One Virginia fitness promotion company is looking to give runners and craft beer lovers alike a chance to get out and be active, drink beer, play games and meet new people.
One Virginia fitness promotion company is looking to give runners and craft beer lovers alike a chance to get out and be active, drink beer, play games and meet new people.
Harrisonburg-based Virginia Momentum will kick off registration next week for its first local Growler Team Relay event in October, a 63-mile run and adventure from Triple Crossing in RVA to VA Beer Company in Williamsburg.
The run will take place along the Virginia Capital Trail, which was finally completed in October.
Participants can form teams as small as two or as big as ten and run as many or as few legs as they want. While one teammate runs, others solve riddles and do mini-competitions and take photos at transition points along the way to earn beer tickets.
“We saw a nice relationship between people who want to be social and drink craft beer and be active so we’ve increasingly expanded the growler relay events,” said Virginia Momentum co-founder Kevin Gibson.
Gibson, along with his friend Alan Maynard launched their relay/race company in 2012 out of a passion for participating in events similar to the ones they now promote. Since 2015, they’ve taken it on full time with charity running events and other types of relays.
Growler RVA/Williamsburg from VA Momentum on Vimeo.
“We do a variety of events, some of them are your more traditional charity 5ks, but we’ve really expanded into the brewery/running market,” he said.
The two founders, who saw the popularity with their growler events in Harrisonburg, Roanoke and Northern Virginia, started working on the Richmond race about a month ago.
“One of our friends that does the graphic design work {for VA Beer Company) made an introduction between us and them and we approached them and then chatted with Triple Crossing to see if they were interested in hosting the starting portion of the event.”
One runner per team will start out at Triple Crossing and head out to their route while the rest of their team drives along the Virginia Capital Trail and heads to pre-determined transition points.
There are 10 legs on the 63-mile run with nine transitional points. Once at the transition point, the rest of the team will compete in several mini-games while they wait for their teammate who’s running to arrive.
“Something like keeping a hacky sac in the air for 20 consecutive hits or building a paper airplane and flying in 25 yards across the grass or something like that,” he said. “Our goal is to make is social, and interactive and fun the whole time.”
And the more people you have on your team, the more people you have to run the legs.
“The cool thing is people get to choose how many people are on their team so it just depends on how much people want to run.” “There’s something for everyone in terms of skill set.”
Every runner carries a key for their leg and passes it off to the next person that’s running on their team. At the finish line, Virginia Momentum will have a chest set up and whoever ends up with the right key and gets there first will get the prize inside.
The end of the race will culminate at VA Beer Company in Williamsburg with a party and a commemorative growler with the event logo awarded to all.
Runners will start at Triple Crossing and head down to the start of the race where Cary and North 17th streets intersect. Registration for the Growler Team Relay on Oct. 15 starts this Monday and through Sept. 6 it costs $60/person.
After that, the price goes up to $75. The run starts at 7:30 am and the after party kicks off at 6 pm at Virginia Beer Company in Williamsburg. Visit Virginia Momentum’s website for more details and register for the race here.
Check out the map of the course here.
