Justine Huang, 26, ran the New York City Marathon drunk — and she has no regrets.
Huang said she likes to push herself, but drinking to the point of being unable to break any records reminded her that running can be fun — especially when roughly seven alcoholic drinks are involved.
"As a competitive person, I have the mindset that I want to run as fast as I can," Huang said. "But forcing myself to slow down this time — spending time with spectators and friends who came out to support me — made this experience so much better than I thought."
Huang didn't think she'd get the opportunity to run the Bank of America Chicago Marathon and the TCS New York City Marathon three weeks apart, since both are hard to get into.
The New York City Marathon's lottery has an acceptance rate of 4% — the same as Stanford University. Huang was able to bypass the lottery and snag one of the 14,000 slots allocated to charities who give bibs to runners who fundraise for them.
But, she relied on the lottery for the Chicago Marathon — where over 120,000 runners applied for around 50,000 spots, according to the Chicago Sun-Times. Once she learned she had received a slot, she decided to run for speed there, and run for vibes in New York City.
"I wanted to go hard for Chicago because I had a time goal to beat," she said. "And so that was what I focused on."
The Chicago and New York City marathons are among the seven Abbott World Marathon Majors, along with Tokyo, Boston, London, Berlin and now Sydney, which was added earlier this month. They're known for drawing huge crowds of spectators: Chicago has an estimated 1.7 million on-course spectators, and New York has over 1 million, according to Abbott.
As Huang raced to meet her time goal in Chicago, she wasn't able to interact with the cheering crowd and friends who came to support her as much as she wanted to. So, her goal going into the New York City Marathon was to engage with the spectators cheering her on — especially since multiple friends were going to be joining her.
"I wanted to eat all the food I saw and then drink whatever the spectators were bringing," Huang said. "That was my plan going into this race. But I didn't expect how much food and drinks there would be."
She started with candy, then "the first guy handed me, I think, a shot of Hennessy," Huang said. "After that, it got really, really lit."
Shortly after, three people handed her beers, and her friends who came to cheer her on brought her another shot of liquor. She detailed her full drunk running experience in a TikTok that has amassed almost four million views.
In all — she estimates she had "four or five shots of liquor and then maybe another four or five half cups of beer" — along with a red Solo cup of prosecco shown in another TikTok with over eleven million views.
New York City running coach Elizabeth Corkum, known as Corky in running circles, said dehydration is a big concern during a marathon — even without the alcohol.
She loves a post-race beer, but said alcohol and running generally don't mix well.
"Alcohol is poison. It's a fun poison, but it's poison," Corkum said. "And so for a runner, it's going to do a couple of things. First off, it's a diuretic. So depending on how much is consumed, it might actually impact that athlete's dehydration. Alcohol can also get in the way of our body's ability to really utilize carbohydrates efficiently."
The amount of liquid needed to stay hydrated during a marathon varies across athletes and situations — but she said ideally, "most marathoners should be trying to get in about 16 ounces of fluids per hour."
She's also wary of athletes doing something they've never done before on race day — since they don't know how their bodies will respond.
"A marathon is a really big undertaking and a very stressful experience for our bodies mentally, physically and emotionally," Corkum said. "So I would caution tossing in something, you know, like alcohol or weed, because it's already a pretty extreme scenario."
If you must consume alcohol during a marathon, Corkum recommends finding drinks with a low alcohol content, such as 4%.
But Huang was intentional about hydration.
"I also did stop at every single water station that the marathon provided," she said. "I would chug down two cups of water and two cups of Gatorade at every station. But I did have to go to the bathroom at least six times during the race."
And, she paced herself with the booze.
"This was like during the course of maybe five or six hours," Huang said. "So I wasn't pounding alcohol within the span of like 30 minutes or something."
And even though her body wasn't used to running drunk — her body was used to running: it was her third marathon and she said she runs 30 to 55 miles per week.
Huang said her stomach was "surprisingly fine" with all the snacks and drinks, since this was her first time consuming anything other than gummies and water and electrolyte drinks on a long run.
She finished the marathon in around 5 hours, 36 minutes — compared to 4:14 in Chicago a few weeks prior.
"I met so many cool people on the run," Huang said — many of them in bathroom lines.
"I literally ran the whole thing with my best friend and it was her first marathon," she said. "Being with her and seeing our friends who spent the entire day running around the city finding spots to cheer us on, that just made me so happy. I have no regrets at all."
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