4th Munich Breweries Ultra – 80 Kilometers With Seven Beer Stops in Pouring Rain

Time for a stupidly fun ultramarathon! Since my buddy Nicolas Palme and I initiated the race back during the pandemic in 2021, our reach and people’s interest have both grown. From us two to six participants in the follow-up run in 2022 and roughly twenty the year after, this year’s day started with about 25 but had a total involvement of about 45 runners.

The Munich Breweries Ultra is inspired by a Belgian brewery marathon, but with a twist. Munich is popular around the world for its exceptionally good beer with a tradition of brewing spanning centuries, probably millennia. But, in what seems like recent history, the European Union introduced the PGI seal which stands for “Protected geographical indication of the European Union”, making it more official if a type of beer states it is, in fact, “Münchener Bier”. Two conditions have to be met: The brewery building has to be located within Munich’s city limits, and the deep-water well which draws the brewing water has to as well. And quickly, it was down to six breweries. Augustiner, Paulaner, Hacker-Pschorr, Spaten, Hofbräu, Löwenbräu. Recently, a seventh has entered the gang, Giesinger. And soon, number eight will join as well. It’s called “Münchner Kindl”.

The idea of the run is a low-hanging fruit, if you ask Nico and me.

Run to all the seven breweries, have a beer each.

The tried and tested and often refined route now spans just over 80 kilometers, conveniently making it a 50-miler race. With Nico now residing in Amsterdam and me still in Hamburg, we were reliant on a few of the early adopters in Munich to help us out with organization. Guy and Lukas stepped up and were a huge help. Rough planning started a few months ahead and Nico did the most of the effort. It’s his brain-child and he deserves most of the credit.

As last year, we were happily embraced by the folks at Giesinger Bräu, the newest addition to the breweries, and they promised to provide a beer aid station at their crowd-funded “Werk 2” brewery. Paulaner and Hacker-Pschorr, who both are part of the same international holding, raised their hands as well and supported us with crates of free beer and a warm welcome. Münchner Kindl, the new kids in town, are still working on their brewery building in the south of the city, but kindly offered to host us with drink and food at the construction site. That’s four out of the eight breweries who are now part of the run, which makes us very happy. With a bit of luck, the others will join in on the fun in the next few years as well.

🍺 Alcohol or No Alcohol?

The question that might be on your mind now is if it’s a good idea to drink seven beers during an 80k run. It seems to be counter-productive, maybe even dangerous, right? Every human metabolizes alcohol in a different way and what can clearly be stated is that low-effort endurance sports increase the speed of that, at least that’s what’s subjectively felt. No one races an 80k brewery ultra like this one as hard as possible. Heart rates are low and relaxed, somewhere between sixty and seventy percent of the maximum for most of the time.

Alcohol remains a toxin, though. No way around it. It’s better for our bodies not to ingest it. Just because our body can get rid of it faster and more efficiently during easy exercise, doesn’t mean it’s a good idea. That being said, bad ideas can be fun, too!

I myself am on a non-alcohol streak for over a year and hadn’t decided if I would like to break that healthy streak for the ultra. But then, the decision was made for me by the breweries: Quite recently, the last remaining traditionalist brewery without a non-alcoholic variant in their product range, Augustiner, came out with a much requested healthy edition of their “Helles” main product. There’s a hype around it and it’s hard to get, but it’s there! So for me, the quest was clear: Do it all without a single drop of alcohol. Enjoy the isotonic beverages and clear mind, making the run a fun outing that also plays a role in my race preparation for the 106 kilometer Zugspitz Ultra Trail two weeks after.

When we announced that the full-on zero alcohol way would be an option during this year’s Munich Breweries Ultra (→ “MBU”), the interest grew and I am sure that this alone increased the male-to-female quota in favor of females by quite a bit. That’s great, because this isn’t supposed to be a drunken bachelor party, it’s an inclusive and slightly crazy sporting event celebrating the rich tradition of one of Germany’s finest products.

🥨 The Preparations

Jumping right into it. Even for such a seemingly simple community run, there’s a bunch to do so it will go smoothly. Telling people about it is one thing, so I was again the one to do some work on our little website at www.munichbreweriesultra.beer, so people would have a single place for all the information. We reached the limits of that simple outlet this year and are planning an overhaul for next year, but I’m getting ahead of myself. With the website done, Social Media is another important item. Guy and Nico mainly took care of that using our Instagram channel @breweryrunners. Then, there were some route modifications to do, which Nico planned and Guy tested out. With half of the breweries now being part of the run and providing the beer at the right time, we had less of a struggle with placing enough cold beers in the vicinity of the breweries. The far-away Hofbräu brewery surroundings offer plenty of opportunities to hide some beers with ice blocks the night before, so we did that. Löwenbräu and Spaten both also belong to a bigger holding company and are located next to each other, so I asked my old friend from school, Joachim, if he could help out since he lives in Munich. Fortunately he said yes and so we just had to deliver the beers to his home the day before. Lukas took care of getting enough Augustiner beers, including the new and rare zero alcohol ones.

