Yes, it’s called the ‘Beer Mile’ and it’s a spectacle which takes place every week, competitively or non-competitively, all around the world. Better watch your belly though, because one or more regurgitations of yeasty discharge results in a penalty lap to be completed at the conclusion of your fourth lap. Logistically it sounds like a heavyweight running man’s dream, but for Blanch and his close friend Alex Michael it’s much more than that.
Michael won’t drink a beer and won’t run a metre, but he has his own mile to complete as he attempts to capture the incredible feat in his documentary titled More Than A Mile. Despite Michael’s healthy experience in sport television production, he is the first to admit he has a substantial task ahead of him.
“I studied film for three years and I haven’t made a longer production in a while so I thought I’d give this a crack and try and go out on my own and try and prove to myself that I can organise and complete a production like this on a shoestring budget,” he says. “It is already proving to be a bit of a headache but we’ll get there in the end.”
A booze induced dash seems to be a combination of contradiction, but for Blanch it appears to be a headache he is perfectly used to in what Michael describes as the perfect marriage of two superior skills. “I’m friends with a runner and a piss-wreck, to put it in cruder terms, who loves to drink and loves to run and he’s always been pretty good at both of them,” Michael says. “His running group roped him into it [the beer mile] one day back in 2011 and he told me about it and I thought it was the most far out unique thing I’d ever heard.”
While Blanch’s competitive beer mile record extends as far back as 2011 the idea of shooting the sensation was established only recently. “Last year when he competed at the World Championships, I wanted to go over with him and watch his race and I was just going to make a shorter documentary about it but it all came down to not being able to have all the equipment that I wanted to have,” Michael says.
With three deputies in charge of social media, merchandising and the B-roll footage, Michael’s personnel and equipment is evolving and as Blanch continues to post personal bests the prospects of producing a refined documentary and achieving a podium finish, respectively, continue to grow. “From what he’s been telling me, he’s been doing PBs across the board. He’s got a couple of events coming up, most particularly there’s a beer mile run at the end of April at Melbourne University as a finishing up date for our Kickstarter campaign,” Michael says. “He’s running on that day and hopefully the club and him can bring in a crowd and he can get a personal best. [For Blanch] it’s really about aiming for that podium spot and aiming to be Australia’s best beer mile runner at this World Championship.”
BY TOM PARKER
