Brain Farts One and Two

Present: Liberace, Velcro Lips, Serbian Bomber, Mango Groove, Golden Balls, Eunuch, Luk Dim Boon, One Eyed Jack, Catch Of The Day, Golden Jelly, Luk Sup Gow, Dram (hare)

Let’s start with a definition:

Yeah you guessed it, most of the pack on this run suffered from multiple brain farts. Maybe it’s a new disease. Hare Dram’s briefing specified a flat run with no need to climb any hills as he’d had to make some adjustments due to the RA’s failure to keep the rain away from the first trail he tried to lay – caught in a deluge on the hillside, fell over and injured himself.

Sounds simple enough. After running through a car park and through a cut to the temple near Moonie’s old gaff the trail then wound it’s way to another small temple. Here the front pack of Liberace, GB, LDB, COTD, Serbian and Mango decided to follow washed out trail up a steep hill. Brain Fart #1 marked in green on the map.

This is what happened to those hashers:

t-10 minutes

You’re daydreaming, and your medial temporal lobe subsystem, precuneus, medial prefrontal subsystem, and posterior cingulate cortex, which together make up the default mode network (DMN) are all active. This was during the briefing, as usual you weren’t paying attention!!

t-5 minutes

You confront a demanding task, such as following trail. Your anterior cingulate and right prefrontal regions, brain areas involved in attention, begin to activate, as do the cerebellum and the parietal, visual, and temporal cortices, which control the motor coordination you need to pilot through pedestrian traffic. At the same time, the DMN deactivates.

t-30 seconds

Your route is extremely familiar, you have been along these paths before. Your frontal lobes, bored by this habitual task, begin to power down. The retrosplenial cortex in the posterior section of the DMN begins to stir again. When the balance of activity between the DMN and the attention network reaches a certain threshold, you enter an error-prone state. You miss your exit off the footpath.

t+5 seconds

Your frontal lobes fire up again at high levels in an attempt to compensate for the error. They return to a state of optimal performance, ready to work on a corrective action. You follow washed out trail.

t+15 seconds

The stress of having made a blunder activates the limbic-hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis, your brain’s “panic button.” You experience a surge of the stress hormone cortisol. You reach the end of the washed out section and realise you are stupid.

On the map the real trail in red (as fully completed by Eunuch and OEJ) wound around the paths in Wai Tau Tsuen, went under the Hong Lok Yuen roundabout, past the old gathering point and on to the first footbridge, on which was marked the wimps / rambos split.

Rambos went right and down onto the cycle track, along a bit, then right through the fields up towards Tai Wau then back down to the service road and along to footbridge 3, having by-passed footbridge 2. Somewhere along here Liberace, Luk Dim Bun, Serbian, Mango and COTD had Brain Fart #2, marked in green on the map. GB had allegedly done the wimps but diidn’t know where the split was so one could say he cheated.

The markings were very challenging to follow as the hare had tried to protect them from the rain.

The usual culprits received down downs, well basically everyone. – One Eyed Jack