Hash 1310

Assendon, in deepest Oxfordshire, was the venue for the said hash. Unfortunately the location, slightly further away than normal, resulted in me missing the introduction, and so I have no idea how long it was supposed to be. The short run was almost certainly shorter than the long run. I'm not sure how long the long run was, but Gerry has, helpfully, sent me various stats on the run from his GPS tracker / electronic tag. I can therefore reliably confirm that Gerry ran 6.14 miles, and burnt 628 calories in the process. Interestingly a small portion of chips contains about 550 calories, so I reckon Gerry is in positive balance overall (… if we ignore the beer)…

Anyway, I digress. We all met up at the pub and proceeded to locate the steepest hill in Oxfordshire, if not the UK, if not the world … and run up it. Or walk up it in some cases. Or sprint up and down it repeatedly in the case of Ant. Every time I looked up, I saw Ant doing an on-back. Truly amazing. He is seconded only by Summer in terms of energy and speed.

To be honest, following this mega-hill, and the supreme effort involved, the rest of the hash became a bit blurry. I believe we ran through some woods and a field, emerging around the Old Bix Road area. Somewhere around here was the long-short split. It was at this stage that it was pointed out to me how unfortunate it was that Jo wasn't on the hash for my first ever write-up. Apparently Jo is the hasher who most commonly provides a source of entertaining anecdotes for the write-up. If she had been on the hash, I'm sure she would have done something entertaining at this point, allowing me to describe it to your general amusement here. For example, she may have run away from some cows in a hilarious manner. But she didn't, as she wasn't there (as previously mentioned). She'll therefore have to do something doubly amusing next week.

Anyway, I digress. The longs proceeded in the direction of Crocker End. Head torches were very much out by this stage. We had reached the general area of Bix Bottom Farm when one of our party started to feel slightly unwell. My professional services were called upon, which gave me an excellent opportunity to legitimately jog very slowly at the back with a little group of distinguished gentlemen escorting their fellow hasher back to the pub. Such a situation also gives a legitimate excuse to give to Helen when she generally bemoans the slow pace upon doing her many, many on-backs. I won't mention who wasn't feeling too well (due to issues of patient confidentiality of course), but hope they're feeling much better now. So our little medical team proceeded at the back of the pack. Roger acted as nurse for the patient, although fortunately didn't wear the uniform. Although that may be an idea for him to think about for the next fancy-dress run.

Anyway, I digress. Despite this minor issue, we made exceptionally good time. This was, in part, helped by the fact that the last mile or so was along a quiet country road back into the village. We returned triumphant to the pub more-or-less in one piece, to have a celebratory beer and some chips.  The beer was good, and there were copious quantities of chips. Roger re-awarded a tankard for 500 runs to our hare Simon (aka Whipping boy). Last time Simon had left the tankard in the pub, so Roger awarded it to our other hare, Louise (aka Mrs Whip) to see if she'll remember to take it home. We'll see next week if the tankard made it.
Overall, an excellent run and well worth the drive. Thanks to Simon and Louise.