Alice teamed up with BH out in Doi Saket. Home turf for me, so after not running outside in August, I ventured out into the heat. It is nice running in aircon.
A modest crowd showed, and slightly late we were set off without the GM in sight. We scrambled to the start of the trail, and then I ran out of paper until someone spotted a circle check randomly placed on a tree to the left. I was wrong, but it was early doors so I jogged along and got another check wrong, meeting up with some dogs, before an on call to my left. I cut across and with another check I got one right headed for the Chinese graveyard. We hit a series of 50/50 V checks, but I lucked out, and was going well till I hit a FT. I came back and was still in position for the true trail.
This was a familiar area, but it wasn’t clear yet if we’d be going clockwise or anticlockwise. My hunch said to head for the road and the other half of the trail would be back on the other side of the canal, perhaps using the trail people had missed on Alice’s last run. I was right (for now), and opened up the legs to find Alice with a single can of beer to share between the pack. I carried on, and got a couple of checks right before hitting another false trail. I was impressed, they’d gone deeper to the East. The next couple of checks screwed me over – excellent work hares! One I went left when it should have been straight, the next I went straight when it should have been left! Damnit – maybe I think too much.
Sheepshagger passed at one of those checks and then Chuckie joined me. Somewhere around there the heat got to me again. I started retching. Chuckie decided not to wait, and the other FRBs past by. I tried pressing on, but eventually had to collapse. Sex Pistol and Knockout arrived and poured water over my head, and after a few minutes I started to recover. Damn this heat – I’ve got to figure out a way of coping, or its back to the treadmill.
We started heading back towards the A, and the leaders were well ahead until a sneaky last FT that screwed everyone up. For some amazing reason, nobody considered looking for trail dropping straight off the side of a fucking cliff. This wasn’t a Belly Dancer hill, this was the cliff edge of a quarry. The hares said “we’ve done worse” – mhmmm… Apparently there were trees that people could swing off. I opted out and ran around the quarry picking up trail as we crossed back over the canal and got to the OnIn a bit ahead of CW. Nice route – just get a bit more aircon next time, or some more ladies to shower me with water!