Sunday, March 09, 2008

I'm no Kobayashi, but...

...I have won a hot dog eating contest.

When I walked into the hockey game, a couple of the guys from the front office tried to recruit me to enter the contest, which they planned on holding during the first intermission.

When I was told that the winner got an Anton Khudobin stick signed by the entire team I decided to give it a try. After all, I couldn't be more humiliated than that time I did sumo hockey, right?

I figured I'd probably eat about three and say I'm done.

So I go down there and see the competition. I'm the smallest of the three guys. Right about then I'm thinking "there's no way I'm winning this thing."

We come out and as we're just about to start we get a curveball thrown at us by bringing out the team's equipment manager to participate.

Then we got the rules... as many as you can eat in three minutes.

I started out kind of slow, but as I got going I picked up the pace, noticing that water did help a lot in getting the bread to go down. I finished the three minutes tied with another guy for first with four five and 3/4 dogs eaten.

So we go to a one-minute overtime. I'm thinking "Oh fuck, not more!"

When they start us up, I picked up one and the other guy got one in each hand and started. I figured I was screwed right then. But right about the time I finished the first one, I saw he was about halfway through his two so I knew I still had a chance. I picked up my pace a little on the second dog and finished it with a few seconds left just about the same time the other guy did.

I quickly grabbed a third hot dog and took a bite right before the horn went off, squeezing out the contest by that one bite and taking home the stick and bragging rights.

I must have looked pretty rough during the second period, as one of the ladies near me almost flagged down the team doc to take a look at me, but I was fine.

Well, besides feeling like I needed a nap.

(Corrected because now that I think about it I ate one more than I said I did the first round)

No comments: