I'm not even sure if trudges is a word but it isn't underlines so I am going to assume that it is one. Most of the time when we get together the idea is that we are going to go on a run or jog for the members that are physically capable of doing so. Sometimes, the hare (the person who sets the trail route) is a sadist though and they will put us through the ringer in a way that is so much of a climb that there is very little chance that anyone, at least in our ranks, is going to be capable of running these things. One of our recent meetups was exactly this.
There are a couple of our meeting points that are at the base of temples. It is quite common in Chiang Mai temples to have elaborate staircases that lead up to the main part of the temple and these serve as great starting points for our runs because they have parking lots. We of course ask permission to use the parking lot and make a donation to the temple and are also very respectful of the temple itself as well as anyone that comes to it. If there are other people at the temple we will be as soundless as possible because temples are places of worship, not of beer-guzzling Hash House Harriers runs.
These stairs are almost always how the hare will decide to start us out and it is normally quite amusing because of the fact that some of our more fit members will start out with a jog up the stairs but as far as I know nobody has ever kept up that pace for the entire thing.
Maybe if a world-class athlete joined us for a run just for the sake of embarrassing us they could run all the way up, but for all of us it turns into a light stroll by the time we get about 1/2 way up.
At this particular site there are lots of opportunities for us to be going downhill later, but the hare at this meetup seemed to have magically found a method to ensure that we were almost always going uphill, which doesn't make any sense in a geographical sense seeing as how we ended up back at the same point that we began in.
later, in the jungle, more stairs
While I know that it happened because it has to since we eventually emerged into the same parking lot that we started in, I honestly don't recall any of the run being downhill at all. It just seemed as though we were constantly going up up up.
Since the average age of our current stock of members is around 136 there was lots of complaining about back and leg pain but at least we were lucky and it was only 100 degrees outside with 1000% humidity. Honestly, how is it that none of us have ever needed to be medevacked out of these remote locations before? I guess it is kind of a testament to how these weekly exercise meetups actually are benefitting us in a fitness sense even though the focus of the entire thing is on the drinking beer portion of the day.
We are currently still doing one run a week at least and will strive to do more of them as soon as we can, we are still subjected to a lot of Covid restrictions and don't want to piss off the local authorities with our antics. If you would like to join us you can do so but please contact us before hand to make sure we have space by visiting our official website here
