Yesterday's run shown above was (believe me!) a bitch to set - not that there was anything particularly difficult about the run itself, although the long run pack might disagree, but with an abortive recce at another site on Monday, the recce for the run itself on Tuesday, the lay on Friday which failed to complete the long run and didn't even contemplate the short run, a supplementary lay early on Saturday and then shepherding the short run on Saturday afternoon around what had up until then existed only on the GPS, the run basically took the thick end of 4 days to organise. Matters weren't helped by the weather, which was wet all week, some local creativity with the paper and the fact that a lot of trails, which we have used for years in that area, are just not viable any more. But in the end half a dozen people got as far as the beer stop on the long run and a slightly larger number completed the whole short run, including a guest or two from Koh Samui, a couple of new runners, one of the two returners, and Stick Insect, sporting his latest life-style injury and a pair of flip flops which came off towards the end of the run and gave way to bare feet.
For the record, although Kan Kai racked up 8.1k on his smart phone app., the long run excluding the F's and X was just under 6k as far as the beer stop, with the whole of the pack opting for the ride down the last 600m of road. The total ascent was a surprisingly large 260m, with the maximum height reached being about 270m. The short run, having suffered a fairly hairy truck-ride up to their starting point, opted to complete the road trip down from the beer stop on foot, so covered a little more than 4k reaching the same high point but with about half the ascent. The returning Gan Yao went AWOL but managed to be first at the beer stop, proving that his trip to the civilized(!) world has not blunted his native instincts. With most of the habitual short cutters absent for the day it was left to Kan Kai and Palm job to opt for the road down to the beer stop rather than take the hares' carefully planned route to avoid it.
A curry-fest followed with three on offer from different cooks, most of which were polished off by the depleted host. The circle which followed managed to greet two new runners but failed to welcome back the two returning runners both of whom had POE'd along with one of the hares. Red Mullet from KSH3 got named Red Herring and Sparky became Extra Terresticles (you had to be there!). Palm Job and Kan Kai were iced in lieu of more serious short-cutters and yours truly represented the haring team which though not credited this time around had involved the entire canine section of the Egg family at some point during the week, plus Eightball and Buddy who was even drafted in to aid the herding of the short runners on the day.
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