I’ve been walking the same route to work for about a year and inevitably see a lot of the same people every day. What they may or may not know is that I am secretly racing them. There is one girl in particular who is usually walking up my road as I leave the house. She’s pretty fast and sometimes she overtakes me and sometimes I stay ahead of her. We’ve never made eye contact or spoken but I feel sure that knows that we’re racing and I’m sure she purposely swishes her ponytail at me as she’s overtaking. She wears very cloppy shoes so I can usually hear her approaching from behind even when I have my headphones on.
I’m 23 weeks pregnant now and getting a bit slower as my hip has been giving me a bit of bother. She wins most days and this is just going to get worse. This morning I set off down the road and straightaway could hear clop clop clop so I upped the pace a bit, determined to at least beat her to the traffic lights at the bottom of the hill. It was going pretty well as her clops got a bit faster too but weren’t getting any louder so I thought I was holding her. Upped the pace a bit more to the point where I had a bit of a light sweat on and still no sign of her overtaking. Made it to the lights first (yes!) and risked a glance back over my shoulder and saw that no one was there. Was a bit puzzled by this until I started walking again, heard the clop clop clop and realised that my keys had been knocking against my phone in my bag when I walked and this was what I had been hearing.
While finishing my walk to work at a rather more leisurely pace I started thinking about how I’m probably slightly mad. Do other people secretly race to work? Would it be unreasonable if next time I smiled at my swishy haired opponent and maybe said good morning? Would this be breaking some kind of commuter grand prix rule? To be honest she doesn’t look very friendly but maybe she’s just focused on the race.