Why are people choosing the 5 pm wave?? The party closes 3 hours after the START final wave. It will take at least an hour for most people to finish, maybe longer. So you will have under 2 hours of free beer drinking. Doesn't it make sense to do an earlier wave and drink free beer all afternoon?
Not sure if they changed it for this year, but last year, everyone got a ONE free beer coupon attached to their race bib (Make sure you don't lose it in the mudpit!). More beers after that were extra, maybe about 4 bucks each?
On a somewhat related note, I felt so bad for this one guy last year. People who had come to watch told me that he was one of the first few people through, like in the top 10, when he came to the mudpit. Not only did he then lose his shoe in the mudpit, but lost the shoe with the chip on it, so he spent the next twenty minutes looking for his shoe and attempting to free it.