• Governance in club matters •
[1½ MIN READ]
A previous Rumination raised the issue of authority in determining the definition of a competitive marathon. I made light of it by naming myself the arbiter of the definition. I can get away with it because I’m the one using the term to quantify how many marathons I’ve run: 25. No one I’ve used the number with has asked how I came to it. It helps that I’m not a world-class runner whose record needs to be authenticated for official purposes. In situations like that, there are recognized governing bodies establishing definitions and determining thresholds.
The matter comes to mind with this Rumination because of the use of names, in this case those for designating runners in the club. I’ve spoken to this matter before by writing about the practice of using trail names that club founder Zen Yanni popularized back in the late ‘80’s when SRC first became a thing. The average SRC-er should know that this here little club has no dues, no board of directors, is not registered, and doesn’t even take itself particularly seriously. That means decisions are nearly as easy as one runner defining what they think a competitive marathon is. Nearly.
Recently, this here little ruminant got into a conversation in which a runner expressed dismay about receiving unwanted attention. I won’t go into the details because that would only serve to bring even more unwanted attention. Suffice to say that the easy solution seemed to be to stop doing it; both in my writing and on the club website for which I do content editing. Under other circumstances, a conclave of 2 runners would seal a decision like that. After much internal debate the decision came to pass via uniclave [sic]: voilà, a suitable authority had made a determination for official purposes.
There are benefits to being a small operation like SRC. Unfortunately, small also means a 3rd runner noticed the change and started directing unwanted attention…
-CtCloser (Calvinthe) “Negative Split or Positive Splat” #dothedue
FINE PRINT ¶Text by Calvin Wang (Wäng), CC BY-NC-SA 4.0. ¶Cross-published: Facebook Shawmont Running Club (ZY Weekly Newsletter 3/29/25), Shawmont Running Club website, Ruminations by CtCloser. ¶This website posting: Rumination only with added caption.
iCandybyWangC 