The 20th Tour de Donut is Saturday, and ol’ 10 Speed can say definitively that the annual gut-buster is not at all to blame for his Big Magnus Backside.

Nope. Ol’ 10 Speed did that without partaking in a single Tour de Donut, tho he has partaken in quite a few of the glazed pastries from Lubeley’s on Watson Road. (Thankyouverymuch, Mrs. 10 Speed.)

Be that as it may, I’d say it’s about time I BobRoll from the starting line of the Boeing Employees Bicycle Club’s annual donut-bicycle fest. So, in a few hours, at 9 a.m. Saturday, all 6-foot-4, 2^% pounds of ol’ 10 Speed, will be lined up in Staunton, Ill., ready to challenge the clock and his gut.

Although the bicycle race currently going on in France dropped time bonuses this year to make the race entirely against the clock, the TdDonut has a liberal time bonus of 5 minutes for each donut consumed. Last year’s winner, Steven Meinke, JoeyChestnut-ed 27 and apparently survived to be credited with a donut-adjusted time of 13 minutes 38 seconds for the 32-mile ride.

Meinke’s intake is the most in at least the past five years (results from 2003 and 2007 are available online), but four competitors in that time have finished with negative times for the Race of Gluttonous Truth.

– 2006 winner Tim Ranek was credited with a time of minus-6 minutes 38 seconds thanks to Kobayashi-ing 20 donuts.

– The top three finishers in ‘03 also scarfed 20 donuts apiece en route to their negative splitsides: Charles Wood -0:11:01, Mike Kapilla -0:08:54, and Larry Davitz -0:03:01.

My girth to the contrary, the best I think I can do in the time-bonus department is 20 minutes. That would be four donuts. Any more than that … I don’t think so. Gotta save room for the postrace ribs.

Thankfully, this event is not part of the World Anti-Doping Agency’s biological passport. I’d hate to have an adverse analytical finding for cholesterol and have to do a Floyd Landis-appeal of a positive doughing control.

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