Great turnout on a windy day!

We don't get too may windy days here in Chiang Mai that aren't accompanied by rain but we got one this past week and it was kind of fun. We do worry that the rain will come but the sky was just kind of clear so we didn't do anything about it, not that we would have been able to anyway.

We don't cancel runs for anything though. We have been running in cracking thunderstorms and even during a flood warning.

Most of our runs tend to take place in the south and north to north west of the city but a few of them are to the north east near one of the really big dams that are up there and the man made lakes that are a product of these dams. For the most part, despite the water feature these areas aren't generally all that good for runs because so much of the nature was wiped out to make way for the dam. I'm not being critical of the government here, they needed the dam because of the growing population that needed access to water so it had to be done.

When building the dams, the did at least try to preserve some semblance of nature by making some trails. These are a different kind of exercise for us because while it's good for the glutes and calves, it is basically just walking up a hill for a really long time plus we don't actually have much opportunity to vary the trail a great deal. If we start up those stairs the crew knows exactly where we are going to end up.

Once at the top the man-made lake is impressive and it is one of the largest water features in the North of Thailand, it just isn't natural. Getting up there to see it is one of our more difficult trails and during these visits some of our less physically capable people will sit this one out or just take a walk down near the bottom. Sure, you might think you can easily walk up 1000 stairs but you might change your mind about half-way up them!

Upon returning to the start point we got back to our usual shenanigans of putting people on the ice and drinking beer. Since there was an unusually high number of women in attendance, there was also food, which is nice and something the men, for no other reason other than laziness, never do.

It was nice to have a good turnout and everyone had some fun. We really got lucky with the weather because the skies looked threatening but it never rained a drop. To be honest some rain would probably do us some good because it has been dry as a bone here lately!

We are still doing 3 runs a week and all, members or non-members, are welcome to join us in Chiang Mai Thailand. You can see full details at our official website