Yet another Alice run, this time teaming up to help train Mr. PP as a new hare. Alice puts a lot of work in, and lucky for me this time he was out in Doi Saket. Terror Byte wanted to come along today, so we set off a little early to try and find a shelter for a run I’m setting soon. We arrived to find a packed runsite.
Harebrief done we were pointed off as Sups just arrived. I walked off at a brisk pace, trying to warm my legs up. My legs were definitely still feeling the effects from Thursday’s efforts – I tried commanding them to run, but they told me to fuck off. At least today wouldn’t involve much in the way of hills, but I wasn’t feeling overly confident! Obscene and a visitor ran off and then stopped to take photos at the first check. I used that to my advantage nailing the small trail off to the right. Another check, and this time I wasn’t quite right, but it was easy enough to hack through the trees to paper. Obscene was running hard, and putting us all to shame.
Out to the canal, and the pack were lured to cross the canal. I’d seen Alice’s photos posted from scouting on facebook, and he had put some clear / obvious ones from the other side of the canal… I second guessed his double bluff and headed up the road to the left. Sure enough there was paper – not on the road, but just to the side of the road. Another check and I got there a bit ahead of HRA. I went left, knowing there were limited trails if we carried on straight. I was wrong, and found myself chasing back again. Fortunately just ahead HRA couldn’t spot paper as it switched from left to right of the road, and we regrouped to some extent. We turned into an abandoned moobaan, and another circle on the road.
Obscene again nailed it, but I’m not 100% sure we were correct. The trail was “suspicious”, randomly appearing in shiggy avoiding the roads? It turned up and to the edge of a quarry, with another circle check. From here it could have been back to the road – there were plenty of options. The first choice would be right along the side of the quarry, and NOYB & Sloppy took that option. Obscene was poking around in the quarry. Sex Pistol headed after him. CW and I stood debating our options, after watching NOYB go well past 100m. We started heading into the quarry as well, and after a while finally heard NOYB calling us on. WTF? It couldn’t be? He had gone probably 200m before he found trail coming in from the side – he must have known he wasn’t right, but was too lazy to go back and do it properly. When we caught up, we knew something was wrong, but a decent sized group were already off and running. Problem was, nobody knew where they were running to! There was a V check with potentially 3 different options (as we had all short cut to get to it)… First both ways were called as false trails, then both were called on! Confusion reigned and the pack was completely split up.
I found myself running along with Sex Pistol – her talking about how simple her trail had been on Thursday (Up and down the hill), while my legs were arguing that her trail was nothing like simple! We were on roads through an abandoned Moobaan before randomly hitting shiggy for no good reason but to connect to more road. Out to some rice fields and I knew where I was again. Neat connect and finally a bit of trail. Some confusion ahead, and again I hit the front when they came back presumably from a false trail. KO got iced for telling me I was going the wrong way when AGAIN the hares had randomly drifted off trail into trailless shiggy. We got to another quarry and ran along the side of it to another circle check. I was reaching my limits.
CW went straight but didn’t find anything, even though he was right. I went right with Sloppy and found nothing. Nothing was called for a long time, so I did a very, very large arc around hoping to intersect paper at some point. I did, rejoining the pack at a circle. A decent sized pack was still together, so maybe these checks were working as intended? I trailed NOYB for a while, knowing we were closing in on home, and knowing he knew we were closing in on home, and knowing he knew that I knew that we were closing in on home, and knowing that he knew that I knew that he knew we were closing in on home, and knowing he would use whatever he had in his young legs to “win”. A final V check, and with Chuckie wrong to the left, Sex Pistol led the youngster towards the closing part – the only question was where the ONIN might be…
NOYB bursted off after Sexy, but he’d shot his load too soon. I caught both as the trail rounded the corner into the field and with the A buck just a few hundred metres away we were all looking for the ONIN. Feet pounding behind me, NOYB couldn’t resist a giggle as he sprinted past me again – these youngsters who can manage a second spurt so soon after the first! But sadly again, he climaxed too soon and was short lived as he nearly collapsed in despair when there was no ONIN yet, and again the old man managed to slip past and get to the beer first.