Despite a nagging knee issue (notice how I still refuse to call it an injury), I’ve kept telling myself that I’ll be able to compete in the Uwharrie Mountain Run on Feb. 4. Even though it’s a 40-mile run. Even though it’s on a hilly trail. And even though I haven’t managed to complete a single run longer than 13 miles since November. None of that mattered, of course, because I’d simply gut it out on race day.

But it’s time to face the reality that I have no business running that distance through the woods in my current condition. Today, I finally e-mailed the race organizers to let them know that they should give my spot to a lucky person on their waiting list.

Sure, it hurts a little to finally admit it. But it’s also a relief. During the past year, I’ve fallen in love with running for its stress-relieving, worry-zapping powers. Recently, however, I haven’t been able to run more than 5 miles without stressing and worrying that my knee won’t be able to carry me 40 miles. Now, without that fear clouding my thoughts, I’m willing to bet that this 5-mile run I’m about to take will be a breeze.

Plus, I’m comforted by the fact that my dream of running an ultra isn’t dying. I’m just putting it on hold. A wise friend of mine recently told me about an injury he endured while training for an Ironman a few years ago. He had to stop running for a while, but he eventually healed up and ran a 50-mile race last summer. “The way I look at it,” he said, “is that an injury every now and then is the price of admission for doing cool stuff.”

I couldn’t agree with him more.

In the mean time, I should probably be on the lookout for more cool stuff with less impact on my knees. Pillow fighting, anyone?

Instead, I’m entering a race that’s just plain insane.

I’m running an ultramarathon.

The Uwharrie Mountain Run is a 40-mile trail run billed as “a true adventure that requires intense concentration.” That’s probably because the course promises treacherous hills, ample opportunities to fall down, the potential to easily get lost in the forest, and numerous stream crossings, which depending on the weather, could be freezing cold.

Of course, it could also be raining.

Or snowing.

Fortunately, I’ll probably be far too insane to care.

At the urging of my friend and former boss Bil Boyd, I have applied to appear on the ABC show Wipeout. Yes, I have applied for the chance to look like a complete moron on national television. Don’t act like you’re surprised.

Obviously, I have no idea if I’ll ever hear back from the production company. As I understand it, most of the people who wind up on shows like this were discovered at on-site casting calls in California shopping malls. Or they slept with a producer.

As for me, I have no recollection of sleeping with a producer and I simply filled out an online application that posed some moderately probing questions, such as:

• What are your worst qualities?
• If you could be anyone living or dead, real or fiction, who would you be and why?
• If you were granted one wish (however impossible), what would it be and why?

In case you’re wondering, I said I can be a jerk; that I’d like to be Marty McFly so I can travel through time; and that I’d like to play a football game for the Steelers. On the moon. Why the Steelers? Because I’ve been a fan all my life. Why the moon? Because if we lose, at least I can say I’ve been to space.

As clever or just plain stupid as that might sound, who knows if anyone at the production company will read my application? Either way, I’ll keep you posted.

Even with that footnote as an excuse, I never intended to go four weeks without writing a post—let alone four months. Call it a hiatus, a sabbatical, a spiritual retreat, or plain laziness. No matter what, I’m back, and my next event is another marathon.

Even though I haven’t blogged since June, I haven’t stopped running. In fact, since the Tobacco Road Marathon in March, RunKeeper says I’ve run 568.6 miles, or about 20 miles each week. I’ve used most of that time to somewhat successfully concentrate on not falling face first on the trails at Umstead State Park. During the rest of the time, however, I’ve thought much about my next steps for this blog. Its future has mirrored the highs and lows that go along with long distance running. It’s gone as high as starting my own national egg toss championship and as low as pulling the plug on this whole project.

But for every time I think of one reason to stop blogging, I’m reminded of a dozen reasons to keep at it. Actually, today I was given 10,000 reasons to keep at it. That’s because the Japan Tourism Agency has proposed a campaign to give away 10,000 free roundtrip tickets to Japan, so long as the ticketholders publicize their trip on blogs and social media sites.

So, anybody know of something ridiculous I could enter in Japan?

Maybe a game show?

Unfortunately, my co-champ and I failed to secure a sponsor to send us to today’s event. So instead of competing for a world title, we played a backyard game of Russian Egg Roulette.

Watch the video to see what happened.

Now, I’m also falling short with my words. Probably because of all the beer I drank and time I spent baking in the sun.

Therefore, the highlight of today’s post is a video. Enjoy, but be advised that a middle-aged man nearly takes his pants off at the 3:04 mark.

Congrats to Aaron Todd, the inaugural Pan American Coaster Tossing Champion. Surely, a lucrative endorsement deal from Big Boss awaits you.

No. A destiny.

