In the past the HHH (Hash House Harriers) in Chiang Mai would average around 6km per outdoor run that we did but as our members get older, there has been a greater demand for shorter trails. We don't want to break with tradition even though there are no rules or regulations in HHH but in order to make as many people as happy as possible we capitulated and now almost all of our trails have a "wimp" option as well as the full trail, which is called the "Rambo" trail.
I'm not personally all that pleased about this because in the past a "Rambo" trail used to mean that this option was going to be considerably harder than a normal trail, but as our members have become older and more pussified the Rambo trail has just become what a regular trail used to be. In the past the presence of a Rambo meant that only the best members of our crew were going to so much as attempt it. These days it's just a regular trail.
I suppose this was necessary because a lot of our older members were simply turning up to the events and just walking a bit and then turning around and heading back to camp. They aren't lazy, they are just older and are a bit scared of getting out of their element and being stuck in the woods or something. I take that back, a lot of them are in fact lazy.
This past week's trail was a pretty flat one by Chiang Mai standards and you can see with the green outline where the "wimp" trail was. A mere 2.8 km. The Rambo trail was only 6.5 and just a few years ago a Rambo trail would have been closer to 10.
This isn't a sign of our members becoming more lazy, it is a sign of something that I have been talking about for a while now: Our population of members is getting older and we have mostly failed at replenishing our ranks with new and younger members. I suppose this is tragic when we look at it because this organization has been around in Chiang Mai for 30 years and at the rate that it is going now, when the people who are running the show now retire or die (both are equally likely) we fear that there aren't actually new members to pick up where they left off. When that day comes the end of the Chiang Mai HHH might be upon us.
This is exasperated by the ever-changing visa rules of Thailand, which many of our "snow bird" members have stated are too much trouble to be worth it, and while they don't want to do this, they have moved on to other countries where the government is happy to have them spend their money there.
I don't have much faith that this is going to change because the Thai government is a stubborn bunch and they will never admit that they were wrong about something and then roll it back. 10 years ago the visa situation in this country was excellent and it's not a coincidence that this is also when our numbers were at their highest.
Until something changes though, we will need to do things like have shorter trails. This will not appeal to visiting Hashers but we have to cater to our own first.
It's hard to believe that just 7 years ago Chiang Mai was such a bustling HHH operation that we hosted an international Hashing event that had over 500 people attend from all around the world. These days we can't even crank out a 7 km trail per week.
I would say that we are going to recruit more heavily but the Hash has never been about getting as many people as we can. This isn't a business. There is no money made in the operation of what we got going on here.
It's still a lot of fun but for the "younger" part of the audience these runs are a bit of a downer because they are no really all that challenging. I suppose that is better than having a bunch of pensioners falling down and dying though.
We still manage 3 runs per week here in Chiang Mai, although they are not as challenging as they used to be. come and meet a bunch of grizzled "drinkers with a running problem" if you happen to be in the Chiang Mai area of Thailand. It's very low cost and everyone is welcome. Full details are at our official website