This morning the alarm went off at 5:00AM. By 5:54 the ten minute dreams in between attacks on the snooze button were weirdly pointing me in the right direction. Why was I being awoken by kids on four wheelers at dawn? Why was I searching out and donning this funky blue mesh football jersey and thinking it would be great to keep me cool? Why was I trying to get all my dancing, drinking friends out of my house so that I too could leave?
At 6:30AM this morning I met a group of about a dozen people under the Lotus Bridge on the Cotai Strip. The mission? Duathlon. We would run 4K, making two laps around the 2K run course. Then we racked up 20K via four laps on the 5K bike loop. Last, to finish up honestly, we re-ran the 4K one more time. Twenty eight kilometers before 9:00AM. Right now I'm hurtin'.
I gotta say, it was bad ass and super fun. Myself and another guy both rode our fixed gears. Which was cool because we saved a little time in the transition. Not that it helped me too much in the long run; I came in dead last. But I've got my benchmark time now and I'll be out there again next month giving it my best!
Yesterday at 3:30 in the afternoon I showed up at the meeting point unaware of what and who I would find. In the shade of the Old Taipa Gazebo there gathered the TMH3. Taipa Macau Hash House Harriers.
Several weeks ago I was searching through results on Google trying to find the height of our little mountain, Taipa Grande. One page caught my eye with giant, comic book typeface splashing the words MACAU HASH across its banner. We won't get into the specifics of why these words guaranteed further reading from yours truly. The point is that I read on and was instantly sucked into the history of a fantastic phenomenon that I'd never heard of before, the hash race.
Basically a hash race is a modern reinvention of the fox hunt. Take a group of runners. Round them up at a starting point unaware of where they will end up and what route will lead them there. Now send off two runners who are packing flour which they will use to mark their trail at varying intervals; two hares who are leaving a scent trail. Wait ten minutes. Loose the rest of the pack. The chase group, in their attempt to overtake the hares, will undoubtedly come across false trails, loops, dead ends, climbs, descents, and more.
Wow. Those who know me have probably heard me say more than once how little I like running. Today I realize that it has never been the running that got me down. It was the ways in which I was doing it. On a track. In a line of teamates. Dripping on the control panel of a treadmill. Today I realize that running for running is good, but running in pursuit of a game is the WAY.
Thanks TMH3. It was a blast. See you next week.
