Utah Tour de Donut

I just realized that I never posted a race recap of the Utah Tour de Donut that I did earlier this month.

The Utah Tour de Donut is one of the funnest races I do every year. This bicycle race is put on every year by the Rotary Club of American Fork and they raise money for a charity doing this.

2011 was the first year I did this race and it was fun, so I decided to do it again this year. The whole point of the race is, you ride your bike in a 7 mile loop, stop and eat as many glazed donuts as you can, ride the 7 mile loop again, stop and eat as many donuts as you can, then ride the 7 mile loop the last time and ride through the finish line. For each donut you eat, you get 4 minutes off of your time.

As I was riding down to American Fork with my friend Sylvia and Kim, I thought I’d take it easy again on the donuts this year. I was just going to have fun with it.

Well, somewhere during the first 7 mile loop I decided to go all out, balls to the walls, and if I was going to do this ride, I was going to do it right. My competitive side came out. During the first 7 mile loop, I was cruising. I was down in my aero bars on my bike and I seemed to be going pretty fast.

As I came in to the donuts for the first time, I decided to eat 4 donuts!!! Now, 4 donuts might not sound like alot, but when you still have 14 miles of biking left to do, 4 donuts can be alot. I used the smashing technique where you take 2 donuts and smash them almost paper thin so you can eat them faster. As I came in to the donut table, I’d heard that someone had already eaten 23 donuts!!! 23 DONUTS!!! Make me sick & call me Chuck!

I ate those 4 donuts and got my hands rinsed off and was off on the bike again. The 2nd loop of 7 miles was still pretty good. I felt a little sluggish this time, but nothing too bad. I kept looking around for my friends that I’d left in the dust (sorry!) because my bike is fast. But, I never saw them. I was passing people pretty fast though.

I came back in to the donut table for the 2nd and final time and downed 4 more donuts.I honestly thought I was going to barf. It was SO sweet and SO just…ugh. But, I did it. I smashed the donuts again this time. They were tasty, but I was just ready to be done with the donuts.

After I downed the 4 donuts, I headed back out for the last 7 miles. I was feeling pretty good until about mile 4, then all the sugar from the donuts was starting to hit and I felt sluggish and slow. Somehow I still seemed to keep a pretty decent speed.

I crossed the finish line with a total time of 1:15:28. Not too bad. Take 34 minutes off of that for the 8 donuts I ate and my time was 51:28. I was satisfied. I had fun and that’s all that counts. I got to see my friends come in from the ride and they seemed to have a good time as well. They couldn’t believe I had 8 donuts!! I couldn’t believe I had 8 donuts as well.

We didn’t stick around for awards. Knowing that there were people there that had 30+ donuts, I didn’t think I had a chance in hell of coming in 1st, 2nd or 3rd. So, we packed up our bikes and headed home.

I got on Facebook later and asked my friends in one of the groups I was in how everybody did at the Tour de Donut and they said they had fun and they were congratulating me on coming in 3rd. I was like, what? I contacted the race crew and I had managed to come in 3rd out of all females!!! Woot!!! So, they mailed me my trophy (there’s a picture on Facebook).

This is definitely one of those races I will do every year. Whether I’ll eat 8 donuts next year, I’m not sure.

P.S. Sorry there aren’t very many pictures. I didn’t get any of myself during the race, but you can see a couple on their website.