On June 11, my wife and our 6 year-old girl went to the second annual Northlands Park One Mile road race, and so did over 300 runners. It was quite the event!
The little kids ran a bit shorter, and the rest of us ran 3 laps around a loop to make it a Mile. It was right beside the horse track. Amalia enjoyed it, and ran with her friend Abby. It so cute to see little kids run, I love it!
While we were waiting for our age category races to start, I placed a bet on a horse for the first time in my life – $2.00 on number 2 to win. Guess what – I won! I made a whopping $10 something as a result.
Annik, Erin and Lori ran fantastic and were way up there in the field. Great to see them do so well.
Brendan looked super strong on his run, and he completely destroyed the competition in his age category. Great to see!
Denise and Mary went next in the Womens race, and both finished strong during this lovely Friday evening.
I worked hard from the start on my run, and stayed behind a tall fellow. I was hoping I could get some more speed going and perhaps pass him towards the end. However, no matter how I hard I tried on the last lap, he still had more and I could not quite catch him. 2nd place in 4:53 is fine by me though, quite happy with that. I won a nice HR monitor for this too.
The elite races were great to watch. Malindi Elmore was mighty impressive as she broke away to win by quite a margin. Kip Kangogo proved once again his strength by pushing hard on the last lap, which left the others unable to follow.
The last “event” was perhaps the most interesting one. The Beer Mile. If you don’t know what this is, here is how Wikipedia describes it:
A Beer mile is a sporting event combining the skills of competitive running and speed drinking. Typically, the event is contested as a race on a standard 400 meter or 1/4 mile running track. The race begins at the 1-mile starting line with the consumption of a standard amount of beer, followed by a full lap around the track. The second lap continues in a similar manner; the standard amount of beer is consumed before commencing the running of the second lap. This process is repeated for the next two laps. Following the completion of the fourth running lap (and four beers), a competitor has finished the race. The more specific rules of the race vary by region.
In this case, we did a “light version” on the race track itself – we had 2 cans of beer and 2 cans of root beer. Since many people had driven to get to this event, it wouldn’t have been a good idea to chug 4 beers fast. I don’t know if the root beer made it any easier – they have a high degree of carbonation and the two drinks didn’t mix so well in my stomach!
The Beer Mile started in the horse race starting booths. Three runners per booth, and the locked the doors behind us. Feeling slightly claustrophobic, Brendan, A.J. and myself were waiting anxiously for the gun. As it went off, there was a mad dash to the first beer root beer stop.
The first Budweiser went down easily, and I was in upper half of the field (which I am guessing could have been 15-20 runners). I figured, perhaps this isn’t so difficult after all. I do like beer.
I ran hard to the next stop, the first root beer stop. It was harder, but I got it down after a while. Now it was suddenly way harder to run. My stomach was full of air and it was quite uncomfortable. I got going slow, but picked it up after a series of advanced burps. I passed several younger runners who seemed to be suffering at this point.
The 2nd beer was way harder now. It was very cold too, and chugging it down on top of all bubbly mess already in there was far from pleasant. It took a loooong time to get it down. Meanhwile, AJ, Brendan and Warren got theirs down really fast, and I felt like a complete newbie at this (which I was, of course, and so where they). I did get going running pretty good, after burping like a mad cow.
The last stop was root beer again. Brendan was just ahead of me, and he got that root beer down fast. Me? I took 2 sips and – Ouch! The stomach felt like it was going to explode. Still, I drank as much as I could, but then I had to just stand there and wait for the burping and the nauseating feeling to subside. I finally got started running, and I was half expecting to be hurling out some nasty mixture from my gut. I burped twice as I was jogging, and that helped. I sprinted as fast as I could (read: slow jog) towards the finish, and I saw Warren and Brendan up ahead, near the finish. I still felt like I could throw up any second, but I managed to keep it under control, and came to the finish in 6th place, in about 8:50.
Oh man, this Beer Mile stuff is harder than you might think. I think a person needs a very stretchy stomach! The guy who beat me in the regular mile won the beer mile too – Shawn Muldrew. He is truly a monster.
The weather was amazing – really nice warm evening, even later at night. This event is highly recommended – great fun to run and watch, and lots of good food and prizes as well.
