Luke - 2.75

Beer Mile, 7:44 (~10th place)

I wasn't too confident going into this, with my recent body-feeling-like-shit-ness and all, but I gave myself goals of sub-6 if I felt great and sub-7:30 if I threw up.  There was one guy (Joe, a top ultramarathoner, BMPR of 6:15) going for sub-6, and all around a pretty good field of over 20 runners.  I also convinced a co-worker of mine to run...he's a 270-pound alcoholic who hasn't run more than a mile in the last three years.  He drunkenly did a practice Beer Mile on Wednesday and managed a solo 13:32.  Zack also was in attendance, ostensibly going for ~8:30 but I told him he could go sub-7 if he really went for it and had a great race.

For warmup I ran a little over a mile (4+ laps in lane 3), did a few strides, then 800m in 2:39, then a few more strides.  I also ate some pretzel sticks to soak up some of the carbonation.  I wore my red short shorts, a USA jersey, tall red-and-blue argyle socks, and my track spikes.  I was expecting the spikes to feel a bit weird since I hadn't worn them in a long time, but they just felt fast.

At the gun I downed my beer decently quickly, maybe just under 10 seconds.  I was probably in the top 5 off the line, then within a hundred meters (all the while burping) I was into first.  After about 70 meters I felt good enough to go pretty fast, and only had a couple more burps the rest of the lap.  The second beer took a little while due to inability to breathe, and though I started running first Joe was close behind me and passed me while I burped in the first 100m.  We were both quick through that lap; on the third beer we both took a little extra time and he was off a good few seconds before me.  I started that lap feeling a bit uneasy, going a bit slow so that I could sufficiently burp, and about 40m in one of those burps produced a little vomit--just enough, taking me by surprise enough, that I couldn't hold it in, and refunded about a third of a beer.  At that point I knew to not hold anything back, and I sped up considerably.  My fourth beer was pretty fast, since I was trying to put it down as quickly as possible and welcoming any ejection (which never actually came about).  I knew I had 800m to go but tried to give it as much of a sprint as I could...unfortunately I'm currently even slower than normal so that wasn't that great.  I passed a few people on that lap, and as I came through the finish line I announced that I had a penalty lap.  Passed a few more people on the fifth lap and came through at 7:44 to a crowd which included Zack "7:25" Kennedy, who was pretty happy to have beaten me.  They had popsicle sticks at the finish (for those of you who have never done cross country, a common way to tabulate finishers is to give out numbered popsicle sticks at the finish; runners turn them in later and give their name so officials can write everything down with plenty of time) and I didn't look at mine until well after the finish...I was surprised to see a double-digit number on there.  7:44 would be good for top 3 in a beer mile in any other city on Earth.  I was through four laps in 6:22, so I think I could be close to that in a non-penalty-lap beer mile.  Would love to have a few more beer miles throughout the year in order to get a feeling for how much to push and not throw up.

Adam finished at 11:19, which is pretty much amazing.  Would definitely be top 50% in a normal beer mile but with this amazing field it was only 21st I think.  Joe did break 6, clocking a 5:52.  I think 6:15 would be a possibility for me within a few tries, but sub-6 is elite territory.  Maybe I can get Adam to run a few with me over this summer.