Only in Wisconsin do beer and exercise mix. Several hundred people laced up Sunday morning for a two-mile charity race in which suds were the refresher of choice. Competitors in the 19th annual Beer Belly Two might not be considered athletes, but they know how to have a good time.

"My kids are running it, so hopefully they're already at the finish line and I'll see them in an hour or so," said racer Doug Burmeister. "You know, there's a lot of beer stops."

The race has raised more than $350,000 for local charities since its inception.

How pissah is this idea? Wicked pissah. That's how pissah. Seriously, if you had a choice between seeing a bunch of Packers fans lugging their fat asses from beer station to beer station or watching a bunch of scrawny Kenyans sprinting up Boylston St., which would you choose? This is a no-brainer.

And I love how they consider it a "race" even though it's only two miles. A brisk walking pace is 4 MPH. Simple math tells you at that rate you can traverse 2 miles in a half hour. My man Burmeister is allowing himself an hour. Sure a marathoner can be in Newton in that much time, but let's see him try it with a cup of Sam Adams Triple Bock in his mitts.

I'm stuck in Massachusetts forever. But if I absolutely had to leave, I could move to Wisconsin in a nanosecond. These people strike me as just the right combination of Midwestern nice and sedentary, self-abusing party animals. Like Germans who'd rather watch football than conquer the world.

David Ortiz married a Wisconsin chick. And he tells the story of the first time he went to a Packers game with her family. They got him out of bed to get to the game and it was like 3 degrees outside. One of his in-laws offered him a shot. Big Papi asked him what time it is. "8 AM." "What time is the game?" "8 PM." A people who think the only kind of marathon to enter is a drinking marathon... is my kind of people.