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Tour de Donut 2004

The last time I rode the Tour de Donut in 2001, I was concerned that too many cyclists were taking the event way too seriously. It seemed at the time too much emphasis was being placed on getting the fastest time and not emphasis was being placed on the real winners of the Tour de Donut, the people with the best adjusted time.

For those of you not familiar with the Tour de Donut, it is a bicycle "race" of about 30 miles with two stops to eat doughnuts. You receive a 5-minute time bonus for each doughnut you eat, and the people with the best adjusted times are the big winners of the event. The people with the fastest times and most doughnuts eaten also are honored for their feats.

Each year, the Tour de Donut begins and ends in Staunton, Ill., and the people of the small town of 5,300 people really make the cyclists feel welcome. The Staunton High School band played for us just before the race, and the starter for the race was none other than Miss Staunton! Several people lined Staunton's Main Street to see the peloton of about 600 people leave town on their way to a somewhat hilly course that visits the even smaller towns of Prairietown and Worden.

This year's Tour de Donut was a reunion of sorts for me. One of the people I ran into was Joe Booth, the one-time president of the Mid-America Bicycle Club, the club that created the Tour de Donut in 1989. At the first doughnut stop in Prairietown, I caught up with Joe and his wife, Judy, to talk about Tours de Donut of the past. All of us are past winners of the event, and we're still amazed how much the event has grown from its humble beginnings in 1989.

I knew I had no chance to win this year. I cannot come close to eating the 20 to 30 doughnuts needed to win the men's version of the event. Yet, I had a burst of adrenaline at the start of the ride, and the excitement of the event prompted me to eat seven doughnuts at the first stop.

At the second doughnut stop in Worden, I talked to one of my friends from the Belleville Area Bicycling and Eating Society (BABES), Charles Beil. He's recovered quite nicely from an accident he had in June. Charles always is a contender for the adjusted time title, and he was back in good form. As for me, I decided to eat six doughnuts at the second stop, three at a time. The serious doughnut contenders often squish three or four Jubelt's glazed doughnuts together and eat them at once, so I figured I should do that as well.

To top it all off, Karl Painter, the first winner of the Tour de Donut, was standing alongside Main Street as we returned onto Main Street in Staunton. It was great to see Karl and slap his hand as I closed out the Tour de Donut. Too bad he wasn't riding.

I don't know how well I did yet. I had to leave to go to work before the results were announced, and the results were not posted on the Boeing Employees Bicycle Club's site at the time I wrote this account. But it was good to see lots of people sticking around, drinking water or soda and eating sloppy joes, hot dogs and watermelon. A box of doughnuts sat near the soda and water tanks. They went untouched.

Roger 0 comments 12:40 PM