keninabu!

The Beautiful and the ridiculous

I was running the outer loop this morning, in an effort to 'wake myself up': I ended up feeling like crap, and even more tired than before.

Just when I was about to give up, this black man dressed in a rather worn red T-shirt and jeans, with a denim baseball cap on his head, cycled past me on the road. He looked at me, smiled and gave me a wave. And his bicycle was loaded front and back with dozens of beautiful flowers, which looked fresh and colourful in the bright sunshine.

He cycled on, and it was a picture-perfect moment: the colourful and vivid red, pink, yellow and blue flowers on the bicycle as he cycled along the road, dappled with the shadows of oak tree branches that line both sides of the sidewalk.

---

A little later, as I rounded the bend, a lady literally popped out of the hedges in front of me, and continued running in front of me. I recognized her: during this run, this woman had repeatedly overtaken and lagged behind me for the past 2 miles of running. Our runs had become an informal sort of race between us. AND, in order to overtake me, she had actually crossed through the hedges and across the mushy vegetated grounds for about 100 meters JUST to overtake me!

I just laughed. It's so childish that I couldn't believe it. I had to stop running not because I was conscious of the subconscious 'competition' with her, but because physically I couldn't take it, but obviously she was a lot more conscious of the competition, and so felt it necessary to resort to a short cut in order to 'win'!

I was just competing with myself; who am I cheating when I take a short cut?

posted by keninabu @ 9:58 PM