Brew run fun

Budge Brothers, with its signature popcorn, was a popular stop on Saturday’s Brew Run Run.

For an event without any real expectations, the inaugural Brew Run Run seems to have met them – and then some.

Around two dozen people ran and biked the route between seven Spokane breweries on Saturday, starting at No-Li Brewhouse and ending downtown at the Steam Plant.

“It turned out to be really just a lot of fun,” says organizer John Griffith, who promoted it through word of mouth and social media.

“It was the right amount of athleticism and debauchery, and the weather couldn’t have been better. “

Griffith says some 15 people gathered at the garbage goat in Riverfront Park, and more joined in along the way. Cyclists outnumbered runners two to one, he says – along with a couple of people who pretended to run, but were getting Uber rides.

“It was a really neat cross-section of people,” says Griffith. “There were people there I didn’t know, and I got to know them.”

By the time they got to the third stop, Budge Brothers, folks were getting hungry. “People were just eating buckets of that popcorn,” Griffith says of the Budge specialty (made with browned Tillamook butter).

While the group stuck together between stops at first, he says, “midway through, it turned into more of a racing thing – everybody wanted to beat each other.”

On Sunday, Griffith says, he had three texts from a friend: one about how hung over he was; another about how much his legs hurt; and finally, “We need to do this every month.”

Griffith is considering another organized run this summer, but he hopes people will give the route a try whenever they like. He talks of setting up a website for it where they could post pictures.

“You can do it any time you want,” he says. “That’s the beauty of it.”