Jessica Bliss, The (Nashville) Tennessean 7:36 p.m. EDT September 20, 2015

Jessica Bliss ran the first-ever Brew Mile at the Nashville Fairgrounds on Friday night. Four beers. Four quarter miles. She survived.(Photo: Jessica Bliss / The Tennessean)

NASHVILLE -- In order for it to be epic awesome, an epic disaster has to be possible.

Those sage words pretty much summed up my pre-beer mile mentality. But I can't take credit for the wisdom — that goes to one of my co-conspirators, a friend who texted me after some (beverage-inspired) peer pressure had him on the hook to run Nashville's first Brew Mile.

The event took place Friday night as hundreds ran around the race track at the Nashville Fairgrounds, cans of Pabst Blue Ribbon in hand and ridiculous costumes all around.

So what is this craziness, you ask? The concept is this: Drink a beer. Run a quarter mile. Drink a beer. Run a quarter mile. Drink a beer. Run a quarter mile. Drink a beer. Run a quarter mile. Cross the finish line. Celebrate. Don't throw up.

It's beer-mile delirium. And it's sweeping the country. NCAA champions and Olympic hopefuls have chugged and sprinted. Official world records are being logged (with sub five-minute miles being recorded!). And a ridiculous amount of energy is being devoted to researching the best type of beer and the best temperature to drink. Last December, track-and-field website Flotrack even hosted the first-ever Beer Mile World Championships in Austin, Texas.

Now, some of the world's fastest runners are actually training. For the beer mile. No joke.

Hundreds ran around the race track at the Nashville Fairgrounds Friday for the very first Brew Mile. The concept? Drink a beer every quarter mile until you finish a full mile. The mania is sweeping the country capturing NCAA champions, Olympic hopefuls and regular not-so-athletic types out for a good time. (Photo: Jessica Bliss/Tennessean.com)

It's hard to say when the beer mile originated, though the earliest documented races, according to beermile.com (yes, there is such a thing), occurred in the late 1980s and early 1990s. University track teams (including the locals) have been doing it for years. And when the internet took off, so did the concept. As Runner's World writer Rachel Swaby wrote in her piece The Untold History of the Beer Mile: "If the Internet made the beer mile accessible to the masses, the elites made it aspirational."

So enter the rest of us — the regular kind-of (or not-so-much) athletic types out for a good time. That's me, a fairly avid half-marathoner (with a very average pace) who is not one to turn down a possibly epic experience.

So on Friday night, I put on my costume (a bike helmet, cycling jersey and red-flashing light) and headed to the fairgrounds to meet some friends.

My crew included a 50-year-old soccer playing sports journalist with a marathon personal record of 3 hours and 30 minutes. My 36-year-old husband, who five days earlier completed his first Ironman in just over 12 hours. And one fabulous 30-something couple: He the kind of guy who will rock a pair of gray Pumas when he runs, and she a woman who fearlessly (hiply) pedals her bike around town in mustard-colored high heels.

Some of us (the aforementioned sportswriter and spouse) were serious about our Brew Mile times, snagging the cold beverage and heading to the front of the starting line pack. They would go on to run the whole thing in just over 7 minutes.

Others of us just thought a casual jog sounded good. (Got to extend the fun!) So we toasted, chugged and then set off around the race track.

I passed a banana, chatted with the Blues Brothers, took pictures of a four-man crew of Tetris pieces and attempted to keep up with the sriracha. I drank four beers (the first faster than I ever have before), ran four quarter miles, crossed the finish line in a splendid 21 minutes, and somehow managed to keep it all down.

And for all that, we also helped raise money for water.org — a charity co-founded by Hollywood's Matt Damon that provides communities in Africa, South Asia, and Central America access to safe water and sanitation.

We were feeling good in many ways.

Group consensus? Disaster avoided. Epic awesome.

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