I went out for a run this morning and passed one of those radar machines on the side of the road. You know the ones that police park in residential areas to remind you that you shouldn’t be driving 45 through a street lined with houses and sidewalks on both sides?
Anyway, I had just crested a hill and saw the machine and thought the same thing that I always think when I run by one of them:
“Man, I wish I could register on that thing.”
Then I chuckle to myself, and start thinking about how they must have to calibrate the settings so they only register speeds of cars and not every little moving object that goes past (I’m a programmer, I can’t help but think about that stuff).
So right about the time I’m thinking about how I’d set up the machine’s speed calculation algorithm a huge number “6” shows up on the screen.
Wham! Blink … “6” … Blink “6”
Now I’m having flashbacks to the movie The Rookie when the guy throws a couple baseballs at one of these speed machines to see if he still has any hop to his fastball.
“Naw, there’s gotta be a car creeping into a parking spot behind me,” I think.
I turn and start jogging backwards. Not a single thing moving on the street except for me.
Finally. This is my chance. I turn and step up my pace a bit.
Still registered a 6. That’s no good. Surely I should be able to hit 8 mph, so I step up the pace a bit more.
Boom. 7…. uh wait, back to 6. Ah forget it. I was running up a hill anyway.
Maybe I don’t want those machines to register my running speeds after all. Or maybe I’ll just adjust my route to run by the machine first next time.
