The Long Walk Home

So we decided to the Round the Bays walk this year. My new flatmate was doing it with a friend. And Reids decided she might try it too, but needed a buddy..... So when we walked past the registration place yesterday I got co-erced into going into it with her.

I like team sports. I'm not so much an individual sport person. And walking/running are not my strengths (as my 'Glacier' nickname would suggest).

So anyhow, I was slightly drunk last night. And woke up this morning a little worse for it..... and would have been agreeable to flagging the whole thing and considering it an $18 donation to some worthy cause, effort-free.

But we went. As we approached the bus stop, we saw all these uber-fit people in proper running gear. They had short-shorts and white singlets and toned legs. I was wearing a baggy t-shirt and long shorts. I was hung-over. We were both intimidated.

But once the race started it was all on. For a while we kept a leisurely pace.....

Until we looked around and realised, in a single comical glance, that we were being beaten by two kids walking along eating chippies, a blind man with a cane (I kid you not) and people pushing prams as they walked. Our pride became dented.

At this point we decided to try and pass 100 prams before the end of the race. So off we zigged-and-zagged, picking off prams like a hyena picks of the weakest gazelle. We got up to ten pretty quickly, in about 500m.

But then we met our nemesis.

She was a woman in a red tshirt, pushing her pram along. She looked introverted, possibly socially awkward, but intense. She had a certain solitary grit about her. We would come up alongside her, ready to pass, and she would suddenly dart away from us, putting on a sudden burst of speed. It seemed she knew what we were doing and she wasn't going to stand for it. Brings to mind that movie quote - 'Why won't you just die?!?'

We figured out pretty quickly that she worked in bursts. She would get a little ahead, but we would soon pick her off and she seemed destined to burn out eventually. And so our game of cat and mouse went on for another 5km, from Oriental Parade to Greta Point. *

We would be feeling confident, thinking we had burned her.... but then one of us would glance back and warn, 'Red Shirt's coming!' and we would have to step it up a gear. It was like some terrible horror movie, where the villain keeps rising from the dead, just when we thought it was safe to rest again.....

And then she started running.

Now, Reids and I had sworn not to run. It seemed like cheating, when you were doing the walking section of the event. It seemed like the people who were running bits were just too chicken to enter the running section, and trying to look like heroes by having the best times in our section. We resented them.

But at Greta Point, 1.5km from the end, we had to run. I have never actually seen Reids run before (bung knee, she has always claimed). But before I knew it, while I was power-striding along, she started jogging. She said it was the only way she could keep up with my long strides, and that Red Shirt was getting away and so it was the only option. This was how badly she wanted to win this battle - she resorted to Public Running (third only to Public Speaking and Death in terms of world-wide fears, surely).

And then, when that wasn't fast enough to do the job, we were both jogging. We passed Red Shirt pretty quickly then, and started walking again, thinking that was her final burst. I had brought up a sweat for the first time in the race.

And then we heard the wheels, coming up quickly from behind. That tell-tale buggy creak, and we could tell it was getting closer.

And she passed us again.

We started jogging, nose-to-nose with her. Reidun dropped off but I could hear her behind me, yelling out, 'You can do it, Kate! Go!'

And it was just me and Red Shirt (and thousands of others), 500m from the finish line. It was my Chariots of Fire moment. Me and the middle aged lady with a pram, one-on-one.

And then, after an intense 50m or so, I gave up. I know I could have taken her. But that battle will have to wait for another day. I slowed down and waited for Reids, and we both shrugged it off, conceding that Red Shirt wanted it more than we did. She'd earned it.

We had never actually made eye contact with her, but she knew it was a race. I could sense it.

She is my new pram-pushing nemesis.

Wherever you are, Red Shirt, let it be known that I shall have my revenge on you! This isn't over yet!

Although, I'll admit that if she's not wearing the red shirt or pushing the pram, I may not be able to recognise her ever again. Cunning! Just like Superman's indecipherable glasses-disguise.....



*I got to reach out to a helper-person for a cup of water (like they do in marathons!) and without pausing to drink it properly, chug it down and screw up the cup, dropping it unceremoniously in the gutter (not realising, along with hundreds of others, that there was a rubbish bin especially set up, a little further on, oops). I felt like a professional! Another life-long goal has been achieved. Next, someone has to sponge me down (like they do in boxing....).

* * *

This is cool. The origins of battle-raps, I'm thinking.

Whoa.... or this is even better! Clay Aitken does theme songs........