Random Question #890321

Do runners drink more alcohol than the average American?

The Deets already posted about a pizza party Emily and I had at my house last Thursday. Click here for his report on The Battle of Longfellow Pizzas.

We had all this pizza at my house as part of the "closing ceremonies" to an annual workout we run on a track near my house. So there were 12 of us over at my house after the run. After everyone left, I gathered, rinsed, and put all the empty bottles together.


The close observer will note a few Coke and Gatorade empties, but also an empty champaign bottle, to go along with all those beer bottles.

So as I was cleaning, I thought about my non-running friends here in the Twin Cities, my college friends (those who don't run anymore or played other sports), my family, and my high school friends. If you put all those people together, I don't know if all those people combined would have had as many beers as the 12 of us did on that Thursday night.

And this was a very tame social event. No one was even close to being out-of-control. It's just that we all enjoy drinking beer.

So I'm not suggesting runners are drunks. In fact, in all my years of running and knowing runners, I personally know of only one person who actually had a drinking problem. And that was in college. And no formal diagnosis was made. And that dude was never going to be a scoring runner on our team, in part because of his drinking.

So beer is at the center of most running circles, and I don't think it is unhealthy or bad. But I do wonder, is this true for other subcultures? Chess enthusiasts? Bloggers? Cartoonists?