A man attempting a deliberately slow, low-effort lap of the Tan yesterday morning found his walk quietly and involuntarily upgraded after falling into step behind a pace group, finishing the loop twelve minutes faster than intended and considerably more out of breath than the phrase "recovery walk" would suggest.
The walk had been planned, in advance, as a gentle one. "I told myself, no watch, no pace, just moving," he said. "I was coming off a heavy week. This was meant to be the opposite of effort."
The plan held for roughly four hundred metres, at which point a pace group — six or seven runners in matching club singlets, moving at what he estimated was "a genuinely aggressive walking pace for me" — passed close enough that he instinctively fell in just behind them, matching their rhythm without consciously deciding to.
"I don't know what happened," he said. "One second I'm strolling, thinking about nothing. Next second I'm somehow keeping pace with people who are training for something. I didn't choose this. My legs chose this."
He remained locked in the group's slipstream for the better part of the loop, unable to peel off without what he describes as "an actively rude deceleration," and unwilling to be the guy who visibly falls away from a pace line he was never part of in the first place.
"There's an etiquette to it," he said. "You can't just drop out mid-pack. That's worse than staying in."
He exited the group only once they turned off toward Anderson Street, at which point he stopped, hands on knees, and reportedly said, out loud, to no one, "that was not the plan."
Asked whether he'd log the walk as a run, he paused.
"I think I have to," he said. "I think what just happened to me was cardio."