Today was the third annual pub-race for graduate students at Oxford. And for the third straight year, Somerville made it to the finish line, the Turf Tavern, first. A pub-race is a unique idea combining everyone's two favourite activities drinking and running (well maybe not so much the latter). It the fine British tradition of turning pub activities into competitive sports(?) the pub-race is an inter-college drinking competition.
There were four colleges participating each dressed in their own theme, Somerville was golf-pros and tennis-hoes. Each had a set course of nine other pubs they had to go to, order a drink, and drink it, leading from their college to the Turf in the centre of town. A different drink had to be imbibed at each pub, this year the list included Guinness, whisky, Smirnoff, among others. Competitors had the option of participating as an individual or in a pair (five drinks each). Many pubs also required a task to be performed after drinking such as licking a car door, or building a human pyramid, the completion of each was to be documented on a digital camera. Somerville alone had over ten teams participating which was more than most of the pubs could handle.
The winning time was just over 2 1/2 hours and that included running madly from pub to pub dodging buses and bicycles. All in all it was a fun night ending in a lot of hooting and hollering. Only time will tell how many will manage to drag themselves out of bed at 9:00am college induction tomorrow morning.
