It seems more hares have been realising how great the running is in Maejo – lets get away from the dull canal road and explore the north! Graven picked the runsite up by the lake, but was then trapped even further by the terrain and trying to avoid the trails of recent runs. The hare brief gave it away – if you want to avoid the hill wait behind, otherwise, off up the hill… I led the way, on a few bits of powder… With Angry Inch just behind, I powered on through with a few questions of are you on? We’d missed it but Graven had put a circle check right at the start of the run!!! WTF?! Graven? Of all people? The echoes of Graven’s haring lectures reverberated around my mind… Checks are to bring people back together, not split them up!
I continued up and of course was back on powder as we’d been told we were going up the hill. Another couple of checks and Brown Finger was following me close at each check – could you not even pretend to check somewhere else? The main trail at the top offers a 50/50 split, left or right, but there was no way Graven was going right. I went left and carried on tagging the early checks. Brownie caught up and breezed by, only to wait for help at the next check. Apparently he had inside information about where not to check… It was straight again, but finally I got the next one wrong. I picked straight along the nice running trail and when I was wrong, I looped around to the left, but by the time I rejoined trail, most of the pack had already past by silently – even solving a FT!
The descent for a while was rocky, and my knee was dodgy, so I lost a bit of ground, only then to meet up with some walkers. Damnit – 3 checks or so that were already kicked out, and the pace was quick. Graven ran along with us giving a running commentary of how well the run was going. It felt crowded – I love running these trails though, and the walkers were excellent at keeping to the side and letting us run past. Some months back I’d figured out a deceiving little loop, and for some reason I was convinced Graven would do the same… and I was wrong… and I was thirsty… We crossed the road, and Graven was there to give the option of a Walker route back to the beer, so I took it!