One of the major concerns that people have when they are considering joining the Hash House Harriers is that since we are advertised as being "drinkers with a running problem" that they perception is that we are all a bunch of accomplished runners. If this is a fear that someone out there has you have completely the wrong idea. Sure, there are a couple of people in the ranks that are quite good runners but this is normally, globally, a very small percentage of the overall population of the Hash. For the most part we are all rather overweight and I think this is why we feature "drinkers" rather than "runners" in our slogan.
The upside to all of this to new people is that you need not fear being embarrassed by a group of super athletes when you get here. In Chiang Mai, as well as nearly every Hash chapter I have attended globally, there are normally a handful of people that run for the hills and 90% of the people simply walk when leaving on the trail initially.
I am not going to include people's faces in this post because the objective isn't to embarrass anyone or call anyone out for being fat, but to just feature the sort of body type that you can expect to see when visiting us or any other Hash chapter / kennel around the world.
I think if you were to turn up at an actual running race and saw someone with a physique like this that you probably wouldn't be all that concerned that you were going to get left in the dust, unless the contest was eating hot dogs or drinking beer.
This is the standard physical appearance of most of the men in the Hash.
There are a couple of lanky skinny fellas in our ranks as well but these guys tend to be near 70 years old and well, they might surprise you how spry they are even at this advanced age.
Very few of the participants in our events treat them as though they are competitive and mostly I think this is because we are here for the social side of things and the exercise is just a side benefit. There is something to be said for going on a 5-7km walk / jog 2-3 times a week though and I think all of us benefit from this activity. For most of us this is the only physical activity we get in a week so we look at it as a net benefit even though we almost certainly consume all the calories that were burned on trail once we start drinking beer at the end.
No one is going to pick on anyone for being in bad shape if they turn up to Hash-run with us and at most of our events only about 20% of the pack ever runs at all anyway. According to one of the healthier and younger members of our ranks that concerns himself with such things, walking for a prolonged period of time is just as good for your health and running for a shorter amount of time and I'll just take him at his word for this. I am quite certain that while almost none of us are going to win a foot-race anytime soon, that we all benefit from this immensely. And well, this is part of the reason why our logo features a rather fat elephant in it!
Come one come all!
