Fox's Pizza Den Challenge

While I was in Switzerland, I met a lot of people, many of which are also in the design program, and most of which I had never even seen before. One of which was Cullen. During the study abroad, we did everything in a group, so we all spent A LOT of time one with another, so it was very easy to get to know everybody well. Within the first few days, I knew Cullen could eat like a champion and the rest of the trip only reconfirmed that. Of course we spoke about eating contests and such and that eventually evolved into us deciding that we should try to tackle the Fox's Pizza Den challenge. For a month we talked about it and got ourselves stoked up. Then we came home and made it reality.

For those unaware, the challenge is to eat a 30 in. pizza, which weighs about 10 lbs. in an hour. Only two people can do the challenge and you cannot throw up. Cullen and I figured that we have done our fair share of eating contests and we knew how to handle ourselves. Plus, we both knew we can down large amounts of pizza. We were confident.

Here is a picture of the beast (and my cutie):

Here's Cullen. He's ready to go. You should have seen him dive in when they started the clock.
Our friend Mitch came to document the event and got a ton of really good video and images, so when I get that, I'll have to post more. But here's rundown of how it went:

We started strong, but not too strong. Within 15 minutes we had done half the pizza and began the second half. Then it got hard. But Cullen was still going strong. The sauce wasn't too spicy, but after mass quantities of it, it began to be lethal. We soon found that the roof of our mouths were raw from the acidic pizza sauce, spices and the crust rubbing and tearing the skin off. Then, our gag reflexes began to act up and it wasn't that we were full, because we weren't, or not miserably full at least. Our bodies were just pissed and were trying to avoid a disaster and didn't want us to swallow anymore than we already had. We dealt with the sensitive gag reflex for a while. Boy, I'll tell ya, it was scary when a burp came or when we'd try to swallow an ambitious amount of pizza.

Finally we were down to our two-minute warning and still had two large pieces left. We threw all caution to the wind and went for it, but it wasn't enough. It was devistating. It was humiliating. We lost. Do we have regrets? Well, yes, of course, I mean, we didn't win. All in all though, how could we have regrets? We gave it our all. And our all was dang impressive.

Here's what was left:

People are telling me things like, "Better luck next time," but we're not doing it again. Though we appreciate the kind words, we're not doing it again. We had our moment in time and we didn't live up to it. Sad but true. Besides, I don't think the employees want me throwing up all over their front lawn again.

I'll post Mitch's pics when I get them. They really tell the whole story: the joy, the pain, the agony and the defeat.