Donut try this at home

Palm Coast Observer
Opinion

Monday mornings always seem to be dreaded. They were pretty monotonous when I was in school, but now that I’m a working man, they are much different.

This past Monday, I woke up around 7:30 a.m., got ready for work and headed out the door. Once in my car, I figured it’d be a good day to head over to Dunkin’ Donuts. I order the same thing every time I go there: a large, hot tea with milk and sugar. Sometimes — if I’m feeling risky — I’ll snag a glazed donut to go with my tea.

However, this week, I was feeling dangerous.

Rather than the glazed, I decided to go with a blueberry cake donut.

As the day wore on, I got hungry and headed out for lunch. I got two slices of pizza, which I washed down with a raspberry iced tea.

Talk about a healthy diet for someone who is training for a marathon, right?

It gets so much better. Sort of.

As the afternoon rolled around, I headed out to Matanzas High School. I was about to get into something to which I’m not necessarily proud to admit. The Pirates cross-country team was holding its second-annual Donut Endurance Challenge, an event solely used as a fundraiser and has literally zero training benefits.

The way it works is each runner has to down a Krispy Kreme glazed donut and then run a lap. You repeat the process until you don’t finish the lap within the time limit or — wait for it — spew out vomit.

There were some pretty lofty time stipulations, too. For the boys, you had to run each lap faster than 1 minute, 45 seconds. To add to the torture, you only had one minute to eat the donut. The female runners had two minutes to run the lap.

With everything explained, Matanzas coach James Wolfe ordered all runners to grab a donut and begin eating. The clock started.

I searched around like a scavenger for the smallest possible donut. I needed to cut every corner I could. Once I found my victim, I balled the donut up like a piece of Play-Doh in my hand and scarfed it down.

Off I went on the first lap.

I was at a pretty good pace, finishing in about 1:40. I wasn’t too tired. But the fun was just beginning.

Time for donut No. 2.

It was more of the same — trying to find the smallest donut available and thinking of ways to ease the process of actually eating it.

Earlier that morning, I enjoyed the blueberry cake donut. But I didn’t enjoy these donuts one bit. I resented the fact that I had icing all over my hands and in my beard. Just the smell was beginning to get to me.

I got down the last bite just in time to set off on the second lap.

In the back of my mind, I was thinking, I won’t be able to last much longer. But thanks to my co-workers thinking I wouldn’t last very long, I had motivation to prove them wrong.

The only one who gave me credit was Mallorie Bruce, our layout editor, who said I could finish seven.

Five laps in, I was preparing to eat my sixth donut, and runners were dropping like flies. All the small donuts had disappeared by then, so I had to think of another way to gain that edge.

I grabbed some water and, after stuffing the donut in my mouth, I squirted water in next. It turned into glazed-donut soup. Albeit tasty, I never would recommend it for anyone, especially not when you’re running a 6-minute mile pace in 95-degree weather.

Eight donuts and two miles later, I called it quits. I proved everyone wrong. Sweet victory!

But I was outlasted by several runners.

Joe Rosell defended his title by downing 18 donuts and completing 18 laps. Gabrielle Prickett was the girls winner, after she finished 13 donuts/laps.

“This is an event that we do strictly for fun,” Wolfe said. “It is totally counterproductive when it comes to training, but our athletes seem to enjoy suffering through it as a matter of pride.”

I’ll probably stay away from donuts for now. For the record, I didn’t throw up ... yet.