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A beer mile is an odd event. To compete, you could be good at running, you might be good at drinking beer but to win you need to be somewhat good at both. The Grand Rapids Beer Mile was the brainchild of Steve Schoon, who had been reading about beer miles online and wanted to give it a try.
The structure of a beer mile is simple: drink a beer; run a quarter mile; drink a beer, run a quarter mile; drink a beer, run a quarter mile; drink one last beer and run one last quarter mile. Four beers, four quarter miles. Eleven brave people (mostly connected via Twitter) came out to run this year's first event on January 2, (organizers say there will be more) and braved temperatures around 17 degrees. The carefully measured 400m route was run from the 600 block of Cherry Street to the speed hump on Union Street and back to the official race headquarters on Cherry.
The start of the clock saw Steve, Jeff, Pete and Josh down their beers first and hit the course. By the third lap, things had slowed some. The top five male finishers had completed the race, the women had yet to start their third lap and the gathering area at race headquarters took on a happy hour atmosphere. Chugging had moved on to sipping and chatting.
Overall winner and male first place winner was Steve Schoon (Keystone) with a time of 12:30. Roberta King (three Coors Lights, one Bud 55) was the overall female winner, finishing in 22:08. Other finishers include: 2nd place: Pete R. (Guiness) 12:40; 3rd place: Josh D. (Point) 13:44; 4th place: Jeff Hill (running with a stress fracture and drinking Rolling Rock) 13:47; 5th place: Chad E. (Natural Ice) 14:58; 6th place: Skip F. (BassAle) 25:46; 7th place: Matt S. (Bud 55) 20:53; 8th place: Roberta King; 9th place: Rev. CPS (Pabst Blue Ribbon and Bells); 26:02; 10th place (but only drank two beers, so really 11th place) Denise C.: (two Celis White and two Izzes) 29:56 and last and the award for determination Heather K (Carling Black Label) with a time of 32:41
Heather K. was the only runner to throw up and thus had to run a penalty lap, which she did with great cheer and enthusiasm. Perhaps a better choice than Black Label next time would help.
Tip of the hat to Nick Manes who shot the video. Editing by Roberta King.
Roberta is the Vice President of PR & Marketing at Grand Rapids Community Foundation. She writes, takes photographs and sometimes makes videos about all kinds of interesting people and things.
Reports on: Running, the arts, musicians, this and that.
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Comments
Local event, great detail, names of participants, even beer-choices. And a video! The beer choices will help my strategy if I enter the next one...definitely no Black Label!