Please note that hashers often describe their group as "a drinking club with a running problem" - not a "running club with a drinking problem"
Run, Drink, Repeat
Sunday, 18 July 2010 20:43 | 
Author: Leona Baker | 
By Leona Baker (AKA “Slippery When Moist”)
If I say the word “hash,” you probably think of one of two things. One you can smoke; the other you can eat. What I’m about to describe has nothing to do with either.
This “hash” can be a noun. But it’s also a verb. It’s an activity. It’s a culture that combines exercise with excess in a tradition that began more than 70 years ago in what is now Malaysia. There, a bunch of British soldiers and expatriates began organizing group runs fashioned after a British “Paper Chase,” a game in which runners play the roles of “hares and hounds.”
They did so in part to purge themselves of the partying excesses of the weekend before. They called themselves the “Hash House Harriers.”
Today “hashers” meet at a predetermined public locale—say, a parking lot. There they mingle about until it’s time for the “hash” to get underway. A hash begins and ends in the round, and it starts off something like this:
“Circle up, you wankers!” the “Religious Advisor” (RA) shouts. He blows a whistle and the hashers, many with elaborately adorned and frothing drinking vessels already in hand, oblige by forming a ring of bodies around him. The RA serves as a Master of Ceremonies of sorts.
“Welcome to the 980th running of the Tidewater Hash House Harriers,” he calls. “Can I get a nice loud ‘On On’?”
“On On!” the hashers respond with the universal calling card of the worldwide phenomenon known as “the running club with a drinking problem.”
The RA then introduces the “hares,” the two runners who will lead the hash by laying a trail for the “pack,” AKA the rest of the runners, to follow. Next the hares are honored with a song. It’s right about now that easily offended first-timers may feel the sting of regret:
“Why were they born so beautiful?/Why were they born at all?” the crowd sings to the hares. “They’re no fucking use to anyone/They’re no fucking use at all.”
Then again, if the first-timers were easily offended, they probably wouldn’t have been invited to the hash to begin with.
This is a place where the decorum of polite society is eschewed along with life’s day-to-day pressures in favor of a culture of affectionate crudeness and camaraderie of the sort in which the words “asshole” and “bitch” are regularly used as terms of endearment.
The hares set off to lay their trail with a series of chalk markings and flour droppings. They’re given a 12-minute head start before the pack is allowed to follow and attempt to “snare the hares” by tagging them before they’ve finished the trail.
In the intervening time, any “virgins” (hash newcomers) are asked to enter the circle and respond to a series of specific questions, the most of important of which is: “Why are you here?”
The appropriate answer is “to drink beer.” Any other answer (such as “to run” or “to have fun”) will be met with boos and jeers.
Later, the veteran hashers introduce themselves by their “hash names,” given to them once they’ve completed six hashes and hared one hash.
Most of the names sound like titles of low-rent porn flicks: Off to See the Wizzer, Pelvis Costello, AC Dildo, Nice Rack, Mama Said Swallow, Buckafuffalo, Homorama, Mounted Head.
If you have not yet been given a name, as I hadn’t until I recently became known as “Slippery When Moist,” you must introduce yourself by your regular first name with the antecedent “NFN” (No Fucking Name)—as in “NFN Leona.”
There are announcements and a few basic instructions for the virgins, who are required to go through an initiation ritual that involves a "sacred banana." Then at last you’re off running after the hares. Most of the time there’s a “beer check” along the way—a manned stop where a cooler of cold, cheap brew awaits all who wish to partake.
At first it seems like chaos until you begin to recognize the markings and verbal cues from the other hashers. When someone shouts, “On On,” for example, you know they’ve landed on the correct path or “true trail.”
You can go whichever way you please. You can hang with a friend, follow the bulk of the pack or venture solo if you think you know the way.
However you traverse the trail, you’ll undoubtedly find yourself in locations you would otherwise never (and I mean never) be in your daily life, even if you're an avid runner. Hares are discouraged from creating trails with long straight-aways or excessive pavement. So you end up trekking through neighborhoods, parks, woods and swamps, behind buildings and through abandoned lots. You cross over roads and under highways. Occasionally you find yourself jumping fences, slogging through water or negotiating heavy “shiggy,” the hash word for any messy, weedy, briar-infested nastiness one encounters on the trail.
If you lose the trail entirely, which I have, you can always break off and find your way to the designated ending point (sometimes the same as the starting point, sometimes not).
Running isn’t required. Some people walk. I usually do both. Varying degrees of physical fitness are welcome. What I love about it is the sense of adventure and unpredictability.
The hash concludes with “down-downs,” which basically amounts to a party (usually held somewhere private so as to avoid run-ins with authority types) complete with raunchy drinking songs and recognitions and admonishments for various achievements and behaviors on the trail. All of the above involve the swilling of beer.
I was turned on to hashing by my neighbors, both of whom had been hashing for years before I’d even heard of it. For many hashers, it’s a way of life. It’s a home away from home. It’s also very much an escape. Several hashers have told me a friend brought them to the hash after a particularly stressful period in their life—in many cases a divorce.
That’s how my neighbor, who goes by the hash name Final 4 Play, got into it. It has since become much more than an outlet for her as it does for all die-hard hashers.
“Literally every single friend in my life is a hasher,” she says. “I have a job because of a hasher. I have a place to live because of a hasher. It’s amazing what it opens up in your life.”
There’s also a sense of equality and community at the hash, despite the fact that hashers come from many different backgrounds.
“We’re ditch diggers and doctors,” one hasher told me.
Hashing groups exist all over the world and though their traditions vary somewhat, the basics are the same. That means hashers traveling in China or Italy can locate and participate in a hash just as they would in their home town.
There are several local and regional chapters. The Southside-based Tidewater Hash House Harriers currently meets every Thursday at 6:30 p.m. Their starting points are usually in Virginia Beach or Norfolk. The cost to hash is $5, which covers libations and munchies. To find out more, go to www.th3.org.
Last Updated ( Sunday, 08 August 2010 16:28 )