Fun fact, Nico is living in Amsterdam for about a year now. He knew how to speak Dutch from his college years and now has re-developed a Dutch accent when speaking English, claiming he can’t turn it off. That’s weird and quite funny.

Guy on the other hand, suddenly and surprisingly broke out into speaking Russian to one of the participants who called with a question, a man named Igor-Igor. Guy told me it made sense for him to learn Russian while growing up in Israel, because about two million Russians are living in his home country. A Hebrew native speaker, he also learned Arabic for practical reasons, English, and obviously German. What’s his secret? I’m guessing, beer.

Our friends at Giesinger sent out a few posts on social media promoting the run, so in the few weeks leading up to the run we had the most signups and were very happy about the turnout. Again, the number of participants has doubled year over year.

With everything taken care of, there wasn’t much more to do for us in the team than to get some food and rest. A few years back Guy asked Nico what the most suitable dinner before a long run is and he at the time apparently made a strong case for the combination of quinoa and sweet potatoes. This, and nothing else, was what Guy remembered, and he took the advice to heart ever since. Turns out, Nico couldn’t even remember ever giving the advice in the first place, and while it’s not a bad idea to have quinoa and sweet potatoes for dinner before a race, it surely isn’t the only possible way. So that has developed into a running joke. Quinoa and sweet potatoes all the way! 🍚🍠

🍻 Day of the 4th Munich Breweries Ultra, June 1st

After some sleep and a healthy 4:00am alarm I awoke in my cozy hotel room and walked over to Marienplatz, the famous center of Munich next to tourist magnet Neues Rathaus.

Not surprisingly, it was still dark and empty. But, it was also raining quite a bit.

The whole day had a rain forecast with a temperature somewhere around 10-12C (50-55F).

Now that’s a damper, for sure. Running in the rain is just a lot less enjoyable, if you ask me. There was no question about whether to go through with it or not, but who wouldn’t prefer to stay dry and warm while having an 80k stroll through one of Germany’s finest cities?

I was the first one there and it was great seeing all these other people arrive here on rainy Marienplatz from all the different directions and subway holes. One by one, the group grew and my personal mood as well.

We’re in this together and we’ll go through with it! With proper gear and a proper attitude all of this will be possible.

Nico said some welcoming words and gave some last info, and we’re off into the rain at 5:30am, just as planned.

🍺 The Hofbräu Loop

Out into the east. Some runners brought big plastic ponchos, which turned out to be a great idea. The professional rain running jackets most of us had were good for a while but at some point they just give in to the amounts of water coming from the outside and inside and their protection diminished. Ponchos, on the other hand, while bulky and catching lots of the winds, provided shelter-like protection. That’s the first lesson I learned today!

People are fresh and rested, so we’re starting a bit faster than at the planned 5:45 to 6:00 minute per kilometer pace (9:10-9:40 min/mi). Many people have put Nico’s GPS track onto their navigation-enabled watches, so after the first few near-fails, we’re in a good rhythm and no more mistakes are happening.

This part of the route is one of the weakest, so Nico planned it for the beginning, just to get it over with. Hofbräu is located in the neighborhood of Riem, almost outside the city’s limits. The 13k melt away, some good conversations take place and smiles are exchanged, and we reach the first beer stop. Our hidden crate is still there. Cheers!

This stop is a bit sad, standing there in front of the huge closed gates of the giant brewing facility in the cold rain under a grey sky, but we can make up for it with high spirits. It is what you make it to be.

On the way back the rain intensifies and after all the successfully and partly successfully circumnavigated rain puddles, the task is lost at this final boss. A fully flooded street. Not a single shoe could be spared.

Needless to say, that’s a point of no return. Might as well continue on, conditions can’t get much worse. It’s about 17k to get back to the city center and the two brewery buildings of Spaten and Löwenbräu. Both are next to each other, meaning double trouble! For the people who chose alcoholic beers, this is quite a challenge, because it means ingesting one liter of beer in practically one go. The non-alcoholic ones, including me, had the same challenge in front of them but with different consequences. What’s great though is that you don’t have to worry about dehydration today. There’s enough isotonic drinks for everyone!

♠️ Spaten Bräu

Here, I was extremely happy and grateful for Joachim staying true to his word despite the horrendous conditions and early Saturday morning timing. In the pouring rain he was there for us with his big powered bike and lots of beer in it.

