[/media-credit]Friends Sarah Goff, left, and Lindsay Lictenberg enjoy a hard-earned beverage after running with the Highland Tap and Burger's Wednesday night run club.
An activity is growing in popularity that combines two of Coloradoans’ favorite hobbies: exercise and craft beer drinking. Beer runs, as they are unofficially called, are group runs sponsored by local restaurants, bars and breweries. Although the distance varies for these free runs, the focus is not on miles logged, but on suds and socializing.
“I think running is an excuse to go have a drink and meet people,” said Dave Gillikin, organizer of the Thursday night beer runs at the Irish Snug. “We’ve had people meet there and get engaged and get married. It’s a social atmosphere.”
The Irish Snug Running Club, founded in 2006, was one of the first in Denver and has grown to hundreds of participants each Thursday. Since then, beer runs have proliferated. Denverites can now find one every night of the week — at Stoney’s Bar and Grill, The Pub on Pearl, Highland Tap and Burger, Jordan’s Bistro and Pub and Denver Beer Co. to name a few.
According to several Denver beer run organizers, the idea was actually imported from Colorado Springs. Jack Quinn’s Irish Ale House and Pub began their running club in summer 2006 and the idea spread north to the mile high.
Most beer run clubs stick to a tried and true formula: routes are between three and six miles, complimentary food is provided afterward, there’s usually a deal on pints from a Colorado craft brewery (Highland Tap and Burger offers runners discounts on Oskar Blues and Stoney’s has two-for-one New Belgium beers) and 10 runs will earn you a club T-shirt.
And don’t think that just because running is involved that these events attract serious athletes or health nuts. Attendees are beer lovers first. Highland Tap and Burger’s run club used to offer 20 percent off of Avery drafts, but organizers said the sponsor couldn’t continue providing beer after runners went through about a keg and a half after each weekly jaunt around the neighborhood. The club recently switched to offering discounts on Oskar Blues.
When brewmaster Charlie Berger opened Denver Beer Co. last year, the idea of a beer run fit perfectly with the tap house’s communal, social atmosphere. Exercising in a group, Berger said, encourages conversation much the same way the Denver Beer Co.’s German-style beer garden and the absence of TVs does. The club meets every Tuesday at 6:30 p.m. The idea of earning your beer is also a draw.
“It’s an interesting way to justify drinking a beverage that is perhaps a little bit fattening if you drink too much of it,” Berger said. “It’s a complimentary thing, running and drinking beer.”
Gillikin agrees that there’s something about running and beer that goes hand-in-hand, but not just in the Centennial State.
“I don’t think it’s strictly a Colorado thing,” he said. “I think the average social runner loves their beer.”
