• As practice and as terminology •
[2 MIN READ]
This piece has a 2-fold purpose: (1) to describe the evolution of a practice and (2) to describe the evolution of a term.
The Growlers is a running club. It’s been in existence since the establishment of the Jenkintown Running Company that formed and has hosted it since 1981. The Growlers name came into existence in 2017 . I can’t say that the early club runners never socialized after runs in the early decades; I can only say that, beginning my time running with the club in 2012, we were always happy drinking beers in the back of the store. Occasionally we’d order in for pizza.
Then the club members started getting close enough to feel like going out for beers and pizza would be a good practice. I remember Adelaide figuring prominently into the idea of going out once a month. That’s when something called “Wickedly Wet Wednesday” came into existence with the first outing taking place 2022’08’17’W. Jay-var remembers her and guy David (collectively “Adelavid”) being the first to buy him a beer as a newer crew member.
It went on for a solid year, through 2024. It seems like a practice worth preserving, doesn’t it?
Toward the end of 2024, something started shifting, as reflected in a post from that period on “Crewness”; not for the worse, but for the better. Jackie and Jay-var were the first to agree, ‘Hey, it’s not a 3rd Wednesday, but let’s go out anyway’ (The day was 2024’11’06’W, the increasingly detailed Calvin’s log says).
That’s when “Wickedly” started becoming “Weekly.” At the beginning of 2025, the transition was complete. We stopped using the WWW designation altogether and just went out without using a descriptor.
As for me in my nerdy, neologistic fashion, it felt necessary to distinguish the stein-drinking part from the street-dragging part. “Hang out” became “Afterrun” which finally became “Overrun.”
Overlap also makes me quite happy; hence, satisfaction with the double entendre of something-we-do-after-a-run-is-complete and the accepted definition “a finishing time or a cost that continues past an intended limit” (Cambridge.org).
Evolution is an ongoing process. Someday this post will itself be a link from something in the future. For the nonce, The End.
Mentioned (iCandybyWangC.com unless otherwise specified)
Jenkintown Running Company (RunORC.com)
Growlers name
Wickedly Wet Wednesday
Crewness
Jackie
Neologistic
Accepted definition (Cambridge.org)
–CtCloser (Calvinthe), “Negative split or positive splat” #dothedue
FINE PRINT ¶Text and photos (unless otherwise stated): Calvin Wang (Wäng), CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 (CreativeCommons.org).
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