Mother of Six Shatters 'Beer Mile' Record

It’s not too shabby running a 6:28.6 mile for most 44-year-olds. Chris Kimbrough, the mother of six children, did it while drinking four beers in the process, toppling the women’s “beer mile” world by 13 seconds.

Yahoo Sports reported that the beer mile originated in Canada in 1989 by a bunch of college-aged males having some fun and getting creative with thinking up new drinking games, which collegians are prone to do. However, with the upcoming Beer Mile World Championship in Austin, Texas, on December 3, and a number of recent beer mile attempts by elite runners, the event has become more and more popular.

According to Beermile.com, the event is the most “famous and glorified” of a sub-culture known as “digestive athletics.” The rules dictate that the foundation of the beer mile consists of two fundamental elements: drinking beer and running a mile.

The most common format, according to the website, mandates that the runner drink a full-sized beer of at least 5 % alcohol, run a quarter mile, then repeat the process three times. The result: four beers quaffed, four quarter-miles run, time of feat recorded—Beer Mile completed.

Chris Kimbrough, a five-minute miler if not imbibing suds, got the idea to try the beer mile from her buddies of the Rogue Racing Team, whom she trains with in Austin. There, she lives with her husband and raises her six children. Currently, she possesses several masters national championships, however, she admits that she doesn’t do a lot of track racing and never imagined that her beer-mile record would become the focus of so much attention.

“A friend of mine videotaped it,” Kimbrough said in an article in Runner’s World. “I didn’t want it to be a public thing [laughs], and then it ended up being a public thing. I really didn’t think I could do it. That’s a lot of beer in six minutes!”

Nevertheless, the beer mile race brought out her competitive nature, yet she doesn’t see getting in a lot of time for strategizing on how to improve on her personal record. “I have six kids. It’s not like I’m going to be doing a lot of practicing.”

Astonishingly, the day that the maternal phenom broke the beer-mile record, she had already completed twelve miles of running that day. So, if next time Kimbrough gives the beer mile a run and skips the rigorous pre-race workout, don’t be surprised if she breaks her own record.

“If I could break 6:00, now that would be good,” she says. “The run part wasn’t that hard for me. The last two [beers] were harder to get down because I felt like there was this air there, so it wasn’t going down. Having all those beers in [my] stomach didn’t really bother me as much as I thought it would. I think learning how to get the burp out more before you get to that next beer would probably help.”