic guitar, Sheeran immediately broke into song, belting out the hit. The runner quickly whipped out her phone to capture the moment.
As his performance concluded, the runner said: "Thank you so much." Sheeran cheerfully waved and told the woman: "Have a good rest of your run."
Sheeran posted footage of the moment on his Instagram account soon afterward, adding the caption: "Was filming a video on the canal today, played a request. If anyone knows the runner lemme know so we can have their POV video for the lols."
Within minutes of the footage going live, the runner in question was revealed to be student teacher Nikki Atkins. Some social media users noted how quick she was in filming the moment. "Feel really sad she instantly grabbed for the phone," wrote one.
Taking a more comical perspective, another weighed in: "Knowing my luck, [by] the time I'd [have] got my phone out my pocket he would have finished singing."
Speaking about the "surreal" moment on BBC TV show Breakfast on Wednesday, Atkins responded as the hosts commended her on her quick phone reaction.
"I feel like it almost looked like I'd planned that, and I was ready for it," Atkins said from her home in west London. "But genuinely, in my head, I was thinking like, 'Oh my God, he's actually singing to me. I'm not going to remember this if I don't film it this... I'm going to black out. I'm not going to know what's going on.'"
"In that video, it looks so rapid that I pull my phone out, but I was just kind of like, 'Oh my God. Ed Sheeran is singing to [me]. I need to record this,'" she added.
The footage showed that after Sheeran's performance came to an end, Atkins pressed on with her jog—something she now regrets.
"I do kind of feel a bit silly about that, like I wish I'd kind of said more to him," Atkins said the morning after her evening encounter with Sheeran. "I'm sure like a lot of people have that experience of kind of... encountering like a celebrity or something, and thinking, 'Oh God, I wish I'd said that.'"
Taking the opportunity to share what she would have told Sheeran in the moment, Atkins said: "I'd like just to say thank you so much again. That was incredibly special and so beautiful, and just really made my day."
"He was so lovely as well," she continued of Sheeran. "He was really just so chill and nice. And I felt so silly, just like when I was running away at the end, because obviously everyone on the boat was kind of watching me. But they were all just so lovely. Thank you so much."
For her part, Atkins shared the footage that she shot in an Instagram story post, tagging Sheeran as she wrote: "This was so unexpected and so so beautiful. Thank you thank you."
"This is why we run girls," she added.
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