As a few of you may know, we are putting on a marathon/relay marathon in March. If someone would just wrap up the details on the on the registration website, we could start registration. #ThatGuyIsMe But anyways, this post is a little about our marathon and why we wanted to put on a race.
Since 1995, Boulevard and FreeState Brewing have been putting on a race to each others brewery. A fun run stretching over 40 miles and can have teams up to 10 run the course. WBC entered it’s first team of 10 in 2014. The idea is that everyone rides in a van together during the race and just drops off the runner for each leg. Then they will drive up to the next interchange and pick up that runner and drop off the next runner. This will happen until everyone has run their leg and you make it to the finish line and celebrate. Sounds simple and fun, right? Well, we tried making that simple process into a logistical nightmare. We somehow didn’t realize that if we all just get in a big vehicle and all ride together throughout the course it would be simple and fun. Each team can only have one car to drop off runners because of parking problems at the interchanges. So we put together this detailed plan on using two vehicles driving runners back and forth from our hotel in Lawrence. It was pure craziness and a massive headache coordinating the cars and runners. At the end of the day everyone ran their leg and we didn’t leave anyone behind. We celebrated our accomplishment of running the course but figured out that we weren’t very smart in our driving approach.
This year we had twenty people want to run on the WBC team for the brew to brew race. So we signed up two teams of ten to run. Being a little smarter than last year, we all met at FreeState in Lawrence and rented vans. FreeState was nice enough to let us park our cars at their production facility over night. We all piled in the two vans and drove to Kansas City for the night. We drove to Boulevard early in the morning and naturally had a beer to start the run. The first two legs of the run were a little challenging as it was during a cold thunderstorm. But rain or shine the race will go on. Luckily it cleared up after that and WBC team #1 dominated WBC team #2. We all met back at FreeState to enjoy some food and a couple well deserved beers.
We really enjoy doing adventurous things like this and want to bring that adventure to Wichita. So on March 13th, WBC, with help from GoRace Management and Timing, are putting on a certified marathon/relay marathon. The course will begin around WBC west and will stretch through Wichita and end at WBC east. If you’re a serious runner this will be a qualifying marathon. For the relay part, it will consist of teams of six. Each leg of the race will be slightly different lengths but you will want your strong runners at the beginning and the end. It will be $90 for a single runner and $40 per person on the teams of six. Each runner will get a participation medal and race shirt. Then after the race we will have a party at WBC east where each runner will get pizza and a couple of WBC beers. We will hand out awards for top 3 men and women, top team of men, top team of women, top 3 of coed teams, and best costume/team costumes. WBC is entering 3 teams to compete against each other, West, East, and Production. Production is the early favorite to take the crown.
Brew to Brew raises money for Cystic Fibrosis Foundation (CFF). We are donating money to Kansas Food Bank. http://www.kansasfoodbank.org/ is their website where they have plenty of programs that they run to help people in need.
A registration link right here would be amazing, but it will be done soon. Look for registration early next week. We will spell out some more details on that site as well. We are also going to be looking for some sponsorship and volunteers to help out with the race. If you’re interested in either of those please contact us at kbanick@wichitabrew.com or jhorn@wichitabrew.com.
Then up for grabs on our #wbcEPICxmas giveaway is a grey WBC hoodie! To be entered to win just tag a friend or friends on the Facebook page that this blog post is shared on that you would like to run with at the marathon.
Written by Kyle Banick and proofed by Jeremy Horn.
