Competitive Eating challenge 2010

So those of you that have known me for years know that I have a knack for taking down eating competitions.  Usually I try to prepare for these and the original one that I did many moons ago was to eat a whole large pizza by myself (piece of cake!) when I was in college.  Over the year, the challenges have increased in intensity (I think close to 2005 was to eat one of everything on the McDonald Dollar Menu - thanks Dave for suggesting that one, but I finished it...) And just recently my sister Jenna, brother in law Dave, and myself conquered the Cheeburger Cheeburger challenge of eating a one lb burger with 4 toppings on it up in Charlotte.  We got our pictures taken with this large stuffed burger and got on the wall of fame up there.  That was all childs play in comparison to what went down last night.

As I type this, the only thing I have eaten since the 6:15pm start last night, has been a single 1/2 cup of coffee and a yogurt and quite honestly I still feel full.  This was insane and the details are located here but I don't believe they do it justice.  From my calculations this is what was included:

0.5 lb burger with 0.25lb cheese

0.5 lb burger with 0.25lb cheese

8 strips of bacon (0.5 lbs as bacon is 1oz per strip)

4 sets of (lettuce, 2 slices of tomato and onion and mayo)

1 lb of pulled pork

1 lb of seasoned french fries with 0.5lbs of meat sauce on the fries as well

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~5lbs of food is the approximate grand total of food to be consumed. Picture below is what was delivered to our table:

Now the reasoning behind all of this was that I originally just wanted to get my name up on the marquee outside of Sticky Lips and wanted to get a picture of myself underneath it.  That would have been fun, but last night was not my night.  To give you all a little insight on how ridiculous this challenge is, they make you sign a waiver prior to starting that basically says that you will not hold Sticky Lips BBQ responsible for any "harm done to myself or others" from this contest.  It's the real deal.  And you have 30 minutes to complete it or else you don't win...

Thats my bro-in-law, Dave above signing away his life on the waiver. There were 3 of us brave souls who tried to accomplish this monumental task that night. It was me, Dave and my buddy Matt who was just coming off of IM Florida and ripped off a 10:13!! So he had the post Ironman metabolism in his favor. I do have to thank my sister, Jenna for shooting all of these pictures of the night as a picture is worth a thousand words. I'll let them do the talking though...Enjoy 

The image above is me tearing thru about midway done with the time limit

Dave threw in the towel about 22 minutes in when he realized that although he had an AMAZINGLY strong start and had finished all of the burgers and pulled pork, he wasn't going to finish in the allotted timeframe.

It took me a little longer to realize that I probably wasn't going to be able to accomplish this mammoth task.  I felt good thru about 15 minutes, but honestly the hot meat sauce mixed in with the french fries just really took it's toll on me.  It wasn't necessarily a mental thing (I kind of assumed it would be a mind over matter type of deal) but it was strictly a CAPACITY issue and my stomach wouldn't stretch enough to hold the remainder.  The picture directly above is what I left behind....I'm not proud either.

Matt got bested by the challenge as well, although he kept on powering thru after the time limit expired and he "won" the challenge out of the 3 of us fools because he eventually ate the most food.  I think the best quote of the night came from Matt when he said something to the effect of, "I don't even want to WATCH Man vs. Food on the Travel channel anymore, I think I'm just completely done with eating challenges".  And I absolutely agree with him.

My whole deal was that after I was done competing in Ironmans that I was going to try my hand in competitive eating.  There is absolutely NO way that is going to happen now.  I'm just not cut out for it in any way, shape or form.  So there you have it.  The final tally was Food 3, Man 0...So instead of a solid message on the marquee, I'm left with a full stomach (still), lots of indigestion, and this:

So that's it.  I'll be cranking extra miles on the roads and trails and on the trainer to work that big guy off, but hopefully I'll see you all out there on the roads and trails.  Take care, eat well and cheers.