My first ever drunken running event

A friend of mine and I have been running together on and off for a few months now. A few weeks ago she invited me to her group running Halfway to Halloween hash run. It cost $5, we would be running about the same length as we have been, I'd be out with new people, hopefully making friends and having a good time. Who knew? It wasn't like I'd be held down and tortured. At least I didn't think that would be in the cards. I mean it's possible as we would be running through the forest. But I did want to get out and meet new people. Even scary people who torture.

They did promise beer.

More than a few times I almost bailed on her. I had so many wonderful excuses to use.

• I have a huge knot in my shoulder blade which is killing me (this was true)
• I didn't sleep well the night before
• I had to go to yoga
• Oops I forgot

I don't know. I just seemed to want to go and check it out.

That morning, I went ahead and met her at her house. We were carpooling as we had to meet downtown. We go there early. Apparently runners who drink say, "We'll meet at Noon" which means anytime between 12 and 1pm.

We all had a beer before we started. Then they went over the rules. Ugh, rules and drinking. Seriously who thought of this?! Then we sang some weird intro song where I faked the lyrics. And off we went.

We followed these really impressive white chalky (read: flour) symbols around town, stopping to decipher the cool symbols like drink a beer, switch up a piece of clothing, smack and ass (really?). My favorite was the symbol for you went the wrong way. MEAN! Turn around and run back the other way looking for the correct or "true trail" symbol. We finally all got tired after we jogged through the school playground (against the law, anyone?) and popped a squat on the downed tree in the forest and drank a few beers each. This was actually fun as we got the time to rest, talk bs and then start another smaller game where whenever someone burped we had to say a color and the last one to say it had to make a vulgar comment, tell a sex joke or something else (really, who remembers?). PS: I lost this game so many times I just started cussing when it occurred to me I lost.

All in all, it was a blast. I had to eat a full pizza, drank glass after glass of water and then later, a couple pieces of toast to soak up the last of the beer resting in my system, but it was worth it. It is definitely harder to recover from a Saturday mid day drinking run in your 30's than 20's.

P.P.S.: Please let me know if you know why they call it a "hash" as there was none of that there. I am still hoping to hear the history to this group the next time I run with them.