Race Date: Sunday 18th May 2025
Having failed miserably at the recent Boston marathon (Lincolnshire not Massachusetts), and not particularly liking beer all that much, I was a bit wary about the Beer Lover’s Marathon in Liège. Not only is it 42,192m long, it’s in fancy dress, it has more than 500m of climb and – wait for it – you drink 17 strong Belgian beers on the way round!
Ben Heller and Nick Burns did it last year dressed as gangsters (the theme was prohibition, ironically), and had proclaimed it as The Best Ever. I caved into their peer pressure and signed up for this year’s version.
Would it stand up to Nick and Ben’s claim?
The theme this year was Belgian Comics. Ben and I dressed as the Thomson Twins: no, not the 80s Sheffield band that sang Doctor Doctor but the bumbling detectives from Tintin they were named after. Confusingly, in the Belgian version of Tintin, they were called Dupont and Dupond. We wore bowler hats, thick black moustaches, a pretend black suit and tie and carried a cane: virtually every Belgian we passed shouted Dupont et Dupond!
Walking to the 9.30am start, we saw a full legion of centurions in glittering gold helmets with bright red plumes. There were more purple painted Smurfs than you could shout Papa Smurf at, numerous Asterix and Obelix characters, a large posse of cowboys from a comic called Lucky Luke and hundreds of the baddies that he chased called Les Daltons, dressed up in striped yellow and black prison outfits. Not so many Tintins, surprisingly.
The start at 9.30am was manic in a slow sort of way, mostly because everyone was having so much fun and with almost everyone dressed up, you had to be careful not to poke the person in front with whatever you were wearing or carrying. No sooner had we got going, than there was the first stop for a pain au chocolat (I think to line the stomach). The first beer stop was a little later and I’d convinced myself that no way could I drink beer at that time of the morning. We dived into the fray – grabbed our allowance of 100 ml (0.18 of a pint) and were away. It’s surprising how nice a cool hoppy IPA is at 10am.
There were 6 beer stops in the first half and another 11 in the second. The 100 ml limit was rarely observed and I usually had to stop the volunteers pouring more. Every beer was followed by a water chaser and each stop had crisps, peanuts, and bananas: some even had savoury profiteroles, custard tarts and chips. I remember a brass band, a cover band, a jazz band and multiple techno DJs: Eurotrash is still as popular as ever. At 30 km or so we ran through the amazingly futuristic Liège-Guillemins railway station (look it up) and at 34 km there was the Montagne de Bueren, a climb of 374 steps (beer at the bottom, another at the top), ranked world number 1 in the Huffington Posts list of extreme staircases. Who knew?
The local support was just fabulous.
The terrain was a real mixture: some road, lots of off road along a river, and urban routes across hillsides through bushes, trees and back down through alleyways. Think Round-Sheffield-Run with beer stops.
Ben and I came in the top 15% of runners with times of 5 hours 40 and 5 hours 45 respectively; the last runner staggered home in 7 hours 37 minutes. I’m pretty certain I saw a Legionnaire on a hired electric scooter, red cape flowing behind, off to the next beer stop. Someone said they’d seen another on a tram. No-one seemed to care.
I’m still not entirely sure I like marathons, or beer for that matter. But then I managed to put away about 4 pints by my reckoning and seemed to enjoy every drink: I didn’t even feel drunk at the end.
So was it The Best Ever?
Absolutely.
Will I do it again?
Absolutely
The male race winner was Robin Veyre in 2.54.18. Female race winner was Lee Sandrine in 3.49.26. They must have been in a rush to get to the free bar at the end! There were 2291 finishers
Striders results: