You never really know what you are going to get when a veteran hasher sets a trail. This could be a piece of crap 3km run, or it could be an unannounced near 10km run. Sometimes the hares outright lie to us about how long / bad the run is going to be.
The last option is what we encountered this past Saturday.
This Saturday's "light exercise" run was brought to us by the joyful duo of "Sloppy Rod" and "Adorable Blue Balls." These two jokers are normally a lot of fun on the trail because you can count on them to do something stupid but unfortunately one of the traditions of hashing is that the hares are not allowed on trail with the rest of us. After our pre-hash hare-brief we were told that it was going to be between 5 and 6 km. We were all mentally prepared for exactly that.
I don't know what sort of km the have back in America, but most of us ended up traveling nearly 8 km. It wasn't terribly hilly terrain but if there's one thing I do not like, it is being lied to and looking down on my Garmin after 5km and expecting for it to be over soon, only to watch, 5, then 6, then 7 km pass by.
To be fair I did get duped by a very long false trail but still, it was well over 5km.
As the sun started to fall in the sky we started to wonder if we were going to be returning to the site under the cover of darkness. Ol' Sloppy Rod perhaps forgot that the average age of the participants at the moment is around 112 years old and he could have killed us!
We all made it back and gave him a good ribbing on the ice as we let it be known exactly how displeased we were with his tactics of deception.
I think that anyone familiar with H3 realizes that I am joking about a great deal of this and it is kind of nice to work up a sweat and burn nearly 900 calories in an afternoon with pals and then follow that up with 5 or 6 full-flavored lagers before heading back home.
The events are on full force this week as we have a run planned as usual for Monday (men only), Thursday and Saturday (both mixed runs.) If you are in the Chiang Mai area and are able to join us please let your voice be heard at www.chiangmaihhh.com!
i've always felt like the runs on many Hashes are too short. since we can't / don't run most of it anyway, i don't think 7km is long enough. But then again, i am not the one who is setting the trail.
i am still very intrigued by this group and I know i keep promising to do it but i will find one nearby me.