The story of my first ever Krispy Kreme Challenge goes like this.

(Compliments of guest blogger, Mariana Byrd)

I run. I run fast. I'm passing people and I feel good. I feel ready to eat a dozen donuts. I love donuts. More specifically, I love Krispy Kreme "hot and now" donuts. My two mile run to the Krispy Kreme store on Peace Street in Raleigh is good and I get there ready to eat. Unfortunately, as I suspected, it is impossible to have "hot and now" donuts ready for 5,000 people to eat. I anticipated this, so it doesn't get me down, and I grab my box of a dozen glazed donuts and begin to eat.

The goal is to finish in 1 hour, so I estimate I have approximately 30 minutes to eat a dozen donuts, which would then leave me 15 minutes to run back two miles to the finish line. Doable, definitely doable. Especially because I estimate that I can eat 12 donuts in about 15 minutes or less.

I was wrong. Very, very wrong. I should have dedicated at least as much time to my donut consumption skills as I did to running.

I began eating the first donuts calmly. They were good. Cold, but good. I thought "no problem, slow and steady wins the race". Except the slow and steady doesn't apply to putting food in your stomach. Especially when you don't have all day.

After the 4th donut, I started squishing the donuts to get rid of all the air before I put it in my mouth. I had heard that this speeds up your time and at this point I was ready to try something. More so because all around me were people complaining about eating all 12 donuts.

All around me people were gagging, throwing up, chanting...there was just about everything you could imagine thousands of people doing while trying to eat a dozen donuts.

I felt myself slowdown while eating my 6th donut. Of course, this was natural because I never eat more than 6 donuts at one time. I kept going but it was slower. Around donut number 8, I began dipping the donuts in water. Not as gross as I imagined. It actually helped a lot. There was less chewing and more swallowing with the water dipping method. This worked well until they called "time".

Time? I wasn't ready to start running! I still had two more donuts left! I quickly realized that 30 minutes had passed and I had only eaten 10 out of 12 donuts. I had two options: 1) Stop eating and start running in order to make it in under an hour. But I couldn't do that, I signed up to be a challenger which meant that I had to eat all 12, or 2) finish eating the 2 donuts as fast as I could and start running knowing full well that I wasn't going to be able to run 2 miles in 10 minutes.

I chose option number 2. I ate as fast as I could all the while trying not to have it come back up again. I started running 5 minutes later and threw my empty box away (oddly enough, I wanted to keep it as a souvenir but we had to get rid of them). The first mile back was probably the hardest mile I have ever had to run. I wanted to run fast but my stomach wouldn't let me and I vowed not to throw up because then what's the fun in that?!

I made it back, running, not walking, which I was happy about. I was happy that I ate all 12 donuts, ran the 4 miles, and finished the race. I was not happy that my time was 1 hour and 13 minutes. But that has not yet convinced me to do it again next year.

The Krispy Kreme Challenge is a great run. I am glad that I can say I did it. Maybe one day I'll forget how it felt to eat 12 donuts and do it again to see if I can finish in under an hour. I know it's possible, hundreds of people finished in under an hour...they must be good, very good. How about you?