Mark “Sparky” Sprague ’23 drank four beers and ran a 5:21-minute mile, beating 183 men and women in the overall open race and 24 men in his heat, despite being last leaving the starting line.

“My time would have been very competitive in the official race,” Sprague said. “I would have had one of the fastest times for the USA that day.”

Running a beer mile involves drinking a full beer before sprinting each of the four laps around a track. 

The tab on Sprague’s beer can broke before he ran the first lap, so he was the last runner to leave the starting line. 

Sprague’s former teammate, senior Alex Mitchell, said he almost gave up on Sprague when the tab broke.

“He was a full 10 seconds behind the entire field, but he never lost hope,” Mitchell said.

In the last lap, Sprague passed the lead runner and won the race. 

“It felt pretty good,” Sprague said. “It felt kind of silly too because I was like, ‘What am I doing here?’”

Sprague had run unofficial beer mile races before, with previous times of 6:10 and 5:44-minute miles.

“I was reached out to by a guy who saw my time before, and I got in contact with the guy who runs the USA beer mile team,” Sprague said. “He wanted me to come out to Chicago.” 

Sprague said Team USA told him where to buy the U.S. uniform so he could match the team.

“Him doing the beer mile was hilarious to me,” said junior Donnie McArdle, another former teammate of Sprague. “He’s not the fastest runner in the world, and he’s not the fastest drinker, but he’s a mack at doing the two together. He told me he’s gunning for a spot on the USA team at next year’s beer mile.”

Runners from Belgium, Denmark, Sweden, and six other countries also competed in the 2023 Beer Mile World Classic, which was the main event.

Open events, which had multiple heats, were run on the side of the world classic. Sprague ran in a heat for the open men’s and women’s one mile run.

Sprague said he trained for the beer mile by doing regular running and beer workouts.

“I would just do repeats and then chug some beers,” Sprague said.

According to Sprague, drinking beer and running does not bother him.

“You just feel a little heavier,” Sprague said. “You might have to burp a little bit more, but it doesn’t bother me that much which is why I think I’m good at it.”

Sprague ran the beer mile four days before he started medical school at Wayne State University in Detroit. He said his plan is to become a medical doctor. 

“It was a good way to do something silly before four years of hard work,” Sprague said.

Currently, Sprague said he is training for marathons, and he will be running the Detroit Free Press Marathon in October.

“It’s kind of hard to explain, but running is just a part of me,” Sprague said. “I feel worse when I don’t run. I want to keep doing it for as long as I can.”