Harriers' run
would make any fox howl
The Arizona Daily Star
Date not available, sometime in 1997-98
By Tom Collins
'Dorky' red dresses are part of
the fun
He's 5 feet 8 inches tall,
wearing a red tennis shirt and a wig, standing in the
MacFrugal's parking lot at North Sabino Canyon and
East Tanque Verde roads.
He wants to be called Cheetah.
The 46-year-old University of
Arizona professor is one of 50 red-dresses runners -
male and female - who took part in yesterday's
JHavelina Hash House Harriers red dress hash.
The hash run, which doesn't
always include the red dress, is a 70 [60] year-old
tradition based loosely on the English fox hunt. A
hash involves several human "hares" being
pursued by the "hashers" over several miles
– with a stop for drinks along the way.
HOW TO HASH
"Hares" get a
15-minute head start and leave various hints and
"hash marks" to distinguish their path.
Penalties, which can be assessed for anything from
being a caught hare to a first-time runner, are doled
out in "down downs" - the drinking of 12
ounces of beer, soda or water.
The JHavelina Hash House
Harriers is a 4-year-old Tucson club devoted to the
sport.
Like many pastimes in which
alcohol plays a role, the red dress hash has a hazy
history. This is either the first time of the third
the Tucson group hash donned dresses to run,
depending on whom you ask.
Cheetah said the red dress is a
trend sweeping through the hash run ranks that
started with a San Diego event that drew 500 people.
"It's kind of a copycat
thing," said Cheetah, who was given his nickname
by others in the club.
Anyone who makes it through six
runs earns a nickname, everything from Parachuting
Peter (a 44 year-old engineer who once jumped naked
from an airplane), to Communicable Disease, a former
Marine named Ed Haley.
Haley earned his name doing
hash runs while stationed in Okinawa, Japan, 19 years
ago. Since then he hash run more than 500 hashes,
including 221 in Tucson.
"It's more of a social
club than anything," Haley said.
Wendy Tong, a Davis-Monthan
flight doctor, met her husband at a Washington, D.C.,
hash. Yesterday she brought her stepson, Justin
Ladrun, 12, who wore his red dress showing no sign of
adolescent embarrassment.
"I did at first,"
Ladrun said, "but there are other people here
who look worse than me."
The group runs Saturdays at 3
p.m. - 5 p.m. in the summer and 7 p.m. on full moon
nights.
Hashers yesterday were hunting
Tucson's Hash Master, the Long Ranger, his wife and
another runner. The three planned to lead the others
on about a five-mile run - including a stop at
Hooters for a "beer check" - that would end
in Tanque Verde Wash.
The Ranger's real name is Scott
Devlin, 33, an Army ranger turned writer who runs
ultra marathons in his spare time.
Other special hashes include
Hash de Tucson, which is made up of back-to-back
runs, and camping hashes, which involve one hash in
the evening and one in the morning, Devlin said.
As for the dresses, Cheetah
said: "If you didn't show up with a red dress
you'd feel like a dork. If you do show up with a red
dress you feel like a dork, but you look like
everybody else."
There are about 1,300 active
hash groups in the world today, representing every
continent, according to the Global Trash Hash Bible.