This Charlotte native can drink 4 beers and run a mile faster than any woman on Earth

Elizabeth Laseter reaches for one of her bottles of Bud Light Platinum and wraps a hand around it, assessing the temperature by feel like a golfer throwing grass to check the wind.

“Yeah, they’re close,” says the 34-year-old Charlotte native, her head bobbing lightly. “Like, I wouldn’t want them too much warmer.”

If they were too much warmer, any attempt to chug the beer might cause her to throw up. And in her chosen sport — a sport in which she is a reigning world champion — throwing up while trying to chug your beer is akin to a quarterback throwing an interception with the game on the line.

So with 90-plus-degree heat baking the beer and little time to waste, Laseter sets off on a practice run on this secluded track, dashing and grabbing a beer from her fiancé Austin Duckworth, draining it in 10 seconds flat, and then breaking into a run again.

When she rejoins the group, her eyes widen and she smiles.

“Woooo!” she exclaims. “Those first couple of (gulps) were like, ‘Hold on, wait, what am I doing?’ ... I haven’t chugged a beer since July.”

More specifically, she hasn’t chugged one since July 1; that’s when Laseter dominated the elite women’s race at the 2023 Beer Mile World Classic in Chicago by slamming a beer, running a quarter-mile around a track and then repeating that ritual three more times in a total of 6 minutes and 3.75 seconds.

The time was officially a world record. Or as official as a record can get, at least, in a sport that is decidedly offbeat.

But while the beer mile will probably never be embraced by the mainstream, it likely will always be embraced by Laseter, an SEO content strategist who started running competitively during her junior year at Charlotte Country Day School in 2006 — and who started combining running with drinking not too-too long after that.

Here are the most enlightening, amusing, surprising, and occasionally stomach-churning takeaways from our recent conversation with Charlotte’s own world-champion beer-miler.

She did her first beer mile back in 2007 (don’t, um, do the math to try to figure out how old she was then), when she ran for Division III Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. It was a team tradition. “Our cross-country and track team, when the season was over, we would celebrate it by finding a track and putting on a beer mile,” Laseter says, adding: “Some of the first ones I did early on were pretty rough.”

After graduating from college in 2011, she didn’t do another beer mile until 2014, when an old college teammate invited her to an event in Texas that ran for three years called the Beer Mile World Championship. “I wouldn’t say it went very well” — she finished eighth in 7 minutes and 3 seconds — “but I had so much fun, and instantly fell in love with the beer mile community.” It gave her something light to balance out the quote-unquote more serious goals that she continues to pursue to this day as a sub-elite runner training for and competing in traditional road races. And “I also love beer on top of that,” she says, “so it’s kind of the perfect synthesis of both of my passions.”

She made her Beer Mile World Classic debut in 2020 — when the race was run virtually due to Covid — and finished second in 6:42. She sat out 2021, but she returned in 2022 and set a new world record in 6:15 on a track in Leuven, Belgium ... only to learn that it was nullified after she was disqualified for a rule violation. Her error? While chugging her fourth beer, Laseter stepped out of the nine-meter “chug zone” that competitors are allowed to walk through while downing their drinks.

Yes, there are some key rules when it comes to beer-mile racing. Among the most well-known among weekend warriors are that beers must be 12 ounces and contain a minimum of 5% alcohol by volume, and that if you throw up, you have to run a penalty lap at the end. But at the world championship races, the elites are also subject to this one: Any liquid remaining in a runner’s four bottles (or cans) is poured into a single measuring cup; if it adds up to more than four ounces total, the runner is automatically disqualified.

In any event, Laseter “was very determined to not get disqualified at this year’s event,” she says. “My strategy was ‘I’m gonna re-create the beer mile as much as I can. Just that experience of being there. So when I’m there, it’s all second nature to me.’ So I probably did one at least every two weeks for about two months leading up to the race.” But she only occasionally trained with real beer. “I would do non-alcoholic beer most of the time, which,” she says, laughing, “was a great way to not get smashed on a Wednesday.”

