Fight or flight in the cut-throat world of cycle lanes

Cycle lane, Santos - one of these people is probably a nutter  

13 km 

1:03:54 / 4:54 pace

Cycle lane, mid-afternoon, 27C, windy

The Brazilian Cycling Association (ABC, in the Portuguese acronym) considers Santos to be a ‘bicycle friendly’ city because of its 43 km of cycle lanes. I can well imagine the ABC acts in good faith and probably feels it is on pretty firm moral ground in its mission, which I would guess is something to do with promoting cycling. I suppose lots of representative associations feel secure in their moral standing based on the idea that whatever it is they are representing is unimpeachably good. Such security would be patent nonsense. 

At some point we cannot escape the fact that these associations are representing people and a significant number of people are morons. Cyclists in Santos might well enjoy living in a bicycle friendly city, but we should remember that the cyclists themselves are not necessarily friendly at all. I'd say 25% of them could be downright dangerous.  

You can probably guess that my run this afternoon involved contact with a cyclist who, for all I know, is now at home tapping away on a keyboard writing almost the exact same thing about runners using cycle lanes. 

This is where we are in society. No matter what you do or however you try to manage a situation, people will get involved and mess it up. I have to count myself among that number. The shame is almost enough to make me stop running on cycle lanes but not quite. My thinking on this is simple: I use the lanes at low-traffic times of the day and I am doing no harm to anyone. I often move faster than cyclists and cannot be accused of blocking the way any more than a cyclist would be. I am, in fact, occupying less physical space in motion because I am not cheating on a primitive machine. 

It was a reasonably good run today, although it felt harder than a similar run I did a few days ago (at night, in fact) at a much faster pace. That happens. I was mentally tired when I started and that probably explains it. A few cyclists were extremely decent as they overtook me, saying a friendly word or two - especially one guy who was riding a bike and steering another one by his side (a surprisingly common sight here). He called out to me and explained that he had two bikes, I moved over, he went past and called me "brother" and human kindness radiated around us as we shared the joy of public space. Then at around the 9 km mark a fat young bastard riding like a clown on meth rode past as close as could be without actually hitting me, screaming as loudly as possible in the process. The effect was startling, so I took chase, of course. He was 50% bigger than me and half my age but, fortunately, he was convinced by the suggestions I made to him about his mother's professional occupation and the look on my face that his best bet was to ride on, pointing at the cycle lane and actually wagging a finger. 

Brazil is a very dangerous country. There is essentially no law enforcement and life is cheap, so I have had a word with myself and will not react to the next person that decides cycle lane rights are things worth fighting for. The adrenalin burst and chase helped pick up the pace but I'll be achieving a similar result by self-motivated means from now on.