The Oatmeal’s Beat the Blerch series is road racing like you’ve never seen before
The Oatmeal, a popular cartoon site created by Matthew Inman, is hosting a three-race series which defies everything you thought you knew about road racing.
Matthew Inman, the popular cartoonist behind The Oatmeal, takes a different approach to running and admits that one of his main exercise motivations is to burn off all the birthday cake he consumes. It’s not a huge surprise that the race series that the Oatmeal hosts also has a different approach to road running.
Beat the Blerch, a three-race series this summer and fall, consists of a 10K, half-marathon and marathon in Seattle (Sept. 17-18), Las Vegas (October, exact date TBA) and a virtual event. The Seattle race is run on trail and the Las Vegas event is a point-to-point course in the desert.
Registration is now open for our 2016 @BeatTheBlerch race series. pic.twitter.com/ItU3HAAyW6
— Matthew Inman (@Oatmeal) April 5, 2016
Beat the Blerch is a race series like you’ve never seen before, evident in some of the race highlights, which can be found below.
Wacky race highlights:
– Cake at every aid station (sounds like something this guy may enjoy);
– Free race photos;
– Couches along the course;
– Matthew Inman, The Oatmeal creator, will be in attendance (running, eating, and drawing pictures);
– Blerches;
– Goodie bag full of snacks and surprises;
– A technical t-shirt.
The race name is in reference to the Blerch, a character that Inman created for his comics. The Blerch is an imaginary flying blob of fat that follows him around and motivates him to run. If he slacks off, the Blerch will catch up to him.
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“If I am sedentary at a time when I have zero excuse for being sedentary, I call this ‘blerching’,” describes Inman.
The Oatmeal launched on July 6, 2009 and continues to have a strong online presence including 500,000 followers on Instagram and on Twitter. Inman regularly refers to himself as the Oatmeal as his name has become synonymous with the cartoon.
Running is the topic of many of his comics and Saucony did a feature film on the Seattle-based cartoonist who admits one of his main reasons for exercising is to help justify certain dietary choices. Inman will be running in the Beat the Blerch races.
RELATED: Matthew Inman of The Oatmeal admits his reason for running: To eat cake.
One such cartoon is entitled “The dos and do nots of running your first marathon,” where Inman suggests going out at a impractical pace at the start of a race and convincing yourself that consuming energy gels is an enjoyable process.
The race website’s frequently asked questions section includes “can I wear a costume?” “will there be Nutella and cake?” and “will the race be chip-timed?”. The answer to all three of those questions is “yes.”
You can watch Saucony’s documentary on Inman below, as featured in their “Seeker Stories” series:
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