IndyScent Hash House Harriers is a running club. A really strange running club.
Here’s how it works: Two “hares” get a head start to run ahead and mark a trail with flour. After about 15 minutes, the rest of the runners, or “hounds,” take off after them. The hounds follow the flour, which the hares have used to mark a path and also form clues. Sometimes these symbols are misleading, as in an arrow pointing right when – just kidding! – you should have gone left. Which you learn after jogging a quarter-mile in the wrong direction.
The location changes each time the club, or “kennel,” meets. On this evening, it’s on the far southeast side of Indy. Jonathan – who is only willing to divulge his first name – is one of the hares, as he often is, and the group of hounds is complaining good-naturedly. He takes them through too much “shiggy” – parlance for mud, brambles, and the like. His trails are too long.
Among the 26 runners tonight are visitors from Dayton, Ohio; Washington; and Zurich, Switzerland. Hashing is a global pursuit – founded by a bored Brit in Kuala Lumpur 70 years ago, it has spread across the world. It’s even a thing in Antarctica.
Jonathan explains the symbols he has devised, and then it’s off to the races. The hounds trudge through mud, then shiggy, then woods. They slog through neck-high brush on the edge of a cornfield, then into and out of its rows, and back into the woods for a beer break. It’s PBR and Keystone Light – the good stuff. Finally, they run, walk, and stumble near St. Francis Hospital. A curious nun standing outside asks what they’re doing. “We’re a running club,” says one hound. She leaves it at that.
It will be another half-hour – totaling three hours – before the finish.
The debriefing is a chance to report bad behavior. The punishment for trail crimes? Chug a beer. A non-drinker is allowed to enlist a “stunt liver” for the job. Nice work, if you can get it.
Originally published in Indianapolis Monthly, 2018. Republished here for archival and portfolio purposes.