The beer mile is, in essence, what happens when two great human enthusiasms—running and drinking—collide in a moment of sheer, baffling genius. Imagine a perfectly respectable 400-metre (or, for the metrically timid, quarter-mile) athletics track. Now, instead of the usual pre-race ritual of calf stretches, nervous jogging on the spot, and muttered invocations to the gods of personal bests, you begin by cracking open a 12-ounce (355ml) can of beer. You drink it—properly drink it, not daintily sip it—before lurching off to complete a full lap.
Then, flushed with success and possibly carbonation, you repeat the whole business. Another beer, another lap. And again. And again. By the fourth round, you will be dimly aware that your lungs are about to stage a formal protest, your stomach has begun speaking in a language you don’t recognise, and that the track appears to be moving in subtle, unhelpful ways beneath your feet. Four beers, four laps—one mile of mildly intoxicated heroism.
It began, unsurprisingly, as a collegiate prank—something young men in backward baseball caps did to impress one another. For years, it was an obscure party trick, surviving mainly through blurry recollections and stories that began with “You won’t believe what Dave did.” Then, in 2014, something extraordinary happened: someone ran it in under five minutes. That feat—surely as physiologically counterintuitive as juggling flaming chainsaws underwater—sparked a worldwide craze. Today, beer mile events are held from Melbourne to Manchester, with professional-calibre athletes taking part, tens of thousands of amateurs giving it a go, and millions of people watching online, no doubt while clutching a cold one of their own and muttering, “I could do that. Probably.”