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I took part in the 517th Mendip Hills Hash House Harriers hash (and my second – the first was on Christmas Eve, 2007) last night, starting at the Crown at Wells, Somerset, whilst I’m down here. My 2nd hash, and an opportunity to explore my local town – made famous by a certain Edgar Wright as the setting for ‘Hot Fuzz’ (Just with the massive Wells Cathedral digitally edited out).

The hash, as ever, starts and ends at a local pub. ‘Drinkers with a running problem’, is how hashing is sometimes described.

We started right on Wells market place. A great turn-out of about 30 runners. As I’m still learning the lingo I decided to hold back a bit and let others do all the calling (as well as getting a bit self conscious screaming “on on” and “are you!?” loudly; I imagine local residents were completely baffled as we ran past). The premise with hashing is to follow a flour trail around. The setter had been around earlier in the afternoon laying down the course. To make matters interesting there are various options, so faster runners head on ahead and work out which direction to go, doubling back when somebody else finds the ‘on’ trail. Everybody therefore gets to run together, and gets precisely the sort of workout they want.

Our course took us along side the Bishops Palace (formal residence of the Bishop of Bath and Wells), out to the east of Wells, into places I’d previously last visited far too many years back. Also good research for the Wells 10k I’m taking part in on Sunday, which followed part of the route. Along beautiful trails and up in to the hills. A few short options available for runners up for something a bit shorter, and plenty of detours for the faster and more enthusiastic runners (including myself in the enthusiastic category). Discovering new streams, paths and woods, it was delightful. Heading up a decent incline beside a recently ploughed field, my shoes got properly clogged with mud. Felt like I had weights on my feet. Good exercise, at least until the steep slippery descent with no useful grip!

The weather, rather surprisingly, held off. The Mendip hills has a micro-climate all of its own, so we were greeted with some beautiful views of the Somerset levels as we descended back down in to Wells, around the back of the Cathedral back to the Market Place, and – naturally – the pub for beer and, er, cake. Sharp’s Doom Bar, a particular favourite of mine (and very rarely found in Glasgow), was on tap. Marvellous stuff, and had a good chat with some of the regulars before heading off.

Oh, yes, the times… My run took in 5.94 miles of stunning countryside, taking 01:23:59 with a few pauses for regrouping, chatting, or scraping mud off feet. Not even slightly fast, but a pint of beer was my reward, and some good chat along the way. I count that as a great result. One of my best

One of the regulars is behind a great website that may be of interest to Garmin users: Run Replay allows runners to compare their races in a quite unique way. It’s currently largely being used by hash runners – You can see last nights run here, or the 2009 London Marathon. Sign up and have a go if you’ve a GPS.

Must give the Glasgow Hash a go sometime.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 19th, 2009 at 1:45 pm and is filed under Running, Somerset. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.