Luke Runs a Beer Marathon

In all ways, it was the longest day of the year.

I don't know exactly when I came up with the idea of a beer marathon. Consuming podcasts during the pandemic introduced me to Beau Miles and his ‘Marathon an hour' (every hour, run one mile and complete one chore so that by the end of the day you'll have accomplished both a marathon and a mountain of tasks), and Chris Robertson's ‘Century Week' (one week, one hundred beers, one hundred miles - however you want to cut it). While both of these sounded like a fun challenge, a century week seemed a bit laborious, while Beau Miles’ version seemed far too productive. The idea of a beer marathon instead seemed accomplishable without being too onerous.

Through a period of rumination, the self-imposed rules became:

Every hour, drink one beer and run one mile for 24 hours. The first and last hours would be doubles to make sure it tallied to 26. Apart from these bookends, you could only start a new beer or mile once the clock passed the hour. The rules for the beer were an anglification of the beer mile rules; at least 4% alcohol and at least 330ml (if the rest of the world adopts the uncouth American measure of 355ml maybe this will change).

This idea sat in my head for years. Every now and then it would slip out in conversation; that I think it's possible, but never once had I committed to attempting it. That remained so until earlier this year. On another occasion of discussing the sporting limits of human alcohol consumption following a Social Run, I quietly slipped ‘Beer Marathon’ into mine and Roma’s shared calendar for June 21st. Through a few rounds of ‘what?’, ‘why?’, ‘really?’, ‘do you have to?’, The commitment to run a beer marathon on a valuable summer weekend was accepted. Not that I did anything to progress the plans beyond a holding note in our calendar until the week of the run.

Having soft-launched the concepts a few times, I finally put together a support crew of friends. I had made my way to Sainsbury's to purchase twenty-six 4%+ beers (a mixture of Jubel, Corona, Camden, and Northern Monk), an amount of caffeine and snacks to maintain a marathon effort. I'd plotted the route; a one-mile loop starting and finishing at our flat, taking a sum total of one road crossing. Though slightly less than flat, this meant I could keep myself fresh between laps with access to showers and sofas. I'd chosen the longest day of the year as it would also mean the shortest night of the year. The volume of alcohol wasn't my primary concern, but the soporific effect of that many beers did concern me, so aiming for as much daylight as possible was key. This also influenced my decision to go for an evening start rather than a morning. So, at 7 pm, I set off.

The first hour passed quickly. Alternating two beers and two miles left little time to contemplate my decisions. Joined by Jimmy, the Corona and Camden went down smoothly and the loop was pleasant enough. I don't think the mile could be described as scenic, but it did the job. It avoided the busiest bits of West Hampstead but felt trafficked enough that I wouldn't feel alone, nor risk getting run over by an errant Lime bike in the early hours of the morning.

The next few hours passed pretty quickly. Kept company by Roma, Ed, Tim, Susan, Rob, and Luc, the pile of empty beer cans started to grow. I was, however, starting to pay some penance for my lack of preparation. A good ultra runner will spend days researching and running their race route to make sure they've optimised every detail (see Matt's recent lengthy report for a detailed discussion on pre-race reccy's). I, however, had done no such thing for my beers of choice. Instead, I picked mine based on a balance of being affordable yet pleasant enough and some variation to keep it interesting. I had not practiced running on them; most of that had been done on Wolfpack pale ale after a social run. Now, Camden Pale is a great beer, but running on it proved to be a poor choice. It was weirdly fizzy. Despite having lagers that were overtly gassy, this flatter beer was proving my nemesis. It was starting to cause some stomach acid and a bit of reflux. While I never thought I'd be at risk of any penalty laps due to throwing up, Camden Pale brought me closest.

