Get outta my way

When we start to grow up (which, for some of us, is around 49 years of age), we realize that the universe is full of other people who amazingly, have different agendas than ours.

Nowhere does this become more obvious than when you are working out at a gym, on a track, in a shared pool, or biking or running on a street or pathway. Unless you are the strange and X ray visioned athlete who works out at 2 a.m., you are going to have to play nice and share your space with cars, other bikes, other runners, walkers, skunks, snakes, skaters, dogs, squirrels, children, tonka toys, and the occasional runaway housecat.

It's easy to get annoyed--I know I get that way a lot--when a slow strolling couple holding hands decides to take up the entire trail pathway and you are barreling toward them on a bike with no room to get around them. Or like last night with me, when I am swimming a timed 500 yard distance and a couple of kids decide to jump into the lap lanes (this happens a lot when they close the outdoor pool at 7:45 p.m. each night) and I bounce off them and right into the lane dividers (and then they elect to stay in my lap lane splashing and playing, to the obliviousness of the lifeguard and the multiple signs that say "lap lanes are for lap swimming ONLY").

Life is crowded. Other people cram on our treadmills, cars buzz by us on our bike rides and runs, and dogs roam unleashed to charge us and make our heart rate a personal record that day.

Well, we can continue to be annoyed, and post blistering e mails on running/biking/workout sites and blogs (believe me: the people who you want to hear you are NOT on these sites), and make complete jerks of ourselves by yelling at or nearly running over poor Grandma who just wanted to take a leisurely bike tour around the lake without being run over by a crowd of brightly colored racers down on their aerobars.

Or we can figure out that it isn't always about us and what we want. Our workout time, speed, distance, etc. is important to us, but not to the majority of the free world. Their casual evening stroll with their pooch is just as important to them. Yes, they often break the rules (see the lap swimming one above) or seem ignorant of common courtesy (walking in the middle of a bike path). But let all of us who have never made an error be the first to throw the bike chain at them.

Ride, run, walk, swim and work out with one eye out for those who are going to be in your way (accidentally or not). Be kind and polite. If you feel the need to tell people the rules (I had to remind one lady who was walking in the "run" lane on a track that it might be safer for her to move over one lane--she looked at me as if I had just given her tyhpoid, so I decided to move myself into the "walk" lane and just move on with my workout), do it nicely, and if they refuse to accept your suggestion, then adapt.

I'm not a fast biker, as you have seen, and believe me, I have lusted in my heart over those who scream past me so close that they nearly touch my derailer--not in a Jimmy Carter way, but to go catch them and remind them that slower bikers are just as entitled to their space and place as they are. And when I pass those who are slower than me (not often, but it is happening more and more), if I have to wait to go around them, I wait, I call out "on your left," and I pass with plenty of space between us. Karma happens. Rudeness is not a good way to raise that heart rate.

I did my 2600 yard swim last night (some drills, some intervals, and some long swims) even with the commotion in my lap lane. A half banana before and the second half afterwards. Thursday's a day off although I am going to dog agility class and will do some crunches and planks before bedtime.

Go forth and play nicely with others.