The City Bhey - Part I

The City Bay fun run was on Sunday and the WCS entered a team. Well, not a team as such, just a group of people doing it. They paid our entry fee and gave us a nice shirt with a smartarse slogan on it. Nice.

The day itself was one of those days you'd expect to see if you lived in England, except with less exploding public transport. The clouds were grey and unbroken. The temperature was George Bush's IQ. It was a perfect day for sitting home and doing nothing, except maybe whinge about how average the weather was.

The alarm went off at 5:30am and I slapped the snooze button hard. The clock radio screamed and elbowed me in the groin - whoops, wrong side. I'd just head-slapped the She_Admiral. The previous night's sexual gymnastics had obviously left me disoriented and on the wrong side of the bed again, which also explained why I'd been spooning the spare pillow all night, whispering suggestively into it's mute fibres "Hey, how about another crack in the morning!". The She_Admiral's black eye had wrecked that plan - looks like I'd be runnin' heavy on my feet today.

Made myself some toast and checked on the Ensign who was just waking up. She was hungry for milk, and vaguely aware that my toast with Vegemite was something better than milk - something she couldn't have. She started crying the long drawn out baby-wails that come from knowing you have no teeth and can't eat anything as good as toast first thing in the morning. I bent over the baby monitor and chomped my toast dramatically with a low growl, chucking at the "Monster is gnawing your baby's head" effect this combined with the crying would have back in "No Sex This Morning Central" over the speaker. I was grateful the monitor only transmits one way. Hearing the bedroom door slam open, I ran for the Little Admiral's Room and began my mission to eject 1kg of chicken schnitzel.

An hour later, we were in town, having transported my mum there as well. She was walking the 12km, but didn't want to hang back with Team Stroller because she was "goin' for a time". Off she went to the start line, while the rest of us, now joined by our WCS workmates huddled in the cold waiting for the starter's gun. Except there's no gun now. They used to start the race by firing a blank from a massive 105mm Howitzer, and I figured the shock of that was just what I needed to shift this schnitty, but alas it was not to be. One year, someone probably saw the gun scare a duck, or were moved to cough when assaulted by a whiff of cordite, and sued the event organisers. So now the race was set in motion by an announcer unseen mumbling "go" into a microphone. Weak.

For the walkers "go" meant "wait". For the stroller crowd, it meant "wait longer" as the sea of people surged away like a human glass of beer emptying in a Carlton Draught ad. I used the time to assess the opposition: "Tyres at no more than 18 PSI. Puching that will feel like lead by 8km. We could take 'em" "Dunlop KT26 shoes from Target. New. Blisters by 5km" "Baby grimacing. Undoubtedly dumping. Nappy change before the parklands". We were looking good.

An important part of race prep is also to plan your perving strategy. You're going to be walking behind a vast smorgasbord of arses for the best part of 90-120mins so you better pick a good one. I spotted a group of nubile vixens limbering up 10m away and subtly manuovered the stroller to point in that direction by crouching down and pretending to check on the Ensign, swinging the stroller around to bear as I did so. "Hehehe, LOCKED ON!" I cooed in baby-voice and then stood up chuckling at my own brilliance, only to be met by the icy stare of the She_Admiral wearing her well-practiced "You pathetic man" look. Glumly, I returned the stroller to its default position, pointing dead centre into the monumental arse of a middle aged woman, grotesquely lunging forward to stretch her scant used muscles.

Finally, it was time to set off. We lunged forward a full 5m and then pancaked into a wall of people who'd stopped abruptly in front of us. Then they surged forward again, and the same thing happened. In a fit of inspired design, the starting arch had been constructed 50% narrower than the channel running up to it, meaning that people were being squeezed together to get through, like a giant human funnel. I looked for the posse of lycra-clad honeys I'd seen before. If I could just make some minor headway into the sea of people and initiate a 12 degree tack to the right, the archway crush would cause them to be in perfect position for the rest of the journey. A brisk corrective jerk on the stroller once again foiled my plans and I resigned myself to the fact that the She_Admiral's active perving detection array was operating perfectly despite the cold.

I risked a glance to my six and saw a guy playing a piano in a cage. A heavy steel cage being pushed by a group of burly removalists with tree-trunk calves. Walking amongst the stroller convoy was bad enough, but risking defeat by a team pushing a piano was too much. Alongside was 4 kids with a crude go-kart. Heavy tube steel, solid rubber wheels, spindly, chicken-like legs. No chance. The installation of an esky into their wedge-shaped vehicle was a touch of genius, as was the honky tonk bike horn they'd mounted on the front, but the overall design was questionable. There were four of them, two riding and two pushing. They'd obviously be working in shifts. If we didn't beat them, I'd eat my hat. I kept the thought to myself though, just in case.

Several iterations of the horizontal concertina later, we'd reached the start line and the race was on. Worse than that though, my pre-race preventative hydration routine appeared to be incompatible with the frigid weather. Three steps into the event, I was in minor need of a piss...