So I’ve been invited to my first beer mile (4 repeats of run 400m, drink a beer). Any advice? Sprint all out? Chug all out? Pace? Light beer? Dark? Cheat and go for a cider mile?
I don’t drink much these days and haven’t “sprinted” in years, so it should be interesting!
If you’re gonna go, you might as well go all out…
sprint…chug…sprint…chug…repeat
Go with a nice Christmas ale…
Jodi
You will give it all back at the finish. Just let it go.
A friend of mine is a master of doing this sort of ‘races’ 
Some tips from her … “Tips….go in thirty and hungry. Nothing in the stomach, you need all the space you can get. Do not have the beer too cold or too warm. Take it out of the cooler or fridge maybe 45 mins before. Too cold or hot, it comes back up. Encourage your body to burp while you run your laps so as to have more space for the next beer. But, gotta watch the burps and not let them turn into spews. Hurling earns you a penalty lap. Coors works best for most folks for some reason. Maybe the watery taste?? Beer has to be 5%, no light (4.5%) varieties.”
It’s fun to watch people ‘drink and run’ I took some snapshots at the Dallas Beer Mile earlier this month and posted them at → www.dallastrigeeks.org (Sorry, can’t make the link live - I’m on a mac.)
There’s a seasonal beer here called a Herminator (from Hermann’s Brewery) that is about 9% if I remember. Maybe I’ll try and switch everyone else’s with that stuff…
have fun- my advice: go into it with an empty stomach, and try to burp as much as you can. chug time is very important as well, you may want to train a bit in this aspect…
No-one’s going to believe this but I know the guy who holds the record (to my knowledge) in this - only it’s the UK version with a pint to start so by the end it’s 5 pints and a mile.
4.58.
Love that stuff mmmm… but I bet it tastes like ass coming back up.
Been drinking some nasty big Belgians lately, would hate to do a beer mile on Golden Draak - ugh (thought of it makes me want to puke right now).
AP
five PINTS???
Wow, 4 cans seems to be more than enough. I can’t imagine 5 PINTS.
Love the site.
The last local beermile in my area: http://www.beermile.com/display/event_677
These guys are goofs. 36min! LOL.
I know it’s lunchtime but I should share:
Inspired by that guy (he was a teacher at my school!) I took the chunder mile tradition to my university were it bacame an annual event round one of the college quads. One year I lucked out and was a designated pourer meaning it was my job to keep the table of pints stocked as the rest of the club tried to complete the run.
On about the third lap one girl came round, downed her pint and on reflex brought it straight back up - 90% into the cup she was still holding. She put the cup down and staggered off and before I could do anything the next runner came round, picked it up and was halfway done before he realised the texture wasn’t quite right.
Sorry.
The Ben and Jerry’s 4x4 (4 pints of Ben and Jerry’s ice cream - 300+ calories/serving, 4 miles)
Best known effort: 1:06:55
This makes the beer mile seem easy…
Jodi
ahh, finally a topic I like…
As for the UK guy doing 5 pints in sub 5 min. I can believe that. The most difficult part of a beer mile is controlling the fizzing. With a pint, you can open your throat and let the beer go down smoothly (no fizz) in a matter of seconds (a can is way slower to pour and creates alot more fizz). However, that performance would not be a record. The rules must be followed for the beer mile. As was noted above www.beermile.com.
Now, if you want to go fast. a) have the beer mildly chilled, but not super cold b) drink as smoothly as you can. You must avoid creating foam as much as possible c) drink fast… when you are chugging, you are not covering distance d) burp as much as you can while running (but be controlled on the burps, so you don’t have a follow through) e) run hard. You do get a rest break every lap, so push the run f) make sure you do a warmup. This is actually a hard run to do, so a proper warm up and stretching is needed.
Don’t worry about getting drunk. You won’t feel the beer until 10 min or so afterwards (but, at that point, it hits you pretty hard).
After you are done this, though, you have to post your experience. It is hilarious to hear about someone’s first experience with the beermile.
PR: 6:50
Beermiles are awesome. PR of 6:24.
My running buddy told me a story, like the Ben & Jerry’s mentioned above, of a similar tradition held at Cornell University every year by the XC team.
They run a course which includes all of the dining establishments on campus (4 dining halls if I remember correctly) and have to eat “the special of the day” at each dining hall … and then run to the indoor track, run two laps around the track THEN eat two entire (drinks and all) McDonalds kids meals, to be followed by an 800m run.
Seniors pick out the course and are posted at the dining halls to ensure compliance. He said it was one of the worst experiences of his life.
I did a beer mile this fall. It is surpsingly much more difficult than I anticipated–and the people who did well are not necessarily the people you’d expect to do well. I saw champion drinkers and champion runners felled…and I have new respect for the guys that do this in 6 minutes.
My advice? Puke. I couldn’t, and really wished I could have (I even tried afterwards…nothing. ON the plus side, the two of us who didn’t puke got bombed. The others weren’t so lucky ;-)). Puke and do the penalty lap. You’ll be faster in your running than those who don’t.
Oh, and I’d use a “sanctioned” beer–otherwise your glory is diminished. Alcohol MUST be 5.0 or greater–you’d be suprised how many beers do NOT fit that category. See here: http://www.beermile.com/beer_abv.beer for an abbreviated list.
7:20 with Miller Genuine Draft. Burp on the back stretch, control the foam, start with relatively empty stomach, don’t puke (it’s a penalty lap), run a couple warm up laps and then do strides as if you’re running an open mile. Run very HARD for 350 of each lap and then bring it back a notch so that you’re breathing isn’t too out of control as you come into the exchange zone. The beer breaks give you a rest, but force yourself to keep making forward progress - i.e. drink! don’t just stand there and pant. You can try to breathe through your nose while the can is to your lips. Open the throat - I beat some faster runners by being the fastest drinker (5:11 run split, 2:09 drinking split: 10, 40, 38, 41). Enjoy!
How will this benefit your life? Go with the cider.
I just did a bike messenger race where a shot of vodka was taken at some of the stops…and it wasn’t stoli
M
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