2024 - A Whole New World

In a moment of over confidence, I went out for the Super Long Trail (a.k.a. Ball Breaker trial) at 7 am. We had a 90 minute bus ride from the venue, and we were off at 9. There were time cutoffs for each of 5 legs of 5 kms for a total of 25 KM. First leg was given 90 min (1/3rd of the total time), as it was the hardest. It was killer, starting with stringing out the pack with an uphill single file track, and continuing like that for nearly the whole 5 kms. It was some of the toughest trials I have ever done, and drained the life out of me. I got to the first water point at 105 min, but they were still waving us through. About 200 meters into the second leg, going down a slope I slipped on the mud and fell flat on my back . . . I immediately thought . . . this is a sign. So I walked back to the water point and got on a bus, in defeat. It didn’t matter, I would have been bumped at the next water point anyway, along with the additional 30 or so that were pulled off trail there. In the end, about 2/3rds of the pack did not finish. Makes you wonder what the point was to make it that difficult. Shorter and younger hashers did better overall, as there was a lot of ducking and crawling in the first leg. Anyway, I got a couple hours on trail for the day, and the beer tasted just as good afterwards.

They gave out medals for top 3 male and female, as well as shirts to all finishers. The first hasher in was a local Johor Bahru hasher, 20 years old, and about 5’ 8” . . . he was in full beast mode finishing strong. Second place was 20-30 minutes behind him. Only about 10 finished in the allotted 4.5 hours, the rest that finished were out past 5 hours. I was not humbled by dropping out of the run, what I felt humbled by was meeting the first place finisher. His hash name is Shopu (translates to sex in his native tongue). After he finished, and had his down down on the ice, he was getting a drink and he turned and started walking towards me. I thought he was going to talk to someone behind me, then he came right to me and stopped, started asking me questions about hashing around the world. I immediately congratulated him on his run, and we started chatting. I mentioned something about hash history . . . and he said he knew me from my website and writing. Now that humbled me, a young hasher knew who I was. I rarely see any comments on my posts, so never know if anyone reads it . . . it’s the small things in life that impress me. On OnRead more