4. Everyday heroes

The story I will recount today is an old one, birthed at the same time our ancestors laid the first dirt track from one neolithic cave to the next.

It is a drama so beholden to the human condition that it could unite everyone from Wall Street bankers to K Road slam poets to nomadic Sub-Saharan cowherds - and quite possibly the cows themselves; each nodding in unison at its maddening familiarity.

As soon as you read these coming words, you will no doubt flashback to a traumatic encounter of your own, remembering a time you too were stuck behind... Slow. Walkers.

For me, this story played out close to home today. The battlefield? The aptly named 'John Walker Promenade', the main walking strip at my local park. Named after one of New Zealand's great Olympians, the promenade is filled these days by middle aged amblers rather than middle distance athletes. More so now that COVID-19 has pushed every family out onto their local sidewalks for their daily government mandated hour of fresh air.

Like clockwork, my parents set out for their daily walk and today I added to the journey. Before long, a trio of figures on the horizon began to loom closer and closer, a slowly moving wall. They matched our family in composition: a Mum, a Dad and the son that had been coerced into accompanying them. The only difference - a couple of teeth gritting km/h.

Now I'm a competitive guy and genetics dictates that my parents would be a bit of the same. It only took a look over to see the glint in my Dad's eye for me to understand that our little bubble would not be held back today. We would not bend to their ponderous pace. We were going for it. The overtake.

Given the circumstances, this was an ambitous manouever. Social distancing meant that the usual skitter by in close proximity with a half whispered "excuse me guys" would not suffice. What would we do instead? Would it be the 'divide and conquer' with the team splitting up to go around them before rejoining a couple of metres ahead? A quick scan of the conditions underfoot proved that this would not be the case. Rain earlier in the day meant the grass to the left was a quagmire, slowing us down rather than speeding us up. I could tell that my parents, veterans in the art of the overtake, had made the same assessment.

Suddenly the answer came to us all at once. About 20 metres ahead of our quarry, the shrubbery to our right gave way to a flat paved area, usually meant for service vehicles. If we sped up a touch, it would leave just enough space to make our move while keeping two metres in between our competing bubbles #UniteagainstCovid19.

It was on. Without a word we fell into single file, a couple of metres shy of our strike zone. Strides lengthened, hearbeats quickened, breaths held. From afar it would have been a thing of beauty. A perfectly executed manouever that would be more at home on the black asphalt of Monza than the grey concrete of our local park. It was over in seconds. There were no words spoken, no looks exchanged. Everyone involved knew what had just occurred.

As we regrouped a couple of metres ahead, a sense of satisfaction settled over me. Today we showed that slow walkers didn't own the footpath. Their pace would not dictate terms for the rest of us. Today we stuck it to the man and stood up for the little guy (with fast legs). Everyday heroes.