Get Your Group
Have you been properly describing your animals? What did you learn in Kindergarten? Do you remember- all you ever needed to know? I ate glue in Kindergarten and there is documentation that I dressed up as Charlie Chaplain. Hmmmm, Yes, I went to Yale. Kindergarten never properly taught me my animals. For instance do you know what you call a whole bunch of crows?
“A lot of crows?”
No. A murder. Makes perfect sense right? Somewhere a Zoologist did not get to name a gerbil as GERBIL. He came up with FLUFFBALL and his zoo-friends laughed and snickered. So he decided he would trump the system and take credit for naming a group of gerbils- a horde.
If a wild pack of angry cockroaches invests your home- this is clearly just an “intrusion.” If a bunch of cheetahs meet on your couch, well you have a coalition. ”Oh Honey, look at the beautiful coalition of cheetahs!” Troop of monkeys, horde of mice, herd of moose, rookery of penguins, labor of moles, charm of hummingbirds, band of gorillas, gaggle of geese, army of frogs, skulk of foxes, school of fish, mob of emu and on and on goes the list.
Wouldn’t it be useful to have classifications of human beings? Yes, yes I know we have some fancy adjectives. Dumb ass is very specific. But…but…professor, what do we call a whole bunch of dumb asses clustered together? LaLaPalooza. And if you have a congregation of suited self righteous truth benders? Politicians, Lawyers, Men on the Bachelorette? See it is not very specific. If I got a school- I got a fish. Murder? Crow is cawing. Edgar nailed that one.
What are we as runners? Runners? It would be nice to think we are all the same, but we do run in groups flavored by our marathon mile pace. The 8 minute pace group huddles over here and the 6 minute pace group stretches over there and the 7:10 group stays far away from the 7:45 group. Of course not really- but I think we should place some classification to this very rudimentary system.
It is like naming nail polish. Why would you want to call it pink when you can call it Aphrodite’s Pink Nightie? Nice ring to it don’t you think? So what kind of runner are you? Trail Cash? Road Rash? Or perhaps we will just find a good answer to the world’s dumbest runner’s question, “Huh, what are you running away from?”
Nothing. This is a ramble of runners moving toward sanity. See it? Right over there. Oh! You missed it, too slow. Ramble on!
21 Responses to “Get Your Group”
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Group of ultra trail runners would be a ragged of runners.
We runners are part of a pride, leaping and bounding through life with a killer instinct that endures. Intrinsically, we all have that ‘fight’ in us, and we come together as a collective driven by positive momentum and force.
Oh these are all so good! I love it! A swift of runners, a persistence of runners, a pride! Magic!
I’ve been known to ‘ramble’ and amble
. I vote for a compulsion too and my 2c of creativity is: A swift of racers…
A large group of runners, dressed entirely in high-performance synthetic clothing, taking orders from their leaders, running at “pace”, compulsively looking at their watches/Garmins?
Definately a Cult of runners.
Ha! Or a clone? Terminarunner
Hmmmmm. a gesticulation of runners? (though it would be good to incorporate a sense of insanity into the word too).
Oh that sounds very smart! And I like your thinking toward the insanity. Hmmm a cookery of runners or a Rommel of Runners who was of course crazy like a fox.
I can’t believe you left out “flock of seagulls”. Maybe I’m just old enough to remember the 80′s band. But what do you call a group or ornery llamas. I’d like to know.
Not sure on Llamas. A licorice of Llamas sounds good
Scientists are a pretty easy going bunch, just pick a name that amuses some of them and pretty soon someone might pick it up and use it in a paper and voila it snowballs from there. Give it a while and it becomes ‘the official name’ because it was used by some sciency type – it’ll even start showing up on ‘official’ lists of collective nouns because it is used in serious sounding papers. The term ‘Flange’ for a group of Baboons originated with a classic British Comedy Sketch and now shows up on lists because scientists working on baboons thought it was funny. It was only picked for the sketch because flange is such a funny word when Roman Atkinson says it.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=beCYGm1vMJ0
That was awesome John. Have you named something lately? And as the only official scientist on this conversation role, what say you to a group of runners? I am dying to know.
A persistence of runners?
If you are running a pace and the group is under 10, the group is called a “Bus”. You identify the “Bus” by your marathon finishing time i.e. you would be on the “2:45 Bus”. If there is more than 10 runners, then you have a “Train”. If you are only doing the warm-up or cool-down, then you have a “Clique”…
I am not a bus. What would a Taxi of runners be? Clique? Briz- baby- I know you can do better. Hit me. Come on bring it.
Who says you’re not a bus? If I said, “Back up the bus, Sweet Thing…”, you would know exactly what I meant.
Unfortunately, I rule in the world of sarcasm. Often my words come out flat in print and the message behind the message is only understood by the privileged few. They know who they are. And how was I supposed to know Joe was going to go all Mega-Mind on my ass with his brilliant ideas? My next ideas were going to be “a pack of runners” and then “a herd of runners” but now those seem so 1995. So, ok…..how about:
An Asylum of Runners
An Infirmary of Runners
A Nursery of Runners
A Perspiration of Runners
or here’s one that I know you are going to dig…
An Inspiration of Runners. Bammm! Game over. Keep the change, I’m going home…
Now this is the Briz I know! I love it. Nice ace. I was thinking a stride of runners.
Shoulda, coulda, woulda quit while you were ahead. The bus, train work was great…and leaving clique hanging was great.
Thanks to the witty Nitmos for leading me over here.
Ah ha! So you like the bus of runners. Ok baby- which bus you on? The 250? I keep trying to get on the 245 but damn it is hard to catch. And if it is a train- local stops or express? A train or L? Mind the gap on the Tube and kick Jerod off the subway. Of course we could all just run the Sole Train. Dammit Briz wins again.
My votes for the collective:
A concordance of runners.
A constraint of runners.
A beat of runners.
A rash of runners.
A compulsion of runners.
Oooh- a compulsion of runners. That’s good. That is damn good. Like we are compulsively grouped together doing something compulsive….like….like running. Brilliant!