26 Miles, 23 Wines, Could You?

Getty Image / CHRISTOPHE ARCHAMBAULT/AFP

For the vast majority of endurance athletes, marathon training is rigorous and pushes their bodies to the limits of what they are capable of. I’m not talking about the freaks of nature who go run 100+ miles on the weekend for fun or compete in Last Man Standing ultra-marathons. I am referring to typical marathon runners who set out to finish in a specified period of time and that goal is enough for them.

So after all of that… The running 30-70 miles/week leading up the big day, can you imagine doing a marathon where you stop every mile for wine tastings and then indulge in oysters and steak all while still running the marathon? Most people’s answers would be ‘no’ but the Marathon du Médoc in France is not for most people.

Could You Finish The Marathon du Médoc in France?

A video from Tom Gilbey aka ‘The Wine Guy‘ on TikTok has 70K views and counting. He went with the classic millennial line of “I did a thing” but instead of talking about buying a house, he’s referring to running the Marathon du Médoc.

He filmed his run through what some refer to as “the longest marathon in the world” because there are 23 wine tasting stops through Medoc in the Gironde, an oyster tasting, steak tasting, and there are 50 orchestras set up throughout the race course… 23 wine tastings! A link to the TikTok video can be found here if the video below doesn’t load for you.

@tomgilbeywine

I DID A THING 🏃‍♂️ 🥴 🍷🦀 Marathon du Medoc and we raised a lotta money for a wonderful cause Sobell House Thank you all for supporting esp Pichon Baron and all you fruitcakes who made it such fun x Please continue to add to the stash if you can (donate in bio)

♬ original sound – Tom Gilbey

I forgot to mention that 9 out of 10 participants are dressed in costume. Many runners of the Marathon du Médoc really lean into stereotypical French attire as you can see in this video from 2 years ago:

I will say, there seems to be a very solid split between running, eating, walking, and drinking. In all of the clips I’ve seen from the Marathon du Médoc there are few people if any running full bore. Instead, they’re jogging and reaaally stretching the day out.

So with that in mind, yeah, I think would happily run the Marathon du Médoc. If the plan was to go taste 23 wines over 23 miles and get in 50K-60K steps while also eating oysters and steaks and appreciating some orchestral music and it wasn’t about marathon time I think I’d 100% use this as an excuse to visit the French country side.

What about you? Let me know in the Facebook comments if this is up your alley.