If you love to run but have found yourself thinking, This is great, but yo quiero Taco Bell right now, there’s a race for that, thanks to Arlington ultramarathoner Mike Wardian and his running pal Phil Hargis.
Giving new meaning to fast food, the Taco Bell DC 50K on Nov. 29 will start and end at the Taco Bell Cantina at 417 King St., Alexandria. Participants will run 32.3 miles and stop at seven—yes, seven—more Taco Bells in Alexandria, Arlington and Washington, D.C. along the way. At each stop, including the start and end, runners must place and consume an order of Tex-Mex food. Save the receipt and wrapper as evidence.
Order what you enjoy, Wardian says, but know that by the fourth stop, you must consume at least one Chalupa Supreme or Crunchwrap Supreme. By the eighth stop, runners need to have eaten at least one Burrito Supreme or Nachos Bell Grande.
By then you might have a grande stomachache supreme, but taking Pepto Bismol, Alka-Seltzer, Pepcid AC, Mylanta and the like will result in disqualification. Fortunately, vomiting is allowed.
All of this begs the question: Why would you do this to yourself?
Cooking Up the Plan
“I think a lot of people are just curious,” says Wardian, Arlington ultramarathoner extraordinaire. He floated the idea for the race to Hargis, a former Falls Church resident, over the summer. Wardian had heard about (but not participated in) a similar Taco Bell 50K in Denver, now in its ninth year.
“We got to talking and said it would be really cool to do here,” says Hargis, who, conveniently for this endeavor, works in event planning. “We thought it would be like 20 or 30 of us…. Mike put it up on social media and then all of a sudden we had hundreds and hundreds of people signing up almost daily for this thing.”
So far, almost 900 people from 25 states have registered for the race, known as a “fat ass.”
The name fat ass is not a dig at the runners. Rather, it’s a racing term for informal running events—often ultramarathons—that are longer than a standard 26.2 miles. The name stuck after the “Recover from the Holidays Fat Ass 50” in San Francisco in the 1970s.
Curiosity and novelty aside, another reason for the explosive interest may be that the race has no age restrictions or registration fee, although participants do have to pay for their food. “It’s not every day in the running community you can go and do a race for free,” Hargis says.
Plus, runners will have what Hargis says is a generous 11 hours to finish the race, which starts at 8 a.m. “You can walk a 20-minute pace, and you can probably finish less than 11 hours,” he says.
In the long run, some people just really like the 63-year-old fast-food chain. “A lot of people say, ‘These are my two favorite things. I’m so happy I can marry them together,'” he says.
Eating on the Run
Taco Bell is not sponsoring or affiliated with the race, but Hargis says he gave the local restaurants a heads up that they could see a significant uptick in business on race day. “We don’t want them to feel like they’re just going to get blindsided,” he says.
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Wardian has not had Taco Bell in about two decades, but Hargis makes a run for the border more often. In preparation for the race, Hargis says he fueled his first FKT (fastest known time) on Nov. 15, hoofing it from his hometown of Woodstock, Virginia, to Fort Valley and back with four Taco Bell bean burritos.
The duo offers some strategies for success:
- “People should get what they like and what they’re comfortable with, that also fits within their dietary restrictions,” says Hargis. (He and Wardian are both vegan, which is doable at Taco Bell.) “But we’re kind of saying that people might want to be skeptical of hot sauce.”
- Keep your order simple, Wardian advises. Save the new Mountain Dew Baja Blast Pie for another time.
- Order ahead using the Taco Bell app to avoid lines or delays at the restaurants.
- Get used to running with a full stomach. “When I started getting into ultras, the biggest thing was being able to run when you have food in your stomach,” Wardian says, “especially when it’s not engineered food designed for running, like a gel or powder.”
The first three finishers will get prizes, as will the person who comes in DFL, or dead freaking last (yep, that’s more running lingo). The “awards are a surprise,” Wardian says. “It’s not going to be anything big. Our budget is zero.”
Speeding to the Finish
As race day approaches, Hargis and Wardian are putting the finishing touches on their plans. They are hatching creative ways for volunteers to help along the course, and selling a race T-shirt for $38.
“Everybody thinks it’s going to be so fun,” Hargis says. “We’re excited to put on an event for these people.”
Get those barf bags ready.