beer Mile: World Record Falls as Stomachs Empty

You may have a regional, state, national or even Olympic medal but, let’s face it, none of us are good enough to have a can of beer at the start of each lap of a 4-lap (mile) race and then finish in less than 4:30. But that was the target set by Canadian Bellemore in last year’s event (2021, non-can).

On October 15th, 2022, athletes from over 13 countries (does that mean 14 countries?) converged on Leuven, Belgium for the 8th edition of the annual race. This year saw a return to the original can-based format, thus ensuring a good chance of a world’s best time in this particular version of the event.

The race format is similar to a triathlete’s brick workout of run-bike-run-bike except the beer mile is drink-run-drink-run-drink-run-drink-run. Chundering is really frowned upon by the event’s strict rules, requiring the chunderer to complete an extra 400m lap…ouch

Sports tech is permitted. As you can see in the videos below several runners rely on the Garmin multisport watches and a few are seen to waste a few valuable seconds pressing the lap button as they transition from run-to-drink. Some of the ladies benefitted from a much wiser choice of tech with their Apple Watches, the reasoning there was that Apple watches feature auto-transition detection, Military grade durability against acid, as well as auto-chunder detection.

Anyway, nonsense aside, Corey Bellemore and Melanie Pozdol are the newly-crowned World champions as the event returns to the original can-format. But don’t be fooled into thinking that a can makes drinking beer that much easier than drinking from a glass, there was still plenty of chundering in this week’s hectic (and somewhat disgusting!) races.

Just click on either of the event videos if you want to see the many weird and wonderful ways that you can be sick whilst running or how you can stop running to be sick and then run again. Particularly check out the ladies’ race and give your opinion on the disqualification of Elizabeth Laseter who crossed the line first before receiving a DQ.

Nice work guys. I think.

• Bellemore (4:49.70…can assisted)
• Laseter (6:41…can assisted)