Cuckold teamed with Dodgy Cock for a run out in Maejo. Last week I went backwards, so why not go backwards again today? The OnOnOn was at Baxtah’s in Souf Chiang Mai, and quite a few of the out of towners made the effort to head in, myself included. I had a damn fine burger, and extra fries, with excellent service – if only Cuckold had spent a little less time with the karaoke mic in his hand! Ubered my way home for 95B (-75B discount) = total 20B – not bad, not at all bad! Let me know if you want a discount code 😉
Anyway, hours before the drunken mayhem happened at the ononon, we were in Maejo, and I was carefully driven by my None of Your Business. Finally he was back on the hash, and fit enough to run the first part at least. In the harebrief we were told that we were running on leafsized paper, which the hares called “orange”, but a more accurate shade was “autumnal”. It was as though the haree had selected some dried leaves, headed to a paper mill and asked them to make a batch of leaf coloured paper. Inspired…. or not….
We set off and finally distinguished some paper from the leaves, and then promptly a circle check in the water run off. Mhmmm… Nobody bought it, except me, as I was first there, and obligated to check across the other side. I did, and turned right, to rejoin the pack at the next check. Brownie struggled to follow paper through a bit of shiggy, so I took over at the front, and luckily got first choice at the next check down the main trail… I was running well, and promptly got the next one wrong. I joined Sloppy, and as we passed a junction he stopped, chuckled, and turned back laughing as he had seen an autumnal leaf down the trail to the right… Sadly for him, it was an autumnal leaf, and not the indication of a false trail ahead.
We had got to the square lake, and headed right towards the hills. Another check, and while checking it was called to my left – Sloppy went back, Graven and I went the other way around and rejoined trail. Brownie had the lead and was off sucking up orange squares like pacman. As the rest of us reached a mainish junction we were more sceptical. Why no check? Knowing the trails, there was only one reason for there not to be a check there – we would be back to another trail that wasn’t far away… Note to hares- you could have put a V-check there…
Further down a circle, and Brownie was way off paper, and I led the pack into a field, with a sneaky circle in the middle of the field… Nicely played hares, nicely played. Sloppy called that one when the rest of us were way out of the picture, and then came the epic FRB game play from the Slopster. NO surprise he ran away before the circle started… Up ahead we could see him dart off to the right, and then come back and say he found a circle, but thought he saw some paper to the right. MOFO! All he saw was a complete deadend, but he played it to his advantage… and advantage that didn’t last long. I’m sure he wasn’t disoriented, but checking left at the next check made no sense to me.
The trail was starting to piece together for me, and at 5km in, I didn’t like the prospect of the hill that was still ahead, but it was there, and no way of avoiding it… Why oh why were the hares going to punish us like that??? In some ways it is an advantage to know the area, and in some ways I wish I didn’t know what was coming… Another check, and the rest of the pack checked straight (durrrh), and I was the only one to go right. I was on… sadly on… heading back to close to where there had been no checks before, and as trails were very close, of course there were still no checks. I pressed on alone, calling, and hearing faint calls from behind. Uphill.. I ran for a while, walked for a while, tried to keep pushing, knowing there was no avoiding the ridge at the top… Yes, this late into the run, the hares were going to take us all the way to the ridge.
Very few checks… Not many options on the way up, and had I been behind I would probably have cracked, but I pressed on, knowing that somewhere behind Brownfinger was chasing… What checks there were I got right, until I didn’t. I thought the hares would head towards the 5 way split, but perhaps they weren’t sure where they were and took the mainer looking trail? I went left, and nothing. I went the long way around – there were no calls from the other direction and I had a bit of a lead, so I just managed to pop up back on trail just ahead of Turkish and Brownie.
From there, holy fuck… seriously holy fucking fuckity fuck fuck… There were no more checks, it was a straight on fuckity run run… Every step I took had Brownie right behind me, pushing me, and with him was Cotton Buds? I forget the visitors name… He was coughing like Poo. It was only the narrow trails that stopped them from passing me… while I was close to collapsing, somehow Brownie was able to maintain a steady commentary of the run behind… “You can do it… Byte, it’s just another 10 metres… These are the ones that count… You’re going to do it… Good job!” How can he speak??? How is that human? Finally there was the road, and the onin… I was ready to collapse… I let Brownie overtake if he brought me a beer back – he didn’t….
8.66km… A tough run for a Saturday hash. It worked for me, but for the hash there should have been a lot more checks in the second half as the pack stretched out a lot. It was a really great run for the runners, with great checks in the first half, but probably a little long for a regular Saturday run?