Race Day Forecast

While temperatures during the day Saturday will be much warmer than what the area has seen this week, Saturday morning should still be cool. Runners and spectators need to dress warmly for race day.

6 a.m.

Sunny skies with temperatures in the low 30s.

9 a.m.

Sunny skies remain with temperatures climbing into the 40s.

Noon

Temperatures reaching into the mid-50s with sunny skies.

It all started out as a fun experiment between friends, and after weekly Wednesday night meetings over beers at Mitch’s, the event grew, with more than 5,000 pre-race day registrants for the sixth annual Krispy Kreme Challenge.

Chris McCoy, now a University of Louisville grad student, decided it would be fun for him and a few of his friends to run from the Bell Tower to the Krispy Kreme in downtown Raleigh on Peace Street, eat a dozen doughnuts each and run back to the Bell Tower — in under an hour.

And six years ago, after a lot of talk about it “for multiple years,” 10 students finally gathered at the Bell Tower in early February to do just that.

The irony on race day was that McCoy slept in — but the race still took place.

Greg Mulholland, an alumnus and director of engineering at Kyma Technology in Raleigh, was one of the founders of the challenge and a photographer for Technician at the time. He alerted Sports Illustrated about the challenge and the KKC made it onto the list of “100 things you gotta do before you graduate.”

Where to watch the Krispy Kreme Challenge

Bell Tower

What better place to watch the event than at the start and finish line? By 9:30 a.m. you will be able to see more than 5,000 participants line up to get the race going. The challengers will be at the front of the crowd, followed by the casual runners. Once runners begin making their way back to the Bell Tower to finish the race, stay close to the tower to see who can make it back without losing their doughnuts.

Ihop

If you would like to sit down to watch the race in a warmer environment, maybe the International House of Pancakes is the place for you. You can check out the runners as they go by while you enjoy your eggs, pancakes and orange juice. Be sure to be finished with your food before runners head back up Hillsborough Street, you surely wouldn’t want to watch people lose control of their stomachs while finishing off your breakfast.

Intersection of Hillsborough Street and St. Marys Street

Fun Facts about Krispy Kreme Challenge

-The doughnut boxes used in Saturday’s race would stand more than 16 stories tall if stacked up.

-The runners in the Krispy Kreme Challenge will consume over a third of a ton of doughnuts on race day.

-Competitors will run more than 4,000 miles while completing the race.

-Each competitor who finishes the dozen glazed will consume enough calories, 2,400, to last them the day.

Check out how the challengers are doing here and you may be able to tell who is going to compete for the fastest time. This vantage point should allow you to see runners coming from the Bell Tower area and let you watch them run down the street as they get closer to Krispy Kreme.

Krispy Kreme

While this may not be the best locale to see the road portion of the race, this is the place to be if you want to see the pain of eating 12 glazed doughnuts. Hang out here to check out the different doughnut-eating techniques, and perhaps more importantly, to see who can actually eat the entire dozen. The first to arrive at Krispy Kreme may not always be the race favorite.

The next year, the event grew bigger as the organizers created a Web site for registrants.

“On the day of the event, twice as many showed up as signed up,” Mulholland said.

Because the 150 participants had to pay a $10 fee for T-shirts and the doughnuts, a lot of money was left over — about $1,000.

“We knew some people who were working with dance marathon, and so we gave it to the [North Carolina] children’s hospital,” Peyton Hassinger, one of the founders, said.

During Hassinger’s senior year, around October, the group of friends began debating whether to hold the challenge again.

“We got together one night over beers at Mitch’s, and we decided to go all out and make it happen,” Hassinger said. “For the next two months, we got together at Mitch’s every Wednesday to plan.”

The three friends, in addition to two other friends, Saket Vora and Ben Gaddy, continued to work for the challenge, trying to get publicity and sponsorships.

And it worked.

One thousand four hundred people came out to the race, which both Mulholland and Hassinger said was much more than they expected.

Hassinger, now in medical school at the Mayo Clinic, said he is so proud of how much the challenge has grown.

“It makes us all proud. This was kind of our little baby in college — some crazy idea a few guys drinking beer came up with. And now 5,000 people do it, it’s pretty hilarious,” he said.

Mulholland agreed.

“It’s like my baby has grown up and gone to college, and it’s not like it’s my baby anymore — it’s N.C. State’s baby,” he said.

Although Mulholland said he feels like he is still attached to the challenge and would have done some things differently if he were in charge after he graduated, he still thinks the organizers continue to do a great job with this N.C. State tradition.

And Hassinger said there is one tip he can give participants.

“If your goal is just to complete it in under an hour, you don’t have to cram the doughnuts down as fast as you can because that just makes you puke,” he said. “If your goal is just to make it in under an hour, you can spend 15 or 20 minutes eating the doughnuts.”

Mulholland added another tip. “Water seems like it makes it easy, but don’t forget that you have to run back with all that in your stomach,” he said. Both advised the event is about making it as fun as possible.