RALEIGH -- I am a failure.
I know this, because I watched a post-menopausal lady eat a dozen doughnuts in the time it took me to eat eight. I then watched her run off while I stood, doubled over, in front of a gas station on Peace Street, trying in vain to keep the pounds of deep-fried dough and sugar in my stomach. I realized at that point, as I regurgitated doughnut No. 9, that I had made a terrible mistake in running the Krispy Kreme Challenge.
I woke up early Saturday morning and drove to Raleigh, parking my car in a deck in the middle of the N.C. State campus. I then trekked over to the area around the Bell Tower to register for the race. I was immediately struck by the utter absurdity of the entire situation--attire was, if I could best describe it, Tailgate-lite: There was a guy in a women's swimsuit, a couple of ‘Where's Waldo?' doppelgangers and an overabundance of body paint. ESPN was there, and there were television crews recording the whole sordid scene. At the registration tent, I found out that there had been a slight mix-up, and I would not be running the race as an actual registered runner. (Don't worry, I'm giving a donation to the hospital because I didn't get to pay the entry fee).
I lined up with 5,000 other runners, as well as hundreds of spectators watching from the side of the road. The race began, and, as inspirational music blared (think Eye of the Tiger), we began to run.
My first thought: This isn't that bad. It was downhill almost the entire way to the restaurant.
People on the side of the road yelled at you to keep running, including a group that was, no joke, tailgating while watching the runners. I passed an old guy on a bridge who was laughing at us, and he yelled out, a la Don King, "Only in America!" I made it to the Krispy Kreme in about 18 minutes and got my doughnuts. It was a controlled madness--the TV crews recorded guys shoveling the food in their mouths, downing it with whole cups of water. I took my doughnuts and went to the side of the road, where I discovered that eating quickly was not my thing.
The last two miles of the race are kind of a blur. I spent them alternating between walking and doing a running-stumbling hybrid while holding my poor stomach. I passed two guys pushing another one in a shopping cart, which I would have laughed at normally when I'm not near death. Oh yeah, and remember how I said that the entire way to the Krispy Kreme was downhill? The entire way back, was, quite literally, uphill. Imagine a series of Heartbreak Hills, only the marathoners have just consumed 2,400 calories. Bad times.
The finish, though, was pretty cool--people cheering, music blaring, all graced with the faint whiff of vomit on a crisp day. I crossed the line (no, I'm not telling the time I finished in), and, later, as I drove back to Durham, I asked myself why I did it.
I did it because it's outside of the Duke bubble. It's a great college tradition at a different college than ours, and here, we have a tendency to become caught up in the Duke scene and ignore the fact that there is a world outside of the campus--several people I talked to about the event, for instance, did not know where Raleigh was. We have great traditions, but so do other schools, and sometimes it's good to get out and experience them. Even if it involves eating a dozen doughnuts and running four miles.
And in case you were wondering: Of course I'm doing it again next year.
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