The drunken mile

Raleigh has now hosted a beer mile! I was very excited to get in on this when they first announced it and jumped into registration. I've wanted to do one of these races for a long time now and it did not disappoint. The Beer Mile started with drunks sneaking into a public track after hours. 4 laps around the track is a mile, so you chug a beer before running each lap, and time the whole thing. 4 beers, 4 laps, for time. This race was hosted at Natty Greene's brewery, one of my favorite local breweries, so that only sweetened the deal for me. Kelley hasn't been to a race with me in a while, and my friend Allison wanted to come out as well so we all had a blast.

Funny thing was we had to get there for packet pickup between 4-6 pm, and my wave didn't start until 8 pm. So we got there in time and had dinner inside before getting into the race environment. I figured it would be safe enough to have a pint with the meal since I had 2+ hours until I had to run. Eventually we made our way outside for the race festivities and got to watch the other waves go for it.

The crowd bearing down on the starting line

Me, Kelley, and Allison looks pissed.

And they're off!

Eventually wave 4 was up and it was my turn to take off. I was well trained for this event, and had been looking forward to it for a long time.

And we're off! I totally got chicked in the first beer.

Ready to rock

You had to get behind that line to drink, then throw the empty cup away as you take off for a quarter mile lap. Repeat that 3 more times. That video is the start of the race, so I got the first beer down in 8 seconds. That's considerably faster than the 1 minute it usually took at home, but the cups were a bit small, I think. Even at 8 seconds you could still tell who the drinkers were and who the runners were! ha! I hit the road and hit a road block. These faster drinkers were really clogging up the roadway!

Beer 2 went down pretty smooth, but I really crushed the run part of lap 1 so I had to take some time to get my heart rate back down some. Lap 2 wasn't nearly as crowded either, so that was certainly more pleasant. I did pass this one girl on lap 2, then again on lap 3 so I had to make a joke about that. She caught up with me after the race and admitted to puking, so that was good. At least she knew she was drinking too fast.

After beer 3, ready to barf

I love that pic, the t-shirt and my face are the only things in focus. The key to running fast with that much carbonation loaded up in your stomach is to keep a smooth gait. In any running form, the upper body should glide forward, any energy spent moving the upper body up and down is wasted. And when you're full of beer, the up and down movement generates an explosion of epic proportions. We were looking for pukers, and didn't see as many as we were expecting. I just kept going out with lap 3 trying to keep it all down.

heading to the finish

Beer 4 went down pretty burpy, but I still ran pretty strong in the last lap. I hit the finish line in 8:34, and counted 4 other people out there. So I felt really good about that. Official results showed me placing 77 out of 179 guys, so I'm pretty amped about that. There were 2 guys that went under 6 minutes! insane.

After the finish line I got to hang out with some friends old and new, and they handed out door prizes. I won some anti-chafing stuff, and Allison thought it was hilarious that I won something labeled "for her"! The rest of those cups of beer were still up for grabs, so I had a couple more of those. Hey, they were small.

Overall this was a really fun event and we all had a blast. I did end up a bit tipsy, but I didn't puke like I expected. So winning all around. Check this one off of the bucket list.