Just days before turning 29, Tim Cigelske decided he wanted to do something special for his 30th year on the planet. The Marquette University communications specialist (read: social media expert) asked his Twitter followers, and the answer came quickly: run a mile and drink a beer every day. The challenge made perfect sense for Cigelske. In his spare time, he writes Draftmag.com’s Beer Runner blog, which chronicles the intersection of lacing up the Nikes and leaning back with a brew.

More than 260 days later, he’s still going. Cigelske spoke with Wired.com about running at 11:30 p.m., the proper pint-to-mileage ratio, and why he might never stop.

Wired.com: How did this whole adventure begin?

Tim Cigelske: A day or two before my 29th birthday, I thought “Maybe I should do something for the next year.” I threw that question out on Twitter, and one guy said, “Why don’t you run and drink beer every day for the next year.” That sounded reasonable at the time. I didn’t know what I was getting myself into. Two hundred and sixty days later, here I am.

Wired.com: What have you learned?

Cigelske: One thing I learned is that I could even do something like this. I tried one other run streak that lasted about 20 days, and then I fell asleep early one night. (That was shortly after my daughter Clara was born.) I’ve been running since high school, but this is probably the biggest challenge that I’ve ever tried.

The other thing I’ve learned is how much support there is from Twitter, Facebook, Daily Mile, Untappd, and other bloggers. I’m not sure I’d keep doing it if it weren’t for all the people that have shown support. It sounds incredible corny, but it helps so much to know that I’m accountable.

I wrote an April Fool’s column about stopping the run streak. It was loaded with references to beers that didn’t exist, but there were a lot of people who didn’t know I was joking. I had to tell them to check the calendar.

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