Because in training, she says, “you really just also want to re-create that feeling of having so much liquid in your stomach, and being able to tolerate that and still run fast.”

And in some respects, there’s more strategy to consider on a beer-mile race day than there is on a day when she’s racing, say, a regular 5K or a marathon. “You’re not just showing up at a track and opening up cans of beer you just bought,” Laseter says. “You really have to very strategically map out every component of this race, otherwise you’re gonna puke or not finish.”

This goes back to things like the temperature of the beer. If it’s too cold when you drink it, the carbonation could sting more. If it’s too warm, you’re more likely to gag. So, taking it out of your cooler at just the right time based on the outdoor temperature is both an art and a science. Plus, she says, “you also have to figure out, ‘What are you gonna eat that day?’ Because you don’t want to show up having just had a burger or pizza. I treat it just like a (traditional) race in a lot of ways. I eat bland — usually peanut butter sandwiches and bananas throughout the day, just to prep my stomach for it. ... Again, you’re trying not to puke. That’s really the goal.”

Oh, you’ll also notice that she also wears a gardening glove on her right hand during beer miles. The Bud Light Platinum bottles she drinks out of have twist-off caps, and she says the glove “is gonna get that top off as quickly and efficiently as possible. ... It also protects your hands. I’ve practiced without a glove before and I get cuts on my fingers.”

Where does she train? “It’s always the challenge,” she says. We met her at a track that’s out of sight of the nearest public road, a place she likes to come to practice her beer-mile skills because, well, if you’re going to work on chugging beer — and run around a track with a stomach full of beer — it’s probably best to do so as discreetly as possible. Things can get awkward if you don’t. Laseter says she once was racing a beer mile with a larger group on a track that was also being used by the general public (including families with kids) when paramedics arrived to treat someone who was having a medical issue. “We made it work,” she says, “but it was definitely not discreet.”

Speaking of awkward situations, can you imagine explaining your beer-mile career to your parents? Hers were a little taken aback, at first. “My dad’s like, ‘I can’t believe you do these beer miles. It’s binge drinking!’ ... I don’t know, I think just a father seeing his daughter, like, chugging four beers is not what he wants to see,” she says, laughing. But she says her parents, who still live in Charlotte, were in Chicago for her big win in July, and “they had so much fun. They’re very supportive now.”

Although it may look like an irresponsible event, Laseter says the goal is not to get wasted but to put yourself up to a unique challenge while having fun with friends. “I mean, I’m not going into it drunk. I’m going into it well-hydrated (and) completely sober. Afterwards, I’m not chugging four more beers. ... There definitely is a sadistic quality about it, which also is probably common in a lot of runners — you know, we’re all a little crazy in that manner. But I don’t think you attempt it if you don’t think you can handle it, and we definitely consider what can we do to make this as safe as possible. “

Here’s the bottom line, she says: “We’re not taking ourselves too seriously. We’re having fun. ... It’s a bunch of adults acting like total idiots. How often do you get to do that?”

Want to give a beer mile a go yourself?

We won’t tell you where Laseter trains, and we can’t endorse you taking a bunch of beer to your local middle-school track.

We can, however, tell you that Sycamore Brewing is hosting a beer mile at 12:30 p.m. on Sunday, Sept. 24 at its location in South End: 2151 Hawkins St. The rules will be a little more informal than those described above — beers will be poured from Sycamore’s beer truck and participants will run out onto the rail trail and back — but the general idea is the same.

Cost of the event is $25 and covers your four beers for the race.

Laseter says she has signed up, so she’s automatically a favorite to win the women’s race, and perhaps the whole thing. If you want to try to beat her, you can register to join the fun here: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/sycamore-beer-mile-tickets-705331905717.

Oh, and if you see her there, be sure to wish her a happy birthday. She turns 35 this week.