Sloppy teamed up with Chuckie to give us a mini-ballbreaker, starting from Huay Tung Thao. The hare brief was anything but brief, but in due time we were set loose. I jogged off with Humps to the first circle. 2 options, right up the hill, or straight along the bottom. I took the route over the hill knowing the two trails rejoined further on. 100m.. nothing, damnit! With a long run ahead, I was loathe to go back, but no one was calling… I kept on a bit further, but still nothing. Finally I heard Cougar calling from down to my right – there must be another trail there. By now I was already over the hill, so made my way down towards the call, and found trail with Cougar running towards me.
A V-check. Towards the army base, or not? I didn’t think we’d be going into the army base, so chose left – and hit the check back. OK, so we were going into the army base and I caught up with the pack at the road. Turning right was unlikely, so I headed for the dam, following Cougar who was running very well. It was a long way, but as we switched from paper to powder, perhaps we missed some trail, but we eventually got trail and jogged passed some soldiers.
The other side of the lake we started off on road that slowly changed to mud trail. Great running trails! We were headed towards Maerim… Shortly we got onto a trail that Sloppy used on 5th December 2011 for the male hash. The checks were pretty much straight on, so Piggy & Brownie led the way as the pack started to stretch out. A V-check caught them out and some how I found myself at the front with HRA. The trail took a sharp turn to the right, and there was the water stop. Strange – why no check? and there was a circle on the tree? So I headed on straight another 100m or so. Nothing, no sounds, no calls, no trail… (Had I gone another 20m around the corner I would have found trail again, but I turned back and found Mr. Poo and Cumlord sitting drinking water at the drink stop.
Damnit… I sped up and at the next check managed to reel in the front group. Taste My Buns was leading the way up heart break mountain a steep climb that was a killer after 5-6km already. No choice but to battle through it, and the front group of 5 were close together. We reached the top, and then found it wasn’t quite the top, and climbed a bit higher. As we turned to the left we had the view of HTT in the distance, and could just about make out the cars and the A-bucket. We started the descent and somehow HRA got away. For a while I was running with Piggy and Brownie slowly reeling in Tasty Buns, with HRA just ahead, and then all of a sudden HRA was gone. Did he switch on the turbo boost? He blasted through all the checks with us trying to figure out where his calls were coming from.
We were getting closer and the trails felt more familiar, although by that point, one waterfall looks like any other. A fly flew straight down my throat and I paused for a moment to gag. The front group disappeared, and as I jogged on past the ranger station, Graven suddenly appeared behind me. I’d not seen him all run, but in true Gravy style he was making his moves towards the end. But there wasn’t enough trail left for him, and we jogged in together.
A GREAT run… It has been a long time since I’ve done a longer hash run – I’ve set a few, but not had the chance to run them, so it was a lot of fun. Cheers hares! Here’s to more miniBBs