Plenty of fun had at Canada Beer Run

The Canada Beer Run, which snaked its way through Ottawa’s streets early Sunday afternoon, works, basically, like this: you drink a beer, and then you run to a place where you get another beer; this is repeated until you have drank six or so beers, and have run around eight kilometres.

In practice, the whole thing packs in a whole lot more fun. Now in its sixth annual iteration, the run includes about a thousand runners, and a lot of people dress up in creative costumes to run it. And it’s not just any beer that you drink, either. The local craft breweries — eight of them total — get in on the action by providing the beers.

The Canada Beer Run was started in Ottawa six years ago by Danielle Guffie and Laura Glasper, co-founders of InStride Event Management. They founded the idea after a local brewery, Big Rig, tweeted asking if anyone in Ottawa had organized a similar event, so they picked up on the idea and ran with it. Now, it operates in 8 cities across the country over the spring and fall running seasons.

“From there we came up with the concept of how to do it,” said Guffie. “Once we launched it in the first year, we sold out in about 24 hours.” In the first few years, they capped registrations at 500, but in later years (including this year) they offered 1,000 spots.

Sunday’s run was, simply, a cold one. Temperatures had plunged in the city to winter-ish levels, around 4 C. That, though, did not seem to deter anyone, or if it did they really weren’t showing it. People showed up. People drank very cold beer. People danced around a lot, though this was probably necessary.

Mike, a runner (who didn’t want his last name used because he is starting a new job tomorrow and didn’t want anyone to get the wrong impression about his drinking habits) in Sunday’s event, said it was the “coldest it’s been,” and it’s the third year in a row he’s run this race.

He also offered some simple insights into the popularity of the race. “Normally it’s combining two things people love — running and beer,” he said before his 11:30ish start time. It’s a good way to stay active and also get together with your friends and enjoy a couple beers.”

“It’s really the most fun run I’ve done every year,” said Simon Roussin, also running it for the third time. “It’s not a timed run, so you don’t have to worry about not great performance.”

Guffie stresses that the race is not a pub crawl, and for the most part she’s right about that. A lot of the people there are serious runners, even when the beers aren’t involved. The event is equal parts for fun and designed for people who wouldn’t normally run road races and for serious runners who want something different and a little bit less serious, a place for them to run while letting their hair down a little bit and having fun.

“It’s not timed, so you’re not forced to run, You can walk it,” says Roussin. And besides: “Everyone’s in a good mood, having a good time; the beer helps with that.”

It’s also a chance to flex your halloween costume ahead of the spooky high holidays a little bit, as many of the runners dress up in costumes. One pair dressed up, with startling accuracy, as the Hanson brothers from the hockey movie “Slapshot;” another dressed up as Fred Flinstone, who was an accomplished runner for his day; Rebecca Skinner and Amy Fleming dressed up as unicorns.

“On the run there’s usually a lot of people laughing,” joked Skinner. “It’s fun when you dress up and just get into it.” And, says Fleming, the layers help you keep a bit warmer.

Fortuitous design, then, that the core of the event is drinking local beers, one effect of which is that it will warm you up, or at least numb a bit of the cold. And at the start of the course, runners were already looking ahead to the beers that they’d get to drink.

Roussin, like other runners, told me that “Three Brewers,” a local brewery and pub chain, and one of the stops on the run, “is a good one, its one of the stops.” Skinner fills me in on why: “Three Brewers is always very generous.” Full pours there, no 4 oz samples, she says.

Beyond The Pale, in Hintonburg, might also get a positive reputation in this regard, because the brewery was handing out full tall boys of their Pink Fuzz beer, much to the delight of the arriving runners. (“Full cans!” yelled one, as soon as the peloton came into view of the tables.) Staff at Beyond the Pale said that they were handing out 1,000 full cans that day, plus anything anyone decided to purchase off-book at the bar. That is quite a lot of beer.

In all, Guffie says the event is really about having fun and not taking everything too seriously. “You gotta come with a positive attitude,” she says. “You only have so many days on this earth. Just live it up.” And it’s also all for a good cause: the race donates $5 of every registration (it costs around $65) to a charity; this year they were donating to the Canadian Mental Health Association.