If there was one reason for showing up at my second Viagra Vince effort in five days, it was the knowledge that I couldn't fare much worse than I did at the previous one, the Thanksgiving Orphans run, where I had got completely lost at the World Trade Centre and ended up going back to the start (unlike the visiting Warren Piece O'Shit, who would obviously rather commit harikari than go back to the start). This wasn't the only reason though; this time last year's run from this same starting point was one of the best, if hilliest, runs of the year. Fortunately the weather was cooperating for once, sunny if a little chilly, but positively balmy compared with what has followed. A fairly small pack at the start, but then many were probably still eating leftover turkey sandwiches with their folks. Byron-Brown was proudly sporting his Turkey Trot race shirt from Thursday, and has obviously switched into psycho-runner mode; word has it that having short-cut at the Brooklyn hash the other night, he actually left the on-in and ran an extra mile just to make up for it. Insane in the membrane.

The trail headed west and predictably straight towards Inwood Hill Park, where the first check was quickly solved by Hard Man heading straight uphill, setting the trend for the whole trail. A long climb it is too to the top of this park, and there was much puffing and wheezing going on - could this have been a case of collective T.A.S. (turkey aftershock syndrome)? This section of trail was pretty predictable if you'd run it before, heading north towards the Hudson River Bridge and passing a few bemused dog walkers on the way. People tend to let their dogs off the leash here and, hearing a snarl behind me, I saw someone seemingly getting attacked by one. I think they made it to the on-in O.K. though. It's always worth pausing to check out the great view of the Hudson before you cross over the bridge, especially if feeling short of breath. There was a check on the bridge of course, ha ha, inevitably it headed north and straight into a biting wind. Ever wish you'd worn a jacket? I tried in vain to catch Ed in the hope of using him as a windbreak, but to no avail, the bastard was too fast.

And so to Spuyten Duyvil. Now, everyone knows the story of how the Bronx is named after a Dutch guy called Broncks who bought the place way back when, but not everyone knows that Spuyten Duyvil was only narrowly outbid and instead settled for having a small piece of the Bronx named after him. Probably a good thing too; the Yankees, for example, would otherwise be known as the Spuyten Duyvil Bombers, while Fort Apache: Spuyten Duyvil doesn't quite have the same ring to it as a movie title. But enough of the history. The pack had been whittled down by this time to a pack of four Front Running Bastards: Hard Man, Ed, Devo and myself. It seemed pretty obvious where we were bound for, surely one of those Irish pubs in Kingsbridge, and sure enough the trail headed in exactly that direction. Surprisingly and rather unfortunately though, it carried on north and east. More hills and flights of steps ensued (where the hell are we, San Francisco?) and I began to regret my three weeks of vegging since the marathon. There was one hiccup where the trail did a u-turn and then seemed to vanish which stumped us for a while, but it was pretty plain sailing apart from that. The trail worked its way through Van Cortlandt Village, skirting the south side of the park, and eventually ending up at Woodlawn station, which alternates as a start and finish for Bronx hashes. Great trail which more than compensated for Wednesday's fiasco, although as we found out later, I'm not sure how big a part Vince played in actually laying it.

Inside the Woodlawn Café there were a few football watchers, a few pool players, and us. I imagine 4-train drivers may stop in here for a quick one before heading back south again. We managed to get one pitcher of Sam Adams before we they informed us that the Sam keg was off, which was later amended to "we've got no more Sam Adams". We seem to keep picking bars that run out of beer. Instead, we were offered Guinness in cans for $3 apiece - this canned Guinness thing must be a purely Bronx phenomenon. Even more weirdly, the pizza arrived sliced into sixteenths rather than eighths, which any experienced pizza eater like Seth will tell you makes it almost impossible to fold and far more likely to suffer a dreaded "cheese slide". The place was freezing, poor newcomer Julia spent the whole night shivering it seemed - any male volunteers out there to help her keep warm in winter? The lone visitor this week was from Atlanta, can't remember his hash name but I think it had something to do with rats. Apparently he's a news anchor for a local Atlanta TV station and keeps his "other life" a secret. I don't know about that - I think I'd still watch Channel 2 news if Dan Rather had been at the hash the previous night getting pissed up.

As Dan would say, this has been the hash writeup, I'm Dave Long, thanks for reading. On out.