After a short beer stop underneath a tree to take cover from the rain next to the closed Spaten brewery, we ran the 300 meters over to Löwenbräu, around the block.

🦁 Löwenbräu

It’s not even 9:00am right now, but we have already done 30 kilometers (18mi) and had three beers. So far, so good! Our speed exceeded Nico’s estimate, probably because in the rain we didn’t feel like stopping for too long or hesitating during the running, so a slight problem presented itself. Our next stop at Giesinger’s Werk 2 brewery wasn’t fully prepared for us yet. So we decided to wait for a while in the dry and slightly warmer subway station next to the Löwenbräu brewery.

It wasn’t warm enough to dry out, but it was surely better than standing outside in the rain. Philipp started shaking but claimed it was all fine. Roughly half an hour later, we said thanks and bye to Joachim and continued on. Good conversations took place. There were many interesting people among them. One of them, Sven, was a very fast triathlete, qualifying for the Hawaii championships like it was nothing a while back when he was just 19 years old. Then, there was the strong-muscled fitness influencer Nicole with a huge following on social media, and of course many experienced ultra runners such as my old friend Till, who won the male category of last year’s Ehrwald Trail – that’s an 89km trail ultra with around 4,000m of gain. He was beaten only by New Zealander and Western States winner Ruth Croft, by a couple minutes. Let that sink in.

Several people were also connected in some way to Jonas Deichmann, world record holder and current Challenge 120 guy. Deichmann knows about MBU and loves it – but wasn’t able to come by of course, because he is doing 120 iron distance triathlons in a row right now. Acceptable excuse.

The question many might have is, who exactly runs an 80k with beer?

I was glad there were so many fit and talented runners today. People who love running and also beer, but no people who mainly love beer and do some running on the side. My kind of people. Those who are healthy and know their bodies well.

Nico, who has battled various sicknesses over the past months wasn’t still feeling at 100%. Funny side note, in between these sick months, he still wanted to run a new personal best marathon in Vienna, aiming for 2:35 hours, but after 16k of holding the necessary pace he couldn’t do it anymore due to the coughing and had to slow down to “jog” it home to the finish line – with an end result of 2:59h. If you look at what it takes other people to achieve that 2:59h marathon (this author right here, for example), you can’t help but laugh about Nico’s incredible level of fitness!

While Guy was running near the front of the pack most of the time, Nico and I often took care of the runners at the back. Seeing if everyone is okay and can continue, making sure we don’t lose anyone accidentally. The field never separated by a lot, though. That’s the beauty of having these beer stations not too far apart from each other.

From Löwenbräu up to Giesinger in the north of Munich, it was just a short 7k run.

🌆 Giesinger Bräu

Marketing lead Nicolai was happy to welcome us all to the new and modern brewing facilities of Giesinger Bräu, called “Werk 2”, because they started out brewing at a different spot, down south of the center in the actual neighborhood of Giesing, which would be our end goal of today. Right now, the huge new building here in the north was our refuge, and it was a very welcome warm break for all of us.

Nicolai went out of his way and prepared such a nice place for us, he even pulled out some portable heaters which we used to dry some of our clothes. Giesinger is also one of my favorite beers, and not just because of this immense hospitality.

We didn’t want to leave and really took our time here. I think it must have been at least half an hour. Continuing on, the weather hadn’t improved. Some more feet-deep water hazards were to overcome and flooded our half-dried shoes right away. Today’s mantra: “No matter the weather!”

Unfortunately, there was a little medical scare with one of the participants collapsing – not from the beer, and also not directly from the cold. It was a prior condition that led to it. We had to call an ambulance, but after ten minutes it was okay and the runner was fine and stable but wisely decided against continuing. Safety first. When the number of participants go up, the chances for something like this to occur rise, as well. It’s basic maths.

The people who drank the alcoholic beers were all doing great. There wasn’t really anything noticeable from it, apart from an elevated mood. I think this showed that the idea wasn’t as crazy after all. Metabolism is faster during the activity.

The next part led out into the west, through pretty Schlosspark Nymphenburg. Now, more than a marathon into the run, the paces of runners started to differ. Little groups formed. I was among the faster ones at this point. It’s still cold and rainy and now the winds increased, too. But we all settled into it and continued on.

👰🤵 The Side Quests

In all the previous years, we ran into weddings by accident at some point. It is tradition by now. Which is why this year, Guy came prepared. He bought congratulations cards and got some Giesinger beer vouchers as presents, just in case. And sure enough, despite the rain, there was a recipient couple!

And because it’s just so nice, here are the wedding pictures from the previous Munich Breweries Ultras.

