A guiness beer mile? Brilliant!

On Friday I took a break from my longer runs and rides to do some speed work. This served no real purpose in preparing for the ironman (other than being my 50th mile of the week thus reaching my goal), but was a competition just as challenging, despite being only 1 mile instead of 140.6. The beer mile has a long and distinguished history, The full rules can be found on www.beermile.com but briefly, the race is drink a beer, run a lap, repeat (4 total beers/laps). I did this last year at the annual Fort Collins Beer Mile and won with a time of 7:30, so I went in hoping to defend my title. This time though, I wanted to try something different - use Guinness as the beer. When I shared this idea with some friends, most of them thought it wouldn't be possible to keep down due to the heavy nature of the beer. However, a few observed that the smaller nitro bubbles might actually make it easier, since not as much burping would be required.

It turns out that the latter idea was most correct, as there was virtually no 'full' feeling during the laps which most comes from the carbonation, not the beer itself. However, the 15 oz cans of Guinness Draught (as opposed to standard 12 oz cans) put me at a disadvantage during the drinking portions, so I wound up third despite a PR of 7:14. I may have lost a few seconds running in costume also but you can decide for yourself based on the picture:















Come to think of it, there is some relevance to the ironman training in this, since part of the race is running a marathon while taking in plenty of food (mostly energy gels) and fluid. So if the beer mile is any indication, this shouldn't be a problem :-)

Getting to the rest of the weekend, Saturday was my off day, so Leigh and I watched the road race portion of collegiate cycling nationals which was hosted by CSU this year, and then met up with my dad who was in for the weekend to see the Iron Man (not triathlon related) movie, which I thought was excellent if you like the superhero genre.

Then this morning I watched a bit fothe criterium part of cycling nationals, which was pretty awesome because Phil Mann from CSU won, then went on my first 100+ mile ride myself. It went pretty well and I felt really strong towards the end, much more than in my previous long rides so the training appears to be working. Also I saw that my donations have now exceeded my goal so it might be time to increase that goal. Thanks everyone!