Ready, set… Cheers! These are the best drinking marathons
We previously wrote about the best wine marathons in Europe, where every few kilometers of slogging is rewarded with a good glass of wine to give yourself a little courage for the kilometers ahead. Well, we have even more good news: these drink-athons are also available for lovers of other alcoholic beverages!
So if wine isn’t your first choice during a running session (but water isn’t either), you can still take part in such a festive jaunt. Because all over the world you’ll find boozy running races that you enter for the achievement, the glory, but above all for the fun. These are the best:
The Dramathon in Scotland
Useful fact: a ‘dram’ is a measure of whiskey. How big that measure is? Apparently, that’s somewhat open to interpretation… In any case, this Dramathon takes you through breathtakingly beautiful landscapes, where, conveniently, various whiskey distilleries just happen to be located at strategic points! You can choose between four distances, but whichever one you choose, you all end up together at the Glenfiddich Distillery for a dram (or two) of their single malt.
The Beer Run in Australia, the US and the UK
A nice simple, effective name and a very manageable distance too: you run The Beer Run over 5 kilometers, stopping at five breweries and having a pint at each one. That should be doable! Always held in October, so you can still feel a little connected in spirit to your German friends during their Oktoberfest. In four Australian cities, this concept has been so successful that sister runs have been set up in the United Kingdom and America.
Shamrockin’ Run/Guinness Challenge Championship, US
Granted, it’s not in Ireland, but it is held every year around St. Patrick’s Day in March. In New Orleans, where they do enjoy dressing up, so pack your green running shoes and go! You can do the ‘regular’ 8-kilometer run, but if we know you at all, you’ll naturally combine it with the Guinness element: knock back a cup of it every few kilometers to make it into the top five fastest runners as well. At the Shamrockin’ Run, that earns you a crate of Guinness to take along to the after-party. (Or you could bake a Guinness chocolate cake with it…)
Beer Lovers’ Marathon in Liège
We saved the most accessible one for last… Naturally, we can drive or take the train (or cycle, for all I care) straight there: in Liège, Belgium, the cheerful ‘Beer Lovers’ Marathon‘ takes place every year, with live music and DJs—and oh yes, you also have to run 5 kilometers. But along the way you can sample 15 different Belgian beers, so the atmosphere will probably get lively pretty quickly!
Of course, coronavirus could still throw a spanner in the works, so if you want to be certain whether and when these events are taking place, you should check them just to be safe. And until then: every drink after a running session counts, in the name of training!
Read also:
- Guinness launches non-alcoholic beer
- The bubble is about to burst: France’s champagne problem
- 8 myths about alcohol (stop believing them!)
Source: The Lonely Planet, Images: Dramathon, The Beer Run, Shamrockin’ Run, Beer Lovers’ Marathon
