Welcome to the Age of the Acronym. In the decade and a half since the Internet took off, we’ve become too busy, too cool or maybe just too lazy to spell anything out. Whatever the reason, we’re living in an era in which we LOL with our BFFs (even the ones who are FOB, BTW).

You probably already know that if someone asks you to MYOB, they want you to butt out and that OMG indicates surprise or disbelief. As with every niche the web has promoted, so too has abbreviation mania become more industry- and interest-specific. Take the acronyms adopted by members of Honolulu’s most foul-mouthed, booze-guzzling running club.

“Oh no, you don’t want to be an FRB,” laughed Dwight Jackson, 71, who has been running with the local Hash House Harriers for some 25 years. “That’s a front-running bastard.”

It may seem unusual for runners to tease each other for moving too quickly, but these are no ordinary athletes. More like members of a co-ed fraternity, Harriers have long called themselves “drinkers with a running problem.”

“On one hand, we’re wild,” laughed Jackson. “But these are really reputable people. We have attorneys and doctors, police officers, one of our runners was a colonel in the Marine Corps. It’s a really wonderful group of people and it’s just my good fortune to be a runner so I can encounter them.”

Since the first club formed in the 1930s in Malaysia, where founding members gathered at a restaurant called the Hash House, clubs have started all over the world. On Oahu, the group—which dates back to 1978—has evolved into many forms. There are the Aloha Hash House Harriers, the Honolulu Hash House Harriers, and an all-female crew of Hashers who run together, sometimes referred to as Harriettes. Members overlap for various runs and integrate for special events, like the Full Moon Hash.

“The whole idea is to go out, have a great run and have fun,” said Jackson. “But we have people who just walk the trail, too.”

Regularly-scheduled runs are open to anyone, but usually draw about 35 people. They take place on Tuesday evenings and Saturday afternoons and the course changes every time. Routes are mapped out as a kind of hybrid between a treasure hunt and relay race. Each run begins with the person who designed the course, known as the “hare,” leading the way. Jackson said the style can be traced back to a British schoolyard game called Hounds and Hares in which one child starts running and, after a short delay, his classmates try to catch him.

“You flip a coin or jun ken po and whoever loses has to be the next hare,” Jackson said. “So the hare gets a 15-minute start and it’s up to the harriers to follow his trail and try to catch him. The hare leaves little clues along the way for which way to go, and also tries to throw them off.”

The hare makes chalk marks that indicate which way he’s heading and, save for any trail screw-ups, he doesn’t tend to get caught. If he does, the person who catches him takes over as the trail leader. Each run loops back to finish at the point where it started and a course takes an average of about 45 minutes to an hour to complete. Runners don’t know where they’ll even meet up until a day or two beforehand—as of press time, yesterday’s hash was scheduled to start in a Kalihi park near Damien High School—but chasing the hare frequently takes harriers off the beaten path. Some of the places they’ve run are so off-limits that runners won’t detail them on the record.

“Let’s just say, I’ve lived here all my life and I’ve run in places that I never ever would have gone otherwise,” said Jackson. “In some cases, I’ve run places I never even knew existed before.”

But not much is uncharted territory for these runners, who chug beers at each mile-marker throughout their aptly-named Six Pack 10K, and sport red gowns for their Valentine’s Day run.

“The first one I ever did was one of the funniest things I have ever seen,” said Jackson. “We were making beer stops throughout the run and we were at this place in Kahala where there were all these motorcycle guys, these big, burly guys covered in tattoos, sitting there. They took one look at us, 75 guys in red dresses, some girls but mostly guys, and it took about two minutes for them to stand up and leave.”

If running in drag isn’t racy enough, the nicknames that group members give each other are. Hashers have bestowed each other with monikers like Knocked Up, Dong, Manure du Jour, Joy Stick, Splat and UnreliaBILL.

“After you run with the group two or three times, you have to get a hash name,” explained longtime hasher Toby Kravet. “It’s a little initiation. It can have something to do with what you do for work, or something else that you do for recreation, or maybe something you’ve done that’s very stupid and everyone’s harassing you for. A lot of them are not names you’d want your mother to hear.”

Jackson describes one of his running buddies as “Bob with two Os.” Kravet’s nickname is the classic, “Cunning Runt.”

Perhaps even more clever than their nicknames or their official club salute (which simply involves raising one’s middle finger with a smile) is the Harriers’ sacred prayer:

Our beer, which art in barrels, hallowed be thy drink

Thy will be drunk, I will be drunk, at home as I am in the tavern

Give us this day our foamy head, and forgive us our spillages as we forgive those who spill against us

And lead us not into incarceration, but deliver us from hangovers

For thine is the beer, the bitter and the lager, forever and ever

Barmen.

They may not all be FRBs, but Honolulu’s Hash Harriers are unquestionably life-loving, fun-running BAMFs, always up for a new adventure.

To check the Hareline for upcoming runs, call 948-HASH

---