Alice teamed up with Blows Herself again for a Doi Saket run. I nearly went to the hospital to get my bursitis sorted, but opted to go running and drinking instead.
We set off and Brownie behind me was keen to get running, pushing me into a jog so we got to the first check together. We split, but I called him over when I spotted paper up ahead (not the only time we could see paper ahead on trail). Another check and I think I found old paper before we found the right paper, carrying on towards the canal. Would we cross the canal? Alice has been double and treble bluffing me, so I decided not to cross the canal and checked up the road instead. Fortunately I got back to the circle before Brownie called it from 180 degrees the other side of the canal. Alice was sat smugly on a small bridge claiming a 1-0 lead…. Perhaps I’ll give you that, but you sitting there gave me a bit of info too – I had an idea we might be going back to that bridge sooner or later!
We headed parallel to the canal, and after a couple of checks it was clear we were headed for the nice trail that runs through the forest. Lucky for me a false trail tripped up Brownie and Sheep Shagger, leaving Graven and I heading into the forest. From here I was on auto pilot. Great running trails, but the pace was intense with Brownie and Graven pushing us on. I tagged a few checks in a row, but had to keep pressing on, damnit! The key check was when we turned back to the left – he had 2 choices, cross back over the canal and head back, or turn left. I dithered, while Brownie found trail and called on. It was left.
From here I was confident I wouldn’t get another check wrong. The pace was quick though, around 6 mins per km. Sure enough I tried to hang on to Brownie, but he was getting all the checks right as well, while Graven was stranded 100m behind trying to kick out the checks. Running along confidently, I was caught by surprise when Brownie suddenly hit a False Trail. WTF? I knew we would be back on the trail just around the corner, but I went back and sure enough we found the extra loop. Nice touch hare… But at this point, Graven and Brownie ran away from me. I fell over scrambling down a slope and TMB passed by. I knew what was left, but felt like walking in.
Back on the mainer trail, and I saw Brownie up ahead checking. But coming back from checking. TMB went left, while Graven had gone right (why???) I asked Brownie if he had gone far enough, and he said “I went 70m, didn’t see anything…” Suddenly the game was alive again, and somehow I found new energy reserves, and ran through the last few checks with Brownie chasing me down before gentlemanly joining me at the OnIn and jogging in together.
Nice set hares! They managed to find a couple of bits I haven’t used before. It was definitely a runners run – dead flat and a fast average pace <7mins per km. You can tell the seasonals are back!