One woman took marathon running to a whole new extreme.
Justine Huang ran the Nov. 3 New York City Marathon while drunk. She shared her experience in several videos posted on her TikTok, one of which has since racked up more than 11 million views.
One of the videos — set to the Imagine Dragons song “On Top of the World” — features Huang, 26, downing shots and a beer, eating candy and excitedly greeting friends who showed up to cheer her on.
“Staying hydrated at the nyc marathon!!! #nycmarathon #marathon #runningtok#drink,” she joked in the caption of a post that currently has more than 65,000 shares and more than 4,000 comments.
After her unconventional marathon run, Huang told NPR that she had “four or five shots of liquor” and then “four or five half cups of beer” over the course of the 26.2-mile course.
She explained to the outlet that she decided to take a much more relaxed approach to her N.Y.C. experience after finding out that she had also been accepted to run in the Chicago Marathon — which took place three weeks earlier.
“I wanted to go hard for Chicago because I had a time goal to beat,” she said, referring to a previous marathon time. “That was what I focused on.”
So when it came to N.Y.C., she was ready to relax.
“I wanted to eat all the food I saw and then drink whatever the spectators were bringing. That was my plan going into this race,” she told NPR, adding, “But I didn’t expect how much food and drinks there would be.”
Runners on the 2024 New York City Marathon course.
Selcuk Acar/Anadolu via Getty
Huang also noted that her alcohol consumption was spaced out over a number of hours.
“This was like during the course of maybe five or six hours. So I wasn’t pounding alcohol within the span of like 30 minutes or something,” she told NPR, noting that she made sure to stay on top of her hydration.
“I also did stop at every single water station that the marathon provided. I would chug down two cups of water and two cups of Gatorade at every station,” she said.
Huang finished the New York marathon in 5 hours and 36 minutes (compared to 4 hours and 14 minutes in Chicago), and she says she has “no regrets” about her alcohol-fueled run.
“As a competitive person, I have the mindset that I want to run as fast as I can,” she told NPR. “But forcing myself to slow down this time — spending time with spectators and friends who came out to support me — made this experience so much better than I thought.”
“I literally ran the whole thing with my best friend, and it was her first marathon,” she continued. “Being with her and seeing our friends who spent the entire day running around the city finding spots to cheer us on, that just made me so happy. I have no regrets at all.”
“I met so many cool people on the run,” she added.
This year’s New York City Marathon was officially the world’s largest marathon to date, with 55,646 total finishers hailing from all over the world, according to the New York Road Runners. According to CNN, the event — which spans the city’s five boroughs — draws more than two million spectators annually.