Mazel tov!

Some more wind and rain and we reach the outskirts of the city with the two massive brewery buildings of Hacker-Pschorr and Paulaner at about 51 kilometers into the run.

⛪ Paulaner & 🏰 Hacker-Pschorr

Johannes and Sabrina of Paulaner welcomed us with lots of beverages. Both breweries belong to the same holding as well as have their breweries next to each other, so this was another two-for-one stop. I think the plan was to have the beer in front of the entrance building, but because of the weather, Johannes welcomed us stinky and wet runners in. That was much appreciated, but I felt quite guilty about leaving such a mess for the people working here.

Guy and Nico, who along with a few others dealt with the medical situation and the wedding side quest, were far behind by now. They decided to take a shortcut so we wouldn’t have to wait that much for them, but accidentally made the course even longer by doing so. Classic, when you try to take a shortcut. Half an hour after we arrived, the last bunch were ready for a Paulaner and a Hacker-Pschorr beer as well.

We enjoyed the time waiting for them in the warmth of the Paulaner building, had some of our food and talked a lot. Philipp was shaking from the accumulated cold even more by now but claimed that’s just because of enthalpy, so we needn’t worry.

My mood was great, too, and together with Guy we came up with a Nordic slang based motto for today’s run:

“Derbe nass, derbe nice.” (Very wet, very nice.)

Next up, we need to get back to the city center, because Augustiner is located close to it. The route leads back on different paths from the way here and was cleverly planned by Nico. We’re using the other side of Schlosspark Nymphenburg now. The best part is that the rain has now nearly fully stopped. This makes such a difference! The city is still rather empty because of the conditions, though.

🌿 Augustiner Bräu

The distance from 51 to 63 kilometers was over quicker than I thought. Before, I did have some thoughts about calling it a day here at Augustiner, I must admit. The conditions made it tough to push through. With everything wet and sore legs, and Augustiner being fairly close to my hotel, it’s a hard temptation to just say bye. A couple of people did so. But when we then arrived at Augustiner, still all in good spirits, I changed my mind. We’ve come this far and endured this much, let’s bring this home!

One tasty beer that is. The specific Augustiner taste comes through quite well. Since we had no connection to the people at the brewery, this was another self-organized stop. Lukas took care of it and so we drank from the pre-bought bottles right next to the entrance of the Bräustüberl. A few more people joined in right her, among them John, with whom I had formed a connection before we ever met in person.

There are just 18 kilometers left now. It would have been weird to quit. So I continued on with many of the remaining runners.

The final loop led over the well-known Heiligengeistfeld, I mean, Theresienwiese, home of Oktoberfest.

We had lots of streets to cross and traffic light stops to suffer, but the rain was still mostly gone. A few people stayed at Augustiner, so the gang was a bit smaller.

👼 Münchner Kindl

The brewery is still a construction site, but Leo of the management team prepared the stop so well for us. What a lovely guy. There’s no beer here yet because they don’t have any but plan to be ready to go at the end of 2025, next year. Instead, he got us some energy drinks, lemonade, tea, and water. And he even gave us a little tour of the impressive building!

All will be done very traditionally here, they even plan to have two horses to deliver the barrels using and old carriage to some of the close-by restaurants, just for the fun of it.

Now we have just five more kilometers to go north until our finish line at Giesinger Bräustüberl, the spot of the first brewery building in the actual neighborhood of Giesing. It has now been converted into a great restaurant – even offering vegan options in this meat-focused area of Germany. You have to love the folks at Giesinger.

When I reached the place and high-fived Nico, my watch only showed 79.5 kilometers, so I obviously ran a bit more to get to 80.5 which equals 50 miles. That goes without saying.

It has been a great run today and surely one to remember. That’s not just because of the horrible weather, but also because of the high spirits everyone had. It felt like a party, honestly. For next year, though, I’m hoping for 20C and sunny blue skies. That way my phone won’t be destroyed like today. The water damage made it unusable for a whole day more, making the flights home a bit tricky to do and reminding me of the time before everything was done with phones.

After some well-deserved hot food and chatting in the warm and dry Giesinger Bräustüberl, I said goodbye to everyone and was very happy to head to the hotel to take a hot shower and lie down in the dry bed. That bit was pure bliss. And I was very glad I didn’t stop at Augustiner or anywhere else along the route but instead pushed all the way through. It’s good practice for more tough runs like this one in the future.

With all the great people around me today, I really can’t wait to do it all again next year in 2025. Hopefully with even more people – maybe we’ll cross over into one hundred? I’d love that. Check out www.munichbreweriesultra.beer for more information or let me know here if you’re interested in joining in on the fun next June!