Bel vs Mazda.


Last week I ran 13k. Fuck yeah. But about half way through I came face to face with a group of teenage girls, and being teenage girls, they were walking arm in arm. The closer I got, the less they cared. When I was almost nose-to-nose with them, I figured that they were in fact not going to move for me, so I had to run around them (on to the road). As the sleeve of my 7 kilometre sweated top brushed against one of them, she leapt back and looked at me like I had licked her eyeballs. It took every piece of me to not scream at them. What did they expect me to do? Face the oncoming Mazda or cartwheel over their five people strong pavement wall?

I am not sure if it just me, but do other runners have a set of road (or rather pavement) rules in their heads and then get irrationally angry when other people don’t follow them? Well I do.

One of my rules is, if the person coming towards you is exerting more energy that you, you move. It sounds weird, I know. But you wouldn’t believe the number of people who just stare aimlessly at me, and just walk (at a glacial pace) towards me as I run. It’s infuriating. Other runners however, are falling over themselves to get out of the way of anything and everything in their path. I am pretty sure the number of times that I dodge people on my regular weekend runs would add at least a kilometre to my over all distance. It is frankly just rude. The only exceptions I have to this rule are small children and animals. Tiny tots (I am talking under ten) are sweetly oblivious to their surroundings and quite frankly, how can you get mad at something so adorbs? Same goes for pets. To be frank, I’m so swayed by cute things that the same would probably apply if Zac Efron wouldn’t move out of my way.

So, if you see me out and about in my lycra this weekend, please realise that (unless you too are running), it will probably take a lot less energy for you to move a little to avoid being either bowled over (not that I am much of a force to be reckoned with) or touched by my gross, vomit educing sweaty sleeve.

And don’t expect cartwheels, although my eight-year-old self was DAMN good at them.

Blog at