The Krispy Kreme Challenge

Here's a charity event I can certainly get behind:

The Krispy Kreme Challenge, a road race to test both your cardiovascular and gastrointestinal fitness.

Here's how it works:

In 2004, NC State Sophomore Chris McCoy came up with a challenge. He would gather some friends at the NC State belltower and begin a run toward downtown Raleigh. His jog would take him two miles downhill to the Raleigh Krispy Kreme bakery. There they would each consume 1 dozen of the legendary hot glazed doughnuts. The group would then run back to the belltower to finish the race.

All in less than an hour.

The race has grown in the last three years and morphed into a charitable event; it's being run this morning, and over eight hundred participants are running. Funds raised via entry fees and the sale of T-shirts go to the North Carolina Childrens Hospital.

No word on how many are running in the Extra Krispy category, which is the Full Monty: downing a dozen doughnuts in no more than a minute each while running a couple of two-mile legs before and after on a 12-minute pace.

To Complete the Krispy Kreme Challenge is to:

1) Run from the NC State Belltower to the Krispy Kreme on Peace Street.
2) Eat one dozen donuts.
3) Run back to the Belltower.
4) Do all this in under one hour.

People always ask if puking is allowed. Don’t puke on purpose. That’s not fair to the rest of us. Keeping the doughnuts down is the real challenge, don’t cheat yourself!

Now, truth to tell, a 12-minute mile is barely a jog; a respectable racewalker could do that. Hell, I walk a fifteen-minute mile on crowded NYC sidewalks, and I'm a fat man.

I doubt I could do it after a dozen Krispy Kremes, though.

Ladies and gentlemen of the Krispy Kreme Challenge, my hat's off to you.

The Krispy Kreme Challenge

Mmmmm - 20051101_0047
Originally uploaded by EngelFish.

P.S. Here's the nutritional information:

Doughnuts: 12 Original Glazed Krispy Kreme Doughnuts

• 2400 calories
• 1200 fat calories
• 144g of fat
• 36g of saturated fat
• 48g of trans fat
• 60mg of Cholesterol
• 1140mg of sodium
• 120g of sugar
• 24g of protein

And here's a photo of the famous neon sign outside the Krispy Kreme mothership at the corner of Peace and Person Streets in Raleigh, NC.

Krispy Kreme
Originally uploaded by beebo wallace.

Back in the early 1990s, I lived (with several roommates) in a charming old Victorian house in the Oakwood neighborhood of Raleigh, three blocks away from this 24-hour doughnut mecca.

Being an insomniac who was likely to start jonesing for doughnuts in the wee small hours of the morning, I met every cop, hooker, schizophrenic, and night-owl (and a few people who might have met more than one of these criteria) in the neighborhood over a very short period of time.

Of lemurs, lorises and layups

A lovely and apposite travel story about the part of Piedmont North Carolina that I'm presently in, and our obsession with college basketball, in (of all places) the New York Times: A Triangle Equal to the Sum of Its Hoops:

The gentle hills of the Triangle region of North Carolina are spangled with the prim brick McMansions of migrant techies lured by opportunity and temperate weather — almost any day is good for squeezing in 18 holes. Out on the wandering back roads, tall pines still cast thin shadows, turning a sunny-day drive into a sparkling strobe-light show. Just roll down the window to air out your soul. The Triangle, bounded by the cities of Raleigh, Durham and Chapel Hill, is an easy place to live and an even easier place to visit. Refill your sweet-tea glass and sit a while.

But at this time of year, an earlier immigrant from the North slices its pleasant homogeneity into three. The pulsating indoor game of college basketball takes over, dividing loyalties and generating friction. In the Triangle, even if you are not a fervent fan, you must share the deep regional certainty that basketball is really, really important.

Important? Ha. I've been living in NYC for ten years now, and I will, this year as always, arrange to take a vacation day on the opening Friday of the ACC Tournament.

In there amongst all the Tobacco Road and roundball references, writer Dave Caldwell even manages to work in an unexpected shoutout to one of my all-time favorite Triangle institutions, the Duke University Lemur Center, which works to study and preserve the earliest (evolutionarily speaking) surviving primates on the planet, the lemurs, lorises and other prosimian cousins of Madagascar.

Aye-aye, captain (picture of Aye-aye, Daubentonia madagascariensis,
courtesy Duke Lemur Center)

These cute little buggers are the ancient ancestors of monkeys, apes, and human beings (for those of you not into evolutionary "theory," relax... Satan put them on Madagascar to confuse us all and test our faith.)

Update: Do check out the Modulator's Friday Ark today - and later tonight, Carrie is going to please Mister Gato's large Internet fanbase with a bit of catblogging.

Man-Mur Barber Shop: Tonsorial excellence in Raleigh

Continuing in our series of service-blogging posts about the Triangle area of North Carolina:

The best $12 old-school haircut in Raleigh (complete with straight-razor neck shaving) can be found at Man-Mur Barber Shop on Hillsborough Street, over by the NC State University campus.

Craptacular cellphone camera shot of Man-Mur Barber Shop

Man-Mur, sandwiched in between a coffee shop and a shoe store that seems to specialize in sandals and clogs, is the kind of place where the TV mounted on the wall alternates between CNN and Country Music Television, and the barbers are happy to keep up a running commentary on either.

Conversations occur between and across barbers, customers, ideologies and party lines, and there's a comforting rhythm and regularity to the place; when the phone rang this Saturday morning as I was getting a trim, every barber in the place sang out "1 PM!" before the guy closest to the phone picked it up.

Sure enough, he said "1PM, you're welcome" and hung up.

I accused him of being psychic, and he laughed and said, for years, when the phone rang on a Saturday morning, he just picked it up and said, "1PM, $12, yes he's working." (The Saturday closing time, the cost of a haircut, and the answer to "is my favorite barber there?" Man-Mur is not open on Sundays.)

That $12 buys you a careful and fine haircut, and for an additional $6 they'll do a hot-lather facial shave or a beard trim.

Haircuts there have been $12 for as long as I can remember.

Highly recommended.

Man-Mur Barber Shop (Google Maps link)
2708 Hillsborough St
Raleigh, NC 27607
(919) 832-4170

No static at all: Understanding Triangle (NC) FM radio

Never let it be said that we don't do service journalism (service blogging?) at enrevanche.

Helpful hints for NC visitors:

When in the Triangle area of North Carolina, everything worth listening to on FM radio can be found at 91.5 FM or below on your dial, including two (!) very fine jazz stations:

88.1 - WKNC, NC State's student radio station
88.7 - WXDU, Duke University's student radio station
88.9 - WSHA, Shaw University (jazz format)
89.3 - WXYC, UNC's student radio station
89.7 - WCPE, privately-funded classical radio station
90.7 - WNCU, NC Central University (jazz format)
91.5 - WUNC, North Carolina Public Radio/NPR news/talk

All else on the FM dial is dross; a programmed, formatted morass of pop, country, Christian and "urban contemporary" bullshit... the same stale wasteland that commercial radio everywhere has become, essentially.

Since the student radio stations (KNC, XDU, XYC) are relatively low-output and you'll only be able to pick up one or at most two of them, depending on where in the Triangle you are, you now have all the information you'll need to program the presets on your rental car's radio.