Krispy Kreme Challenge

Jason (my brother-in-law) was over at our house about a month ago and mentioned this race they do at North Carolina State University, it's called the Krispy Kreme challenge. The Challenge is to run from the NCSU Bell Tower to the Krispy Kreme doughnut shop, eat one dozen doughnuts, and run back to the Bell tower in less than one hour. I was intrigued and said I'd do it with him. Grandpa (my dad) also committed to doing it with us, except for he signed up for the "Casual" participant, which means he didn't have to eat the doughnuts.

The race was yesterday and it was wild. There were 3000 participants and it started off well. I felt good running and enjoyed running with the group. As far as I could see ahead of us and behind us was a 4 lanes wide of people running to the Krispy Kreme bakery. The run there was mostly downhill and I had some adrenaline so it seemed pretty easy. Jason and Grandpa both have GPS running devices so they were keeping track of our pace and how far we had gone. The run there was supposed to be around 2 miles. According to the GPS devices, it's actually 2.3! I think we made it to the bakery in about 20 minutes and Jason and I grabbed our box of a dozen doughnuts and a cup of water. We found an open spot in the parking lot and started to eat.

Before the race, I thought I could enjoyably eat 4 or 5 doughnuts. I wasn't even close. The first two doughnuts tasted good since I hadn't eaten breakfast and it was now getting close to 9:30. After the first two, it went downhill fast and each one was less and less appealing. After about 5 doughnuts, I looked at Jason's box and he was at least one doughnut ahead of me. I asked him how he was doing it and he had put two doughnuts together and was eating them two at a time. I started to do the same and it went quicker. I eventually finished all twelve in what seemed like 20 minutes. It was actually only about 12 minutes, but the memories will be imbeded in my mind for a very long time. I ended up finishing the doughnuts a little before Jason and he is a much stonger runner than I am so I decided to start back to the Bell tower. I started back and felt decent. I was happy that part of the challenge was over and I was on the last leg. I had 28 minutes to finish the race and complete the challenge so I was feeling decent. My stomach definetly felt like I had stuffed a dozen doughnuts in it and I could feel it moving more than I normally do when I run. After about a half of a mile, I heard a bunch of people in front of me yell "eeww gross" and I could see someone losing some of the doughnuts they had eaten. It didn't bother me as much as I thought it might. I made it a mile back before I had to start walking. I walked for a minute or two and then started running again. I repeated the walk for a couple minutes, then run a couple times. The hills were brutal and I had trained on the treadmill without any incline so I wasn't used to any hills. On the run to the bakery I had tried to look for Landmarks to give me an idea of how much distance I had to complete the race. I had in my mind that Ledo's pizza meant there was only one quarter of a mile left. However, on the way back, I must have missed it, because as I was about to start walking again I saw the start finish line. That of course motivated me a little more and I sprinted the rest of the way to the line. I think I finished the race in about 53 minutes which was within the challenge and I was grateful it was over.

We'll have to see if I continue running, I have good intentions and want to keep it up, but I have a lot of other good intentions that never come to pass.

Here's the link for the website if you're curious about the history or anything else. http://www.krispykremechallenge.com/