Run 17 – The Dark Knight. 26/06/2019
To honor the longest night of the year (or the darkest night) I decided to do a Batman themed run. Into the city then north to Batman St then south down William St to Batman Park. A short lap of Batman Park and then further south through South Melbourne towards Albert Park Lake.
But it was in the transition between the two Batman sites that I got to live in the Batman world for a moment. Running down Williams St I noticed a woman walking towards me, but because she was on the phone, she didn’t see me and suddenly changed direction and stepped in front of me. Fortunately I was able to make a quick sidestep to the left that Scott Pendlebury would have been proud of, but that landed me in the bike lane. That would have been OK if there hadn’t been a bike coming. But there was a bike coming. Another Pendlebury-esque side step to the left saw me narrowly avoid the bike, but that put me on the road. Which would have been OK if there wasn’t a car coming. But there was a car coming. Yet another side step to the right put me back into the bike lane, but this time with no bike coming I was finally safe.
The whole sequence was virtually approximately identical to the chase scene in the Dark Knight movie – just different. Having had my life flash before me, it wasn’t until I got to Albert Park Lake before I felt I could pick up the pace. But by this time a new record was off the agenda.
Finished with a time of 1:47:29 but will treat it as a positive that I survived – I’m sure the cyclist and the driver in the car would have thought I was the Joker. I thought I was Batman.
My Three Learnings
Staying alive is vital to running a fast time.
CBD has short kilometers due to inaccurate GPS measures, but is still slow due to all the people in the way.
Albert Park Lake a more relaxing run than CBD at peak hour.