2010 Krispy Kreme Challenge -- Eat, Run, Repeat

Last Saturday was the 2010 Krispy Kreme Challenge, the NC State benefit for the North Carolina Children's Hospital where you run 2.4 miles from the NC State belltower to the Peace Street Krispy Kreme, eat a dozen donuts, and then run back to the belltower. If you do all that in under an hour, then you have completed the Challenge. This year the race was capped at 6,000 entrants, and that cap was reached with about two weeks to go before the race.

The weather this year was much more cold and gray than the superb weather we had in 2009; the temps this year never left the low-to-mid 30s, and there were a few snowflakes flurrying around just before the race start. That may have kept the crowd down a little bit, but according to the official results, there were still 4,228 official finishers on race day. 309 women and 1,679 men finished in the Challenger division, and 1,305 women and 935 men (including me) completed in the Casual (run, no donuts) division. (I want to burn off calories, not put 2,400 of them in at one shot!) So the donut part of the Challenge is definitely male-dominated.

However, the weather didn't seem to discourage the spirit of the crowd or the number and creativity of the costumes. There was one guy, the "official mascot" of the race, who wore some kind of huge engineered donut on top of his head the whole way. There were seven or eight guys running together dressed in those head-to-toe spandex bodysuits. There were lots of Indianapolis Colts jerseys and even some Packers and Vikings, but no New Orleans Saints to be seen. There were Supermen, guys in Speedos with Fuel Belts (more), masked superheroes, two guys from Pennsylvania who were dressed as tacos, Death (probably from a heart attack), guys with strange hats and hair, Justin Timberlake, pirates, Elmo and Cookie Monster, guys with huge afro wigs, Forrest Gump, guys in long johns and full-body pajamas, ninjas (ninjae?) -- one running barefoot, a gorilla chasing a huge banana, just plain weird outfits, clergymen and choir members, students that spelled out "KKC 2010" on their chests, and -- of course -- Elvis. I guess the costumes were male-dominated, too.

There were some real athletes out there, too. The first-place Challenger finished the race, including the donuts, in less than a half-hour.

It was kind of tight at the beginning when all 6,000 runners had to feed through a small gate to be read by the timing equipment, but most of the runners were in too big a hurry or having too much fun to be slowed down by that. And it will be nice when all the construction on Hillsborough Street is completed and we don't have to dodge half-completed roundabouts on the race course. Most importantly, though, more than $40,000 was raised for the North Carolina Children's Hospital, and that's what the event is really all about. Kudos to the KKC organizers, staff and volunteers for putting on another great event! Hopefully the warm weather will return next year!

WTVD has a report with some video.