By six a.m., snow was falling in gusts and sprays. My phone blinked and buzzed from an onslaught of text messages. I heard my girlfriend cajoling me awake. I groaned.
Less than an hour later our two-car caravan left the D.C. metro area as a cataclysmic snowstorm approached the capital like something out of a disaster movie. We were escaping the Snowpocalypse, but we were driving right into an intestinally destructive melee of saturated fat and competitive running. Four and a half miles in under an hour, with a twelve-doughnut snack break halfway through: this was the Krispy Kreme Challenge at N.C. State. Only six of us were foolish enough to attempt it, with my girlfriend there to chronicle the event and identify our bodies if need be.
A hot wings joint en route offered a picture on the wall to anyone who could eat twelve of their spiciest wings in under fifteen minutes. No way I’m punishing my body like that less than twenty-four hours before a doughnut race, I thought. Two minutes later, I was signing the waiver, thinking about permanent taste bud damage. Soon, I was gasping in defeat, my face covered in purple splotches. Three of my friends got pictures on the wall. I got diarrhea as a consolation prize.
As if we didn’t feel foolish enough, we picked up some superhero underwear—to be worn outside the pants—at a Walmart. It was bitterly cold when we left the hotel the next morning, by which time I’d already made three agonizing trips to the bathroom. Shorts around my ankles, Transformers briefs around my shorts, I thought hard about my life. I was an idiot, I decided. So I ran 4.6 miles and ate twelve Krispy Kreme doughnuts. It was glorious. I didn’t finish in an hour, and my stomach never forgave me, but at least I did better than the barefoot guy in the Mortal Kombat costume.
— from Urbanite Magazine, August 2011