MAKE IT TO THE WORLD EGG THROWING CHAMPIONSHIP IN ENGLAND AND RAISE A BUNCH OF CASH FOR WORLD HUNGER

Clearly, as 2010 made way for 2011, I wasn’t just hoping to drop a few pounds or learn something new to expand my mind. I was aiming for global domination in a sport (if you’ll humor me and call it a sport) in which I am the reigning U.S. national champion.

An epic plan was hatched. My co-champion (and good friend) Mike Hepp and I would seek corporate sponsorship to send us to Swaton, England, for our world title shot. Along the way, we’d raise money for hunger-related charities. The sponsor would get some positive press coverage, hungry people would eat, and Mike and I would finally have an excuse to get WORLD CHAMPS tattooed on our chests.

Everyone would win.

Our efforts to attain sponsorship included the production of an epicly awesome video pitch, a website (thanks to my beautiful wife/web designer Carie), and a cleverly packaged direct mail campaign (egg cartons filled with plastic eggs stuffed with reasons to sponsor the champs).

The immediate results were impressive.

During that first week, the video racked up more than 700 hits on YouTube. Jason Jennings, a local TV sports reporter, blogged about our pitch, saying that we are “never short on tongue-in-cheek creativity.” We even received the ultimate pat on the back from Darren Rovell, a CNBC Sports Business Reporter who tweeted:

Any1 looking for sponsorship can learn from the US Egg Tossing Champs. Great pitch http://tiny.cc/5b4x6 (via @AnyoneCanEnter)

Unfortunately, most of the corporations we targeted for sponsorship didn’t quite see it the same way. The ones that actually responded were nice enough, but only before assuring me that they prefer to spend their time and money on actual charitable activities. Not egg tossers.

We did manage to flirt with the North Carolina Egg Association, but only after proclaiming that we might actually just pay our own way to England. Problem was, once we actually thought about shelling out more than $4,000 to fly ourselves and our wives to England to compete in an egg tossing tournament, it was easier to see what some of our potential sponsors were thinking.

That’s part of the reason why we have officially decided not to attend this year’s contest.

It’s a sad thing to finally type that.

For nearly the first five months of this year, I’ve been somewhat consumed with this idea. Now, here I am admitting that it won’t happen. That I’m giving in to the silliness of it all. That I won’t be meet World Egg Throwing Federation Andrew Dunlop in person this year.

Then again, I have no regrets about pursuing such a ridiculous adventure. If anything, I regret that I didn’t try harder to make it happen. That I didn’t follow through on booking that last-minute flight to Illinois to start a rally at the quarterly American Egg Board meeting. That I didn’t mail just two more egg cartons. That I didn’t tell enough people about the brilliance of such an insane idea.

Fortunately, Big Boss Brewing Company just dropped another tossing contest into my lap. Instead of eggs, I’ll be tossing coasters this Saturday for a chance at a Pan American title.

Plus, there’s no reason Mike and I can’t start saving up to make it to next year’s World Egg Throwing Championship.

Yeah, I think that might be a nice goal.

Or a destiny.

My only competitor and I have been running neck and neck, matching each other’s pace at every turn. But now, I’ve pulled ahead, and my lead continues to grow. My stride is true and I feel as though I could run like this all day. If so, I think, he’ll never catch me.

Too bad my heart is pounding so much that I can’t get my golf ball to stay on the tee. OK, good, there it is. Now take a deep breath. … DOH! I just hit my tee shot into the woods. That’ll cost a stroke, but at least I won’t lose time. That is, until—CRAP! I just hit my second shot into the sand trap! Stupid 6-iron. That’s going to take me at least 10 seconds to rake before … oh, great. Now he’s passing me.

Stupid Speed Golf!

A regular round of golf can last anywhere from about four to five hours. Either way, that’s brutally slow. So when NBC-17 morning anchor Penn Holderness recently asked me to play a round of speed golf at Brier Creek Country Club, I jumped at the chance to play 18 holes before most people have finished their Cheerios.

Watch Penn’s report of our round here.

The game is played just like traditional golf, except that players run between shots and scores are calculated by adding minutes played and strokes. Just like in regular golf, players are responsible for raking sand traps and fixing ball marks and are expected to adhere to the standard dress codes of the club where they’re playing. The only other major difference is that players carry only one or as many as six clubs.

For our round, I chose my 3-wood, 6-iron, 9-iron, and a putter. Of course, since I hadn’t picked up one of my clubs in about 16 months, I might as well have carried a rake. It would have been lighter, and I could have used it to simultaneously hit the ball and rake myself out of sand traps. Knowing that I’d be a little rusty, I also chose a wardrobe—consisting of a running jacket with zippered pockets and cargo shorts—that would accommodate plenty of spare balls and tees.

