Well, congrats to everyone who turned up for this run as I expect all of us left our homes/workplaces in torrential rain. Hardy people we all are :-)
And we were rewarded for our toughness/craziness by emerging out of the rain into a sunsetty (there’s a word you didn’t expect to read tonight) glorious perfect running evening. Who says there isn’t a God? ;-)
Plenty of hounds abounded but this careless hare didn’t count the amount. :-(
So we all dandered up a longish hilly incline with PLENTY of onbacks. Not sure I’ve ever onbacked so many times in one hill before. Sam’s genius punishing method of keeping the group together.
At a certain point (you may hear that phrase a lot in this race report – my geographical awareness is not top notch), we regrouped and had a natter. At this point, or at least close by (another technical term), the long short split happened. The shorts ran down a rather steep steppy (can u tell I like reduplicating the final consonant of nouns, and adding –y?) hill and were never seen again until the pub. This indicates they must have run rather fast as the longs had Sam reminding us every 3rd minute that we should run faster to ‘catch the shorts’. Again, possibly just very clever psychological encouragement from a Swiss genius.
So the longs had headed UP another hilly thing (note linguistically that nouns with a final consonant that is already reduplicated do not further reduplicate when –y is added – sad but fascinatingJ). We actually I believe were running up a ridge, the Bledlow ridgeway of local fame. It felt like we were going to fall off on either side and it was rather slippy due to earlier rain, but when I say we were running I am rather exaggerating, more like a fast walk.
At a certain point we came out into a clearing and a wondrous thing occurred – there was this gorgeous big white moon really low in the sky and the dark blue sky around it, and then the whole city/lights of some big place below us. Awww. We stopped to admire the view and to coo and whoop.
Well, I whooped. But then it doesn’t take much.
Erm, we then ran across some fields, crossed a road and a railway line, missed an onback and dutifully went back to perform it. We met Ellen, Anthony and Sarah I think somewhere along here, who had admirably come late and run around looking for us. Though that last sentence makes it sound admirable that they were late……
We had lots of regroups, enjoyed lots of wellset and obvious floury blobs and had a lot of hilarity later in the run when Sam decided to take us through some paths that reminded me of NigeriaJ. Kev and Graham fell into some ditches and I heard lots of unidentified female screams too. Slippy boards across streams and a general funny mood made this a restful, slippy but highly enjoyable evening out.
An English man and an Irish man are driving head on, at night, on a twisty, dark road. Both are driving to fast for the conditions and collide on a sharp bend in the road. To the amazement of both, they are unscathed, though their cars are both destroyed. In celebration of their luck, both agree to put aside their dislike for the other from that moment on. At this point, the Irish man goes to the boot and fetches a 12 year old bottle of Jameson whiskey. He hands the bottle to the English man, whom exclaims,'' May the English and the Irish live together forever, in peace, and harmony!'' The English man then tips the bottle and lashes half of it down. Still flabbergasted over the whole thing, he goes to hand the bottle to the Irish man, whom replies: '' No thanks, I'll just wait till the Police get here!