anderson street hill

For some god-awful reason, known only by my sad excuse for a subconscious, I decided today was the day for a tempo session AND hills. One can only assume I’ve done something extremely bad in a former life and/or in a dream.

Either way, as you might expect, it wasn’t a wholly pleasant exercise. I started out at lunch-time in the city, after showing a rare bout of common sense at 5am. At that point I, quite justifiably, thought it was a little too cold to venture out.

On the other hand, 5am runs may be cold, but at least you don’t have the psychological torture of making an exit from the office. For some reason, even the hint that I’m going for a run seems to bring hordes of people out into the lobby, and not just ordinary jo-blows: people who really shouldn’t see me in my shorts.

I ran the gauntlet of leers from the boss’ boss’ boss’ PA and various other low-lifes, after which half a dozen Anderson street reps didn’t seem so painful.

Don’t get me wrong, Anderson street is never fun. Neither are 15 minute tempo runs around the tan. Let me qualify that, they probably could be fun, but only to someone with, as they say in the classics, a diseased imagination and a healthy dose of self-hatred.

In fact the best thing you can say about today’s run is this: I didn’t get shot.

Danger
Melbourne readers will no doubt recognise that last sentence as a rather oblique reference to yesterday’s triple shooting in extremely-down-town King Street. To the best of my knowledge, the only person to actually die was a runner who stopped to give the woman some help.

I don’t mean to make light of this. Quite the opposite, I think he was one of the rare people who actually deserve to be called a “hero”.

If I came across a fight, would I intervene? I’d have to think carefully about it, after yesterday.

On a similar issue, in the US it’s been noticed how often runners/joggers come into contact with the seamy side of life. See Nation’s Joggers sick of Finding Dead Bodies.