Tummy survives Tour de Donut
Ol’ 10 Speed hammered and Homer-ed at his first Tour de Donut, the 20th installment, on Saturday in Staunton, Ill.
I did more hammering than Homer-ing my doctor will be glad to learn, though for the sake of competition more Homer-ing would have given me a heftier time bonus. My Garmin time of 2 hours for the 32 mile ride required at least two dozen donuts — a dozen per stop — to put me in contention among the “heavy” hitters.
Well, I did have two … just two … not two dozen. That’s all I wanted to put down, tho I saw grown men and women consuming two, three, four at a time. One guy I saw at the second donut stop had downed 17, and was still eating. Last year’s winner was working on No. 20 when one of my TdD teammates talked to him. Dude ate 27 last year, and it usually takes at least 20 to win the race against the gut.
I not only didn’t have the technique to contend for the bellow jersey — smoosh several donuts together, mix liberally with water, and down the hatch they go — I didn’t have the stomach for it.
So go ahead, call me a lightweight. Please. I’d be flattered.
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Many thanks to the Boeing Employees Bicycle Club for putting on the event, to the police officers and the many volunteers for keeping us safe at the intersections, and to the friendly people of Staunton for coming out to cheer us on. Twas a cool event all around.
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I did the Donut, too, for the second time, and it was a great ride, as usual. If only what felt like 93 percent humidity could have been at 94 or 95…I could have sweat off another pound or two.
The Tour de Donut is the best bike race in Staunton! (and only)….
This is my third year in the race and I am already looking at a new road bike for next years event. In fact I started training already today a day after the race as I took a five mile bike ride and then I came home and ate a 16oz. Ribeye steak and a loaded baked potato followed by a giant chocolate chip cookie. mmmmmm good. Thank you to the Boeing bicycle club and all of the volunteers and all of the great people that helped, cheered, waved etc.. This is the best weekend in Staunton…. Thank you.. DB
As a resident of Staunton and participant in the TdD can i just tell you, it’s the most exciting thing to happen in this town for a very long time! Thanks to Boeing Bicycle Club, the volunteers, and all the participants who show up in droves to make it such a successful event! Looking forward to next year
Unfortunately, there was some apparent cheating going on in the TdD this year.
The race started about 25 minutes later than the posted start time and it appeared that there were some riders who either started earlier or did an out and back ride instead of the full 32 mile route.
I started near the front (about 10 rows back). My average was just over 20 mph with two short donut eating stops (4 donuts); total time of 1:38. In the first few miles I became very familier with those who started around me, yet we passed a number of riders who clearly did not start at 9:25 and did not maintain anywhere near a 20 mph average (even without donut stops). Also there were alot of discarded donuts on the ground at stop 2.
At the finish, one rider commented about folks bringing their own sharpies…
HMMMM.
That’s pretty funny; cheating at the Tour de Donut. Early starts, discarded donuts and Sharpies would certainly qualify as performance enhancers in this race!
At the 2nd stop, I also overheard the Sharpie comment. A few others were talking about cutting off approx. 4 miles by taking the newly constructed Worden to Staunton bike trail. Next year they’ll probably be scouting spots for hitching rides in cars so they won’t get caught. Soon they’ll start making us take urine tests before the race. I’ll be okay as long as beer is not on the banned substance list.