Doughnut Run Race Report

Or, “Swallowing Hard”

Or, “Return of the Yellow Shorts”

Borsch and I got up at the butt crack of dawn, and grabbed some breakfast at 4:30 am. Then we hit the road for a 3+ hour drive for a 5K. The directions were basically to hop on Interstate 35, drive south for 210 miles to Ames, and then turn right. Here was our route into Iowa:

We were only about a half hour from Ames, when I saw a cop. Yep. You know where this is going. I looked down and realized I was going a little fast. The next thing I hear is “License and registration please.” Borsch snapped a photo with his phone:

And then he snapped another when I was walking back to my car after signing the paperwork in the cop car:

Not a great way to start the day. Dang. I told the cop about the Doughnut Run, and he LOVED the idea. He didn’t love it enough to rip up my ticket. He said he was going to tell all the guys about it over lunch.

So Borsch and I got to the race, got our paperwork, and tried to stay warm. Shortly after that, I saw someone drive into the lot. It was Danielle in Iowa, who was the one that told me about this event. Shortly behind her, was Laurie (who I’ve met through IM WI events in the past), and suddenly we had a little meet-up!

So here’s how the Doughnut Run works: You run a normal 5K. But along the course, there are 8 “pit stops” where you can choose to eat Krispy Kreme doughnuts (but you don’t have to eat any). For each doughnut you eat, time is taken off your 5K finish time. Here’s how many seconds you can earn:
• 1 Krispy Kreme - 0:15 seconds
• 2 Krispy Kremes - 0:30 seconds
• 3 Krispy Kremes - 0:45 seconds
• 4 Krispy Kremes - 1:00 minute
(so if you eat 4, that’s a total of 2:30 off your time)
• Every Krispy Kreme after that is 1 more minute off your time.
• At certain “major” numbers (10, 15, 20, 25, etc), you got an EXTRA 2 minute bonus off your time.

So the idea is to balance speed with doughnut consumption. I could eat 10 and finish fast, but if someone finishes a few minutes behind me but they ate 15 doughnuts, they would have a better “doughnut adjusted” time.

So the 3 of us lined up (Laurie wasn’t there to run – she is the one responsible for all of the upcoming great photos!). They shouted “go,” and we were off. My goal was to TRY to eat 2 doughnuts per station, which would be 16 doughnuts. Here’s what the first “doughnut station” looked like before the race started:

Yep, that’s BOXES of Krispy Kremes stacked under the table

I was about the 10th one to the first table, but most of the people in front of me didn’t stop; there were a number of people that just ran a normal 5K (with those delicious doughnuts, I don’t know WHY). Here I am running into the first doughnut station on the far right:

I ATTACKED a box of doughnuts:

The first 2 doughnuts were inside of me. And I was going strong. Except for between stop 2 and 3, I was passing a group of women, and one leaned over and spit on me (accidentally). It landed on my arm. It was pretty hot. She felt sooo bad. I laughed it off, told her it was no big deal, and kept bookin’ it.

The “2-per-stop” race strategy was working OK until the very end. On the second to last stop, it took me 2:38 to eat 2 doughnuts. They went down hard. I had reached my saturation point. And I technically lost 38 seconds by stopping. So at the last stop, I was only going to eat 1 more, which would take my total to 15 (and that extra 2 minute bonus). So that’s what I did.

And the run from the last station back to the finish line was HELL. I nearly coughed a little doughnut back up, so I had to swallow hard to get it back down. Gross. But I crossed the line in 28:46 total, having consumed 15 doughnuts along the way.

Here are my, umm, splits:
Run: 3:09
Eat: 1:29
Run: 1:46
Eat: 1:01
Run: 1:52
Eat: 1:41
Run: 1:03
Eat: 1:25
Run: 1:56
Eat: 1:24
Run: 1:05
Eat: 1:25
Run: 1:49
Eat: 2:38
Run: 1:50
Eat: 1:00
Run: 3:04

Total: 28:46
Eating Time: 12:03
Running Time: 16:43

Don’t get too excited by my running time. It was like running intervals, so I could run pretty hard between stops, and then catch my breath while eating.

Intake: 3,000 calories consumed (15 Krispy Kremes)
Output: 350 calories burned (5K run)
Results: Ummm, I’m not good at math, so let’s just call it a wash...

Laurie snapped a photo of me all sweaty and hairy (and surprisingly glaze-free):

Have I mentioned I’ve started a little beard?...

Here’s my doughnut hand all “glazed-up:”

Then I saw how nasty my watch was from all the glaze. So I cleaned it up. With my mouth, what else?

Laurie and I hung around and watched Danielle and Borsch finish. Yeah! There was no puking! We looked for finishers that had ate a TON of doughnuts, but no one came in with any great numbers. So thought I might have a chance at breaking into the top 3! The 4 of us hung around and hoped to win something in the drawing. None of us did. But then something else happened. They listed off the winners. Guess who took first place. Come on. Guess.

Holy crap, they read my name!! I placed first, with the best "doughnut adjusted" time in the pack!

And I didn’t even need my secret weapon:

I was all ready to do Pepto shots if I had needed to...

Well, I have some photos (from Laurie) of Danielle and Borsch, and I’ll send them off to each of them so they can post the photos if they’d like. And the official results aren’t up yet, and I'll have those as soon as I can.

On the way back to the Cities, Borsch and I stopped in Albert Lea for a lunch at McDonalds with my folks. And yes, we both actually had a burger. We were feeling fine! It was actually kinda gross how not-gross we were feeling. We had a nice chat with the ‘rents (do the kids still say that now days?), and we finished the drive back to St. Paul.

What a day! What. A. Day. It’s the first 5K that I’ve run that I would consider to be “epic.” A 4:30 alarm, a 3 hour drive, a speeding ticket, meeting up with blogger buddies, running and eating like crazy, winning the dang thing, driving back 3 hours, and being treated to McDonalds by my folks: Yep, that’s an epic race day.

Now the tough decision: do I make that BORING drive again next year to defend the title? Thanks for reading everyone!!