Uh-oh! said the notification on my Garmin Forerunner after it vibrated. I blinked for a bit while pointing my face at the screen. I don’t know what clown at Strava HQ thought that Uh-Oh! was an acceptable way to tell you you’d lost your CR. Fucking Uh-Oh! Good job they’re not diagnosing cancer, eh? Uh-oh! You’ve got stage 4 cancer! Uh-oh, you’ve had a miscarriage! Uh-oh! Your first wife left you! But there was that tone deaf message staring up at me halfway through what, up until that point, had been a decent first lunch date.
We’d been talking about fitness which is one of my interests. She considered yoga as exercise, so I’d been trying to encourage her to try a Park Run to improve her cardiovascular fitness. Striking a pose isn’t going to help if a bear is lolloping after you. She didn’t think she could run 5k. I’d explained that there was a deformed man who did my local one and it took him about an hour and she could definitely beat him. She said that an hour sounded impressive for a disabled person. I explained that it wasn’t. He wasn’t that bad. I could walk it in an hour. I told her I thought she could do it in about 35 minutes which would be really good. She should try to keep her cadence at about 180spm. Anyway, yeah, it had been going well but she’d gone to the toilet and she’d been gone ages when my wrist vibrated.
She’d returned from the toilet at some point, but I still couldn’t think straight. My head was abuzz. “What?” I asked her because she was saying something. I looked away from my watch and up into her eyes. “What?” I asked again because she was still talking.
“Were you timing me?” she asked, with a smile, nodding at my left wrist.
“What?” I asked again, confused.
“You’re really staring at your watch!”
“Oh, sorry,” I said. “Hey, was there a problem in there?” I nodded my head towards the toilet doors. “Do you need me to get you some sanitary products or something?”
“Pardon?” she asked.
“If you do, just let me know. There’s a Boots.” I’d read that women love men who can talk about periods and stuff without showing disgust.
“Oh… thanks,” she said. “But I’m…” She looked around then sat down.
“Hey, sorry, I know we said no phones but…” I shifted in my chair so I could access my phone. “This is important, yeah.” I tapped the Strava icon and then went to notifications. “Un-fucking-believable,” I muttered.
“Is everything okay?” she asked. I didn’t bother replying to that because obviously everything wasn’t okay.
I sighed. “You know I was telling you about segments?”
“Oh yeah, segments,” she replied.
“Well, this is the shit I have to deal with!” I turned my phone to her and held it close to her face so she could see.
Her head jerked back. “What am I loo-” I turned my phone back to me. “This guy, right? There’s some guy who keeps taking my CRs.” I shook my head. “I don’t even know who it is!”
“Well, you’ll just have to beat it again!” she said with a smile, displaying the same level of ignorance the person at Strava who invented “Uh-oh” showed. I stared at her to see if she was joking. It didn’t look like she was.
“It’s not real!” I said.
She looked flustered. “Well, no, but if it’s important to you th-”
“No!” I said. “Sorry, what’s your name again?”
“Claire.”
“No, Claire. CRs are real, I told you that. You get a little crown and anyone on Strava knows you’re the fastest ever human over that segment. I’m saying this guy isn’t real.” I tapped my phone screen but thankfully didn’t accidentally give the cheat kudos. But then I thought that maybe I should give them kudos, to let them know I was onto them. I didn’t.
Over the next few minutes, I presented the case against the guy, starting with the most damning evidence – all his other runs. Obviously, I didn’t want to ‘mansplain’, so I told her the evidence and let her reach her own conclusion. That was my plan, anyway.
“Kate, just think!” I told her, tapping my own forehead. “He hasn’t done one run with an average pace faster than 4:30/km! That’s a 25 minute 5k! And his biggest week was 12km!” I sat back in my chair.
“You said 35 minutes was really good!”
“Well, yeah, for someone like you! Not for a… a… The segment I just lost I did at 3:23, and I did it when there was a crazy tailwind. How’s this guy beating that? He’s not, is he?”
“It’s probably a glitch,” she said.
“That’s smart, Kate. Now you’re using your brain. That’s what I thought at first. Well, first I thought he was on a bike, but everything else matches a run, apart from the bits when he destroys my segments! It doesn’t make any sense. One of them could be a glitch, sure, but he’s taken 8 of mine. And I created most of them because it’s a route I run a lot.” I shook my head. “Telling you, this guy is trying to ruin my life. What a loser!” I’d obviously done a deep dive on Facebook using his name and friends, but I hadn’t found out anything about him. I looked at Kate. “Some people are just pricks.”
We sat in silence for a bit. I realised it had become a bit awkward. “So… do you do any exercise?” I asked.
“Yoga.”
“Oh yeah, that’s right.”
“…”
“…”
“…”
“So… shall we?”
“Yeah, I have to go somewhere this afternoon,” she said, already standing up. I nodded. I paid but it wasn’t too bad because I had vouchers. Things got crazy when she was driving me home, though. About a mile from Pizza Express there was a runner on the opposite pavement, going the same direction that we were. Obviously, I checked him out. He looked pretty good. He had long shorts on but hardly any vertical oscillation. He looked good. Efficient. Fast.
“That might be him!” she said. I faked a chuckle, but to my horror she was slowing down and putting her window down.
“What are you-” I squealed, pressing myself against the passenger door.
“Excuse me, what’s your name!” she shouted at the guy. The guy noticed us and slowed and took out his earbuds. Anyway, to cut a long story short the guy was the guy and he’d just moved into the area or something. Just started running. Used to play football. Enjoying trying to beat other people’s segments on Strava, was having fun with it! I just sat there grinning like a fucking idiot in the passenger seat as my date set up a running race.
Oh lord.
“You’re going to beat him, right?” she asked, just before dusk as I did a few lacklustre sideways leg swings while leaning on her electric Renault 5.
“He probably won’t turn up. And to be honest I’ve got a bit of a twinge in my calf. And I did 12 miles on Tuesday so we’ll see, but I think I might be coming down with covid.” I forced out a cough. “And really, I’m better at long distance stuff.” I coughed again. “You don’t have to watch, it’ll be boring.”
“Oh, I am not missing this,” she said. I nodded.
Matey turns up in a fucking Audi and he’s wearing Alphaflies. I only had Vaporflies on so I knew I was in trouble. I still felt I had a chance until he started warming up. He was doing crazy shit I’d never do in public and he ended it with those jumps where you lift your knees up high and he went really high. Fucking guy was like a fucking spring. Uh-oh, I thought. I could be in trouble here.
I stayed with him for about 400 metres before he started pulling away. He was trying to chat with me but I couldn’t breathe. And then I turned off and crashed through some bushes and then just kept jogging. I jogged about 13 miles. It was very dark when I got home. My jacket and keys were in her car, so I just climbed through a window. She dropped my stuff off the next day. Left it in the porch because I didn’t answer the door. I just stood watching her from behind the curtains of an upstairs window.
After dropping my things she ran down the path. Well she managed to run for a whole 12 steps before she had to walk. Pfft, I said to myself, accidentally spitting on the curtain.