The loneliness of a long distance hasher

We never learn....

SO... after seven years of mud, freezing rain, pain, blisters, twisted knees, flaring ITBs, turned ankles, episodes of avoidance-childbirth, and even an honest-to-goodness case of gout, you'd have thought that we'd all have learned our lesson and given up training for Paris in favour of something more compatible with our aged frames, like knitting or golf, wouldn't you?

 Oh how wrong you'd be.

 Since we don't actually count ourselves as dead yet, a selection of the less well-adjusted marahashers have somehow yet again found themselves entered in the Paris marathon for this year. Since we don't all wish to end up dead of blisters (or feeling like Hermionie after she's run a marathon, which amounts to pretty much the same thing) in Avenue Foche on 10th April, we thought we'd better get round to doing some training... 

Which is why, on an otherwise-beautiful Sunday morning in January, six hashers found that they'd unaccountably agreed to spend the morning running to Ely along the river. The forecast sunshine was streaming forth, and the forecast southwesterly wind was ready to push us along. However, the results of the decidedly un-forecast torrential downpour of the night before were up ahead, lying in wait for us on the muddiest part of the bank.

 Sarah demanded a 'before' picture of her lovely NEW trail-running shoes (in the not-unreasonable expectation that 'new' wouldn't be applicable by the afternoon). There was little point in taking a 'before' picture of Pingu, since (true to form) she was already pretty much covered in mud before starting. Chris, Ye, Jeremy and an unexpected Jesus made up the rest of the expedition, dressed in pristine clean running gear.

The fools.







 Despite a knee-injury before we'd even left midsummer common, the expedition made it beyond Bottisham Lock more or less without incident, crossing over the great grey-green greasy swollen river cam without anyone falling in.












A few hundred metres further on, we came to a decision-point: take the slighty-longer embankment path, or the shorter but probably muddier riverside path. Given that the path was wall-to-wall shiggy, the river was flooding and the hashers were sliding uncontrollably all over the place, the right answer was obvious. Right?

Half a mile (and endless mud) further on, we came across a drainage ditch intended to allow the fields to drain into the cam. It was flowing backwards, into the small lake that had appeared between the river and the embankment. You'd have thought that this would have maybe given us a clue, right?

Nope.

Jesus pointed out that it was only water, and we should just bloody well get on with walking on it.  One by one, we leapt over the flow, landing mostly in the middle of the water, then scrambled through the mud to continue. Another half-mile passed, lulling us into believing that we'd beaten the mud...

 Wrong.

We found ourselves on the edge of the exit-channel of the massive lake of floodwater, imagining ways to get across it witout a) getting incredibly wet, b) losing any limbs, or c) drowning. Pingu's plan of leaping from tussock to tussock across the flood was quickly abandoned, as was Jeremy's shoes-off-and-wade-it idea. Since we didn't have Ed to swim across with a rope-bridge betwen his teeth, we ended up backtracking a mile down the riverbank to try and regain the high-ground.





Just before revisiting the stream-leap, Jesus and Chris decided that it MIGHT be possible to return to the embankment by crossing the fringes of the flood by means of a dead tree over the swamp.


After much climbing through the barbed-wire and sinking into the matted bullrushes on the other side, we scrambled up the embankment to (relative) safety, and once again headed for Ely.




Since we were now running late and risked missing the return train, Pingu and Jesus raced off to the station, whilst the rest of us followed.

 Another five miles of slogging through mud, and we drew close to our goal. Jeremy and Ye were trailing by a few minutes as the final train sat at the platform - clearly not going to make it - much to the amusement of the passengers (which by now included Sarah, Jesus, Pingu and Chris)... Fortunately, the guard had an unparalleled sense of humour for a rail-employee, and held the train for two minutes so that their last-minute sprint to the station, down the tunnel, onto the platform and into the train doors with a final massive jump was wtnessed by the entire train.

 The after photos revealed that Sarah's new shoes were history, Pingu looked like a rhino fresh out of a wallow, and the remainder of the party were not in much better condition. The debrief concluded that train-travel was a jolly fine invention, and, in fact, the preferred means of travelling to Ely in future.

Like that's really going to make any difference next time....


(rest of the photos are here and the GPS trace can be found here )

posted by Jeremy @ 1:17 AM