Sunday, July 10, 2011

Tour De Donut 2011

My last training ride for Racine was to be a 2:30 minute ride at 80%. This sounded just about right for the Staunton, Illinois Tour De Donut. I won't go into a lot of detail, as this is the fourth year Steve and I have participated in this 31-mile race/event. We enjoy it a lot.

In 2010, I ate 10 doughnuts and had a decent enough ride to come in first place overall for women. There was some question about the times being correct, probably rightfully so. For 2011, they branched out and had chip timing which i am sure helped make scoring 1600 riders a LOT easier for the race directors.

It was pretty hot and steamy, I think temps were in the high 80s when the race kicked off at 9 a.m. The first ten miles were spent dodging and weaving other riders. We made good time and got to the first stop. I had budgeted five minutes for each stop (there are two), but quickly had to re-evaluate. The doughnuts this year were from a different supplier. I believe they were from Walmart. They were a heavier glazed doughnut that did not compress down very well and were pretty chewy. People seemed to be having trouble getting them down. Nevertheless I managed to choke down 6 doughnuts and was off.

The first stop took me a disappointing 7 minutes. But I felt good and kicked it in on the way to Stop Number 2. I even flew up the quick steep hill that surprises a lot of people. Two years I have been in the wrong gear and had to walk up that hill.

Stop Number 2 about killed me. I figured I might as well try to beat my time of ten doughnuts from 2010 and dumped 5 of the now-warm heavy doughnuts into my "smashing bag". They would flatten out a bit but it was kind of like eating a big wad of chewing gum. I kept walking around, breaking off little bites and washing them down with water. This stop took a whopping 9 minutes, making a total of 16 minutes added to my race time.

My chip time was 2:10. Eating 11 doughnuts knocked 55 minutes off that time, for a net time of 1:15. At the awards ceremony, my name was called for first place in the W40-49 age group, and I got my hard-earned medal. The next day I studied the results and was disappointed to see that there must have been a timing glitch, as a gal from St. Louis was listed as first in the division. I am not so disappointed to take second place but feel bad that the real first place winner didn't get her medal.

I emailed the race director to see how we could fix this, so at least my conscience is clear!

4 comments:

Ransick said...

Great job! Nice of you to email the RD to try to fix the medal issue. Did you eat some ribs afterwards or were you still full?

Midwest Miler said...

I heard some people talking about this race. 11 donuts while racing is crazy! I don't think I could keep them down.

Kate Geisen said...

congratulations!

I wish I'd timed myself at the stops. I'm very curious how long it took me at that second one.

Kate Geisen said...

Thanks! I have a bunch of blogger friends who also appreciate the necessity of lots of pictures. My friend Patrick took the post-donut one, which I appreciate more now than I did at the time. :)

And I felt fine by Saturday evening, thankfully.