If you read my stuff at all, you know that I am a big fan of the Hash House Harriers, a global organization of people who are "drinkers with a running problem."
I have been a part of this group of wonderful men and women for nearly a year but this past weekend was the first time I have ever participated in an event that took me away from my "mother hash" of Chiang Mai.
I strolled a bit south of Da Nang, Vietnma to Hoi An to join up with the HHH of Hoi An for their 34th run ever.
The Hoi An Hash chapter is a small group. So small, in fact, that they experience difficulty in getting any sort of group to participate. So when i found out that another group was visiting from Koh Samui, I jumped at the chance to represent Chiang Mai in their ranks. As expected it was a great time.
The run was considerably more "urban" than our usual hashes in Chiang Mai but this is because in Chiang Mai we normally take a bus 30 minutes out of the city before we start. This was not an option in Hoi An so most of our run was on concrete, which I would prefer not to do but we deal with the environment that we have access to.
The trail did go off road from time to time but there is so much private property here that it wasn't really possible for the hare to make us a trail that wouldn't get us in trouble otherwise. Mostly, when we entered various villages we were greeted with smiles and "hello!" shouts from the children who likely study a bit of English at school.
The run was considerably longer than the average Chiang Mai hash but that was ok since the terrain we face in mountainous Chiang Mai tends to be, well, mountainous... and that was not the case here at all.
There was a "beer stop" built into the run and for those of you that are not involved in HHH this is a part of the run where everyone meets "halfway" or so and has a beer or two before carrying on to run another 5k or so.... just like they do in the Olympics.
Towards the end we were in danger of running out of daylight, so it was actually a very good thing that the run wasn't any longer than they made it.
All in all, it was a relatively small group with a lot of enthusiasm although I do have to say that the local participation was only the 2 hares, which is a bit sad. Hopefully once I move here I can help to change that. I mean... who wouldn't want to run 12km and then drink a bunch of beers?
this is us, at the end, drinking what is probably too much
As always, i strongly encourage all of you out there to get out and see if your local area has a Hash House Harriers chapter. You do not need to be young and / or fit to participate, as you can tell by most of the pictures i have here.