Two pictures are worth two thousand words, but a few more might come in handy

Saturday...

Sunday...

(Click on the images to make them larger)

Haven't we been here before?

As advertised, both of last weekend's runs were from sites used in the living memory of all but the most alcohol addled brains. Saturday's run which in every sense of the word went in the opposite direction from Buk Toy and Sex Sprinter's from the same site, was a modest 6.5k all up and a good deal shorter for those who avoided the checks etc. by the simple expedient of sticking close to the hare (or just short cut up the valley; you know who you are!) But it was a pretty vertical experience with the top most check being set just below the 305 meters to which the run aspired, a check which remarkably all the front runners decided was going to send them DOWN, even after discovering the check-back in that direction. Have they learned nothing? What are hills there for? To go to the top, silly!

And there was something rather familiar about Sunday's HH3 run as well, although only two of the pack who attended the SH3 run from the same site a month ago were there to relive the soggy glory of the day when everyone else buggered off to Khao Men. Little did it profit them as Stick Insect a.k.a. Lady of the Lamp limped in someway behind the front runners and Gan Yao, alias Bigfoot having short cut up the valley on Saturday, short cut through the quarry on Sunday but still didn't avoid the second ascent of the pimple-sized hill. No one actually discerned that the run had been a figure-of-eight with the hare artfully rearranging the paper after the pack had completed the first ascent-descent, although Toy Boy realized he was headed for the out trail and assuming we couldn't be going that way went off in search of the trail elsewhere. The vital stats department reports a with-all-checks-and-falsies length of 7.6k, a maximum elevation of 124m and a total ascent of 200m. The hang-over department reports that we drank the beer truck dry which explains why Knackerwurst/I Want My Wife, who manfully struggled round the full 3 and a bit k of the short run, pissed off early. But a good time was had by all, lending further support to HH3's continuing renaissance the like of which SH3 can only dream of!

Mum, wot's a scribe report?

Scribe Report (Yes, remember them?!!)

Run #1561

Hare: Egghead (but he made the missus cook the curry before she went)

I have half an hour before going to meet Stick Insect at his local boozer and watch the football. So I thought I would reawaken an old tradition, after you’ve read it the cries will be ‘let it sleep!”

I turned into the run site and everyone clapped. Had I scored the winner against Real Madrid? Had they mistaken me for the beer wagon? No, they were just happy that someone else had showed up. With the outstation run drawing thousands we were down to a few. But, it’s not the quantity, it’s the quality. And did we shine!

Egghead called On On and we did a Carl Lewis impersonation into the rubber and directly into a black, black thunderstorm. The lightning raged, thunder roared. Rubber trees bent double, Egghead; like a man possessed, cried ‘the white whale’ and we charged on. Onto the road, check, rain was falling so fast I could only just keep in front of it, the check was broken by a Canuck Chopper Chappie and we rowed our way on, oh no! back check and on back to the road. I looked hopefully both ways for a taxi, but no chance. On On and Egghead had found a hill. In an area that made the Lincolnshire fens enticing to a Sherpa he found a hill, and up we went. He said it was only 220’, but anything over my head is a mountain. Just before the top we hit a check, I headed right, Bart’s son left and the hare advised ‘Greg don’t go that way’, and I learnt later it was because I would have hit the home trail but that’s just what I wanted! Stick Insect worried that City Tits would have drunk all the Chang if we didn’t get back soon. The check was broken, the rain eased and we found ourselves in a surreal, alien landscape. Giant boulders poking up through the earth, or were they alien life forms? Giant brains, quick sign them up for the hash; we need all the help we can get! On On!

A wonderful back check, found by Bart, where (now keep this to yourselves) the sight of the hare standing at the bottom of the hill gave us a hint and no one followed Bart’s enthusiastic cries of On On! It was a long check too, eventually ‘check back’ rang out from the hilltop.

The circle went for hours, charge after charge, gales of knee slapping mirth, more ice or perhaps we just had a few beers, a chat and a laugh. It’s strange, I was disappointed when I saw how small the pack was, but it was a great run, we stayed pretty much together throughout, though to be fair, I did have some assistance, and perhaps, just this once I can agree that the hare on the run can be useful, if only because it was so funny to hear Bart’s excited cries of On as he headed up the hill to the check back! Thanks to the hare!!

Gan Yao

Three posts for the price of one

1. SH3 can't get it up any more.

Like the aging bunch of geezers that we are fast becoming, SH3 failed to hold an erection on Saturday and this little graphic which appeared enigmatically on Friday proved to be prophetic as the organisational end of the committee failed miserably to get its act together and convene what should have been a fairly ritual re-election of all those willing and able to stand. The excuse is that there was a collective senior moment about whether erections should precede or follow running, with the result that the run prematurely ejaculated, so to speak, departing from the runsite almost 10 minutes before the advertised starting time of 4:30, leaving the hare stranded down the old Yala road and being forced to short-cut his own run in order to nanny the pack along the trail.

2. Just how long should a short run be?

With the ranks of the walkers swelled by two of the geezers sporting flesh wounds as well as Sperminator and Quack Whacker, and with newly unre-elected GM, R2D2 looking positively sprightly, the hare's decision to set a 6k short run proved wise. So as the long runners, with Beavershot as the only genuine Geezer among them, headed up the hill (in red from 360 1) , the short run began a complete and largely flat circumnavigation of Khao Lam (in blue from 360 1 to 360 4, then in red), managing to get almost half way round before becoming confused at the final check and shortly thereafter being caught by the male part of the pack, the female part having been bullied by the hare into taking a short cut at the third F to ensure that they got home first thus ensuring that the rest of us were greeted by steaming plates of Som Tam. Meanwhile, Stick Insect, who had thus far been the inspiration of the short run, discovered that his flesh wound was not as bad as he had thought and was magically transformed into a long runner, leaving the rest of the short pack to get back to the run site in about and hour and three quarters.

But the long run really was only about 6.5k...

3. And how long does a long run have to be?

...whereas Sunday's HH3 run was the thick end of 8k and went up to 288 meters, although the hare thoughtfully didn't make the pack go right to the top of Khao Si Chai. As reported below, the run was notable for the absence of dogs, and Beaver/Sex Focus was again the lone geezer in the pack with Big Foot/Gan Yao off on another of his lone runs, hare, Kai Jeow exhausted and asleep in the back of the egg-mobile and the rest of the sick lame and lazy finding other things to occupy themselves with. As also commented on below, the circle was rather unnervingly observed by a cleverly disguised agent of the Islamic Republic of Sai Kao, who as Beaver noted seemed to be one brick short of a full load. No doubt our doings are being carefully subjected to scrutiny this morning, the likely conclusion being that we are a bunch of dangerous and irreverant old farts and scantily clad women with big bums whose main crime is that we enjoy ourselves!
Next week both runs will be out Hatyai way, with Beaver and Sex Printer/Toy Boy promising to make it a memorable weekend of running and the ever present possibility that those whose job it is to organize our doings at SH3 might get off their flesh wounds and ... well organize things.