Anyone here have any experience with competitive eating contests?

The only competitive eating I've done is a bet I had with a couple of co-workers about 15 years ago on who could eat the most slices of pizza at a lunchtime buffet. I ate 18 slices (they were pretty small, so it was probably a whole xtra large pizza) and I can't remember if I won or not, since we all pretty much slept at our desks that afternoon.

You all saw the announcement of what I'll be doing on March 1, so you know that I'm going to be looking down at a plate filled with sweet, artery clogging pork candy and wondering how to eat it all & ask for seconds.

The eating contest is supposed to run from 2pm to 3pm, and I'm assuming that we'll have the whole hour to get busy with chowing down. I'm assuming that the bacon will be sliced to a regular thickness like you find at the store, so it's probably fair to figure that it will weigh approximately 1 ounce per slice (precooked weight), resulting in 16 slices per pound. If I plan on eating a slice every 15 seconds, that puts me on pace to eat 1/4 pound of bacon every minute, and gives me a hour-end total of 15 pounds. Now, don't get me wrong, I don't WANT to eat 15 pounds of bacon at one sitting, but I've got to have a pace, so this is the one I've chosen. I'm not figuring in any bathroom breaks, or stopping to laugh as my opponents spew half-digested bacon & PBR on the crowd, so that pace isn't intended to be an hour-long average. I just figure that I should try to eat at a constant rate, and that seems like a good number to shoot for.

What I need now is advice on how to prepare myself for the day of reckoning. Should I eat lots of bulky foods in the run-up to the event to help stretch my stomach, or should I go in hungry & hope my stomach stretches enough during the competition to accomodate the platters of crispy pig that I'll be wolfing down? One of my college buddies is going with me, and he jokingly said that he's planning on sitting down every night with "Eye of the Tiger" on the stereo and 2 pounds of bacon on his plate to "train for the event".

Any thoughts?

posted by Russ from Winterset at 11:04 AM

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