Speaking of National Doughnut Day, I just learned there is a Tour De Donut event.  You might be thinking it would be a great idea to have a donut-themed race but that this is probably just referencing some person or place named Donut.  That happens sometimes.  But in this case, there actually is a race involving the eating of donuts!

The Tour De Donut is an annual bicycle race held in Staunton, Illinois, plus a few other places.  It’s a 30-mile race, which is a good ways to ride if you aren’t in optimal fitness.  But there’s a unique twist to this race, which somewhat levels the playing field.  There are two pit stops in nearby towns during the race, and your total race time is reduced by five minutes for each donut you consume during those pit stops.

I can put away some donuts, so I could reduce my race time by a significant amount.  However, there is the issue that eating donuts may make you slower.  So you’ve got to strategize about it — if you eat 6 donuts, it saves you 30 minutes, but will it make you 30 minutes slower?  Of course, donuts also provide extra energy (which would be needed for most of us on a 30-mile ride).

I think this race would be fun to do, in the spring or fall.  Having it in the summer would be disoptimal for several reasons.

Obviously the idea can be expanded, too — how about a Tour De Bacon?  Sounds interesting to me!

There’s probably somebody reading this who is thinking something like “this is so unhealthy, I can’t believe you are promoting it!”  Yeah, well, it’s like this — most people are gonna eat donuts and bacon anyway, so if they will get outside and get a couple hours of exercise and fun, it’s better than nothing.  And they might even burn more calories than they consume.  That makes me wonder — how many miles do you have to ride to burn off the calories per bacon strip?  We could come up with a stat to determine the winner (or at least a secondary winner) — miles per bacon.  🙂  Mathematically that wouldn’t be good for eating the most bacon, but we can work on the formula.  I’m just making this up as I go.  🙂

Feel free to continue developing the idea.  As long as it involves eating donuts and/or bacon, count me in!