Owing to which, I must admit to two bits of doping that supported this effort. The first was some Rennies to combat the acid. By midnight, things had settled down, a couple kit changes to optimise the pressure on my stomach while sitting and a sensible approach to the Camden beer, allowing at least 2hrs between them improved my situation. The second bit of doping was the use of Imodium. It's a race aid I use frequently. I had loosely planned my nutrition, only doing one mile didn't mean I had to hit my 60+ grams of carbohydrate per hour, but I was still making sure to get enough in. While there aren't many grams of carbs in a beer, it is all liquid. Liquid in was starting to become liquid out…

Adding variation, the evening crew was replaced by the night shift. Tim, on his way home from a concert, Sam returning from a 3km race in Coal Drops Yard. Both were significantly more drunk than I. While I was getting tired, the company was great and they both kept me lapping until the early hours.

By 4am everything had settled down. The sun was starting to come up, I'd had my first solo mile, the air had cooled, the paths were quiet. It was really nice running. Susan returned to keep me company from 5 am to 7 am. We saw the sun slowly light up the buildings, listened to birds sing their morning chorus, and watched squirrels panic at the sight of humans during their scavenging hour.

Waving goodbye to Susan after the half marathon, 7 am was my second solo hour. I'd planned on sleeping but wanted to avoid doing so overnight. I wanted it to be a nap not a sleep, so waiting for daylight to close my eyes made sense to me. I front-loaded one hour with the beer and mile, and back-loaded the next to give an hour to create the time to shower and rest. The two little naps I collected throughout the day didn't make a huge amount of difference to the accumulating fatigue, but I do think they helped me get to the end.

By late morning things had started to pick up. A friend, Toby, saw me through the early morning, but by late morning I had the post-parkrun collection turn up to support. Fiona, Graeme, Alder, Riz, Fran, Brian, Dustin all contributed to shepherding me around the loop. It continued to get hotter and hotter but the beers and laps continued to fall.

Like the beers, the laps were not quite created equally. Somehow, when running one way around the loop I'd be back at my flat in exactly a mile. Yet, turning left out of my flat rather than right made the loop shorter (as according to Garmin). Some cruel trickery of GPS meant every counter-clockwise trip came in around 60m short. Not wanting to short change myself this meant an extra little bit to add on down the hill, and an unaccounted walk up slope once I'd finally seen the watch tick over to the mile. I don't quite know why this happened but it was becoming increasingly frustrating, yet I still wanted to make sure I was alternating loops, as much as anything to make sure they didn't all blend in to one another, or if people saw me running they might think it was part of some elaborate out and back, rather than the same man running past their home 26 times in a day.

By the early afternoon all of the expenditure was starting to add up. While I was getting closer to the end, the finish was still just a bit too far away, and the quiet bits of the hour were starting to stretch out. For most laps, the beer took around 15minutes to finish, with the mile a further 10. This left just over 30minutes to sit and wait for the next one. Early in the day this was great, it was a chance to chat and enjoy this purgatory I was putting myself through. But after 30 hours of being awake this section of the hour started to become a battle and I spent more and more time counting down the minutes until the next hour could begin.

Social Runners’ Morgan and Lydia supported this shell of me as the final hour finally crept closer. I couldn't wait to be done, but I knew the last hour would be fun. The monotony of waiting would be replaced by the race to finish. People who'd appeared through the past day came back to help see me finish. The final two miles passed quickly, a Corona and a peach Jubel closed off the collection of 26, and a special bonus loop brought the miles to 26.2. A toast of prosecco and I was done. 26.2 beers, 26.2 miles, 24 hours.

While there are a number of things I learnt about myself on that long longest day, the most important was that of community. Since starting running in London, I've been part of three distinct communities, Adidas Runners, Queens Park Harriers and Queen’s Park Social Run; all three of which turned out to support me. While the beer marathon pushed me, friends pulled me through it. I'll probably never do something quite like this again, but I'll always have the day that I did something silly, and my friends said “I’ll help you with that”.

So thank you to: Fiona, Graeme, Alder, Riz, David, Jimmy, Tim, Sam, Fran, Susan, Gordon, Rob, Luc, Brian, Dustin, Toby, Ed, Morgan, Lydia, and most importantly Roma. While I might have been able to force myself through that alone, you made a painful experience pleasurable.