SO MANY CONTESTS, SO LITTLE TIME

One of our fellow UEPa members—Derek “Wing Tut” Payne—has a busy eating schedule over the next few days. He’ll be in a sausage contest tonight and he tried to enter a live radio show event on Friday, but missed being the lucky 18th caller by four lousy callers. And on Saturday he’ll join us at Denny’s Beer Barrel Pub where we’ll each attempt to eat some of the largest burgers in the civilized world.

Multiple eating contests in short periods of time is rough, but it can also make for some great stories.

After my very first IFOCE event (Shoofly Pie in June) I was entered in a hot sauce eating contest in Harrisburg that was scheduled to take place about three hours later. I had signed up a few weeks prior thinking the sweet pie and spicy sauce would compliment each other well. Maybe even cancel each other out. Whatever that means. I drove back from the pie contest in Lancaster feeling bloated, but not horrible after eating two-and-a-half pounds of gooey pie in 8 minutes.

I found the hot sauce contest organizer and he let me test the sauce. It was called "Rectum Wrecker" and it was…how do you say?...hot as fuck. I walked around the block to think about things and savor the feeling of my tongue slowly melting and running the back of my throat. When I returned, I offered my apologies and bowed out of the competition about an hour before it started.

On one hand, I think I made the right decision. Drinking hot sauce isn't really "competitive eating" and as a food-based athlete you have to push your stomach to its limits but you also have to respect your stomach. On the other hand, it would have been pretty cool to compete in two such different contests in one day. Damn contradictory hindsight.