Networking problems in newly created gitlab-runner docker container

I am on:

OS: Ubuntu 14.04 LTS  
Docker: 1.8.1, build d12ea79

Noticed that I can no longer access the network from inside a gitlab-runner docker container. The builds are pending and registering a new runner fails. Here is how I create the gitlab-runner container following instructions on https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ci-multi-runner/blob/master/docs/install/docker.md.

1. Create new docker container

$ docker run -d --name gitlab-runner --restart always \
-v /var/run/docker.sock:/var/run/docker.sock \
-v /srv/gitlab-runner/config:/etc/gitlab-runner \
gitlab/gitlab-runner:latest

$ docker ps 
CONTAINER ID        IMAGE                         COMMAND                  CREATED             STATUS              PORTS               NAMES
8c316769a422        gitlab/gitlab-runner:latest   "/entrypoint run --us"   1 minute ago      Up 1 minute                           gitlab-runner

1. Access container and check networking

$ docker exec -it gitlab-runner bash
root@8c316769a422:/# curl --verbose https://gitlab.com/
* Hostname was NOT found in DNS cache
* Could not resolve host: gitlab.com
* Closing connection 0
curl: (6) Could not resolve host: gitlab.com 

What am I missing? Even pinging a public IP from inside the container times out. Thank you.