How a beer stop wound up among the hydration stations on the Modesto Marathon course

Registered racers have been given the news that a beer and wine garden awaits them Sunday as part of the Modesto Marathon’s Finish Line Festival.

But returning runners know that a bit of ice-cold alcoholic refreshment can be found right there on the 26.2-mile course. If they’re 21, that is.

Each of the marathon’s nine years, Shoemake Avenue resident Les Alderson has offered participants a selection of home brews kept ice cold in kegs packed in coolers. He’ll be back out Sunday, with varieties including apricot ale, vanilla bourbon beer, chocolate rye, one he calls “plain ol’ beer,” and a couple of others.

The retired paramedic, firefighter and, most recently, IT manager, has been a home brewer for about 15 years. When Shoemake residents learned a decade ago they were on the marathon course, he thought it would be fun to go out and watch the runners go by.

Then he thought it would be more fun to take some cold kegs out front. “Lemme see if I can entice a runner to come off the course and have a beer with me,” he recalled thinking.

Two took him up on it.

Alderson, 66, is among a group of firefighters and their families that travel and camp together in RVs. He mentioned his impromptu marathon beer stop to them, and they thought it sounded like a kick. So a couple of them joined him the next year, then a couple more after that.

Over the years, it’s grown to become a long-weekend party. It starts the Thursday or Friday before the marathon, with campers arriving and “circling the wagons” on a piece of land behind his house.

They set up a canopy, outdoor kitchen and, these days, eight 5-gallon kegs of beer and ale. It’s become a country-size block party, too, with neighbors within about a two-mile radius showing up.

Sunday morning, the beer and ale — “what’s left of it,” Alderson said — is taken streetside on a small trailer. Alderson and friends have worn shirts that read, on the front, “Doc’s Fire Co. & Brewery Marathon Hydration Team.” The backside shows the Roadrunner cartoon character and says, “I ran 0.0 miles in 26.2 beers.” Doc, by the way, is a nickname Alderson picked up when he used to compete in firemen’s musters.

They put up a canopy and humorous signs, like “Beer Break Finish Line” and “DNF Start Line.” For those of us not up on runners jargon, DNF means “did not finish.”

Another sign, and Alderson never knows how many people get it, says “B, Double E, Double R, UN. Beer Run.” It’s a nod to a very funny song, “Beer Run,” by folk singer Todd Snider, that got a lot of play on radio’s “The Bob & Tom Show.”

Alderson’s beer stop now gets a ton more takers than the two that first year. Typically, between 30 and 40 take time to jog over, name their poison and toss back a cold one. He sees a pretty even split between men and women, and “they’re not running to qualify for the Boston,” he said.

Chad Johnson hadn’t heard about the beer stop before his first Modesto Marathon run in 2012, and was pleasantly surprised to come upon Alderson and his fellow partiers. He’s swung by in the years since as he’s done photography and marketing each race day.

The beer’s good, Johnson said. The apricot ale, especially, is “approachable, so even if you’re not a big beer drinker, you’re gonna like it.”

He said he’s seen runners from all across the board stop to partake. “I’ve seen guys who can do a sub-three-hour marathon and I think, ‘What they heck are they doing stopping for a beer?’ And you have some who are walk-running and can barely make the marathon’s seven-hour cutoff.”

Half-marathoners are out of luck, Alderson said. He lives about a quarter of the way into the full-marathon course, and about a quarter mile past where participants in the shorter race turn a different way.

And Teens Run Modesto program leaders can rest assured their students are behaving themselves on the course. Alderson said he’s never had anyone who even looks close to being underage try to get a beer. “The kids,” he said, “just go on by.”

This story was originally published March 29, 2019 at 7:28 AM.