It was out in Sankampaeng, near the ‘airplanes’ – I’ve never made it to a run here, so it was clear early on that the likes of Cartoon had some advantage. I arrived with enough time to get changed, grab a bottle of water, but unfortunately the over exuberant hare had set them off already, but it wasn’t far around the corner when I started picking off the walkers – Libbers, Tiptoe, Frozen etc.
It was going to be flat, and wet and it wasn’t long before we were dancing over flooded waterways. I was back with the pack well before the first of the beerstops – here I went the wrong way, so was catching up again as we ran along the road. Trail turned right at a junction with no check, which was immediately suspicious. Up ahead the likes of Cartoon and Skiddy were paused, but then carried on, but without any call that I heard. When I got 80m down the trail there was a circle. Typical – if only someone had called. By now they had scattered onwards, so I turned around and went back to the road – here Belly got a slight advantage over me and HRA and he put in a bit of a jog. We chased him down as the road went through some ricefields.
Again my radar was suspicious, and I spotted something whitish off to the left and decided to check it out, even with Cartoon calling from behind me that he could see the paper going straight on – presumably to a false trail, but you’d need to hide it a bit better to trick me. Here we got onto quite a nice trail that was headed back in the general direction of A with a creek on the left. HRA, Cartoon and I took turns until a check visible the other side of a metal bridge. The construction of the bridge was clearly very stable, but it was rusty, and my hatred of bridges took me a while to brave crossing it, even with a second beer stop just on the other side!
A second beer stop – what a treat! The pack was a bit ahead of me heading back towards the road, and I suspected my chances were over. I forced myself to jog, and found I was feeling better than I have recently – hopefully early signs that my fitness is returning? Sheep Shagger ran past the turning off the road, and then we were following Cartoon who was suddenly off paper up ahead – I looked to my right, and there was the false trail. Back a few steps and into an alley, when SS called it, I darted past and hit the front with Cartoon splashing through the mud to my right. Around the corner, we must be close by now and I was flowing along, until another FT. Damnit! Those following me turned around as well, and all ran past a turning at the back of the temple – I ducked into it, and sure enough there was paper and it was just a short way around the temple and I spotted my car and the A site on my right.
Nice one!