Aside from a Wikipedia page and a small website, there’s not an abundance of official information about speed golf, which seems to be most popular in Illinois, Chicago, and Canada, where a few tournaments are held. From the bits of info that I’ve gathered, golfers don’t play together in speed golf. That is, in tournament play, you won’t see two golfers tee off at the same time.

However, that makes for dull TV, so Penn and I decided to play together. As a result, our round turned into more of a race than a proper round of speed golf. Honestly, I think it was better that way.

I was able to keep up with my score for the first four holes, but things got fuzzy after that. That will happen when you’re hitting a fairway shot at the same time that your competitor is hitting out of a bunker 40 yards behind you and you’re in his line of fire. After nine holes, I had completely lost track of my score. Penn told me that I was two shots behind him, but I’m pretty sure it was more like four.

Incredibly, we kept the same pace for nearly the entire round—until my third shot on No. 17 landed in a crater-like sand trap. It took me two shots to make it out (probably because my club handles were nearly ungrippable as they were covered in dew and grass from constantly throwing them on the ground). I had to rake over most of the trap, and by the time I made my putt, Penn was already on the 18th tee. Lucky for me, his second shot landed in a water hazard, and since he wasn’t wearing cargo shorts with an endless supply of spare balls, he had to borrow one from me. Unfortunately, that didn’t stop me from sailing my third shot well over the green into another water hazard. On his next shot, Penn made it to the green. From there, he two-putted roughly two seconds before I sank my final putt.

We had covered 18 holes and a little more than three miles in 68 minutes.

If I’d been smarter, I wouldn’t have rushed things at the end. Speed golf, after all, is a combination of strokes and minutes played—it’s not just a race. If I had focused more on those last few shots and avoided the water, so what if it took me an extra minute?

Except that I wouldn’t have been in a great position to argue about my score, since I had sort of stopped paying attention to it again. Instead, I could only guess that I was still two shots behind Penn, who finished with an overall score of 172. That was good enough to claim the course record (if only because we were the first people to play speed golf at Brier Creek), but plenty of strokes and time off the world record set by Christopher Smith, who shot a 109 at the Chicago Speedgolf Classic in 2005.

Of course, I’ve read that lots of speed golfers say playing the game faster makes them better golfers. They say it keeps them from second guessing everything they do. For the most part, I found that to be true during my round. So maybe a few extra seconds on those final shots wouldn’t have made a difference, after all. Those were probably bad shots because I’m just bad at golf.

No matter what, I’ve never had more fun being bad at golf. I finished a round in a quarter of the time it takes most people to play and I got a great workout. Not only would I play speed golf again, I think I’d rather play speed golf than regular golf.

So when a speed golf tournament finally lands in my neck of the woods, my rake and I will be ready.

(In case you skipped the link above, go here to watch Penn’s story about our speed golf round. And check out the following video for my post-round interview with the new speed golf course record holder.)

It was the top of the fifth inning and the visiting Seattle Mariners held a 1-0 lead over the Boston Red Sox. As I learned the next day when I looked at the box score, Ichiro Suzuki scored that first run on a double by Milton Bradley. Normally, it would be the kind of important play that makes everyone take notice. Instead, I failed to notice the run for two innings. Probably because I was part of something exponentially more exciting.

I was in Durham, standing on a driveway belonging to a couple that I met in person less than one hour before. Like me, roughly two-dozen of their closest friends, acquaintances, and neighbors were halfway watching the game on a TV in their garage. And just like me, half of them were eating their fifth hot dog and drinking their fifth beer in hopes of completing the 999 Challenge, in which competitors eat nine hot dogs and drink nine beers during nine innings of a baseball game. Some of them were already on No. 8 and imagining which of them might throw up first seemed far more appealing than watching some sober guy on TV try to swat a ball with a wooden stick.

But then, almost out of nowhere, I was overwhelmed by more pressing matters. My new pair of shorts felt like they were shrinking and the belt around my waste might as well have been a noose. Had I bought the wrong size? Nope, that was actually my belly expanding at the rate of a quarter-inch per inning. The waistline held nearly five hot dogs and slightly more than four beers just fine, but I feared it wouldn’t support sixth, seventh, eighth, and ninth helpings. Oscar Meyer-flavored belches, which were becoming a by-the-minute occurrence, provided little relief.

The fact that stripping down to my underwear occurred to me—at a party where I barely knew anybody—was proof enough that I was in for the longest four innings of my life. (Not that I make a habit of taking off my pants at parties with people I’ve known for a long time.)

•     •     •     •     •     •     •     •     •     •     •     •     •     •     •     •     •

When I received the invitation to Matt Glass’ 999 Challenge, my first inclination was to decline. And not just because I have a terrible history with eating contests. After a year of competing in at least one offbeat or wacky competition, I was tired. I also worried that Matt’s 999 Challenge would violate the only rule I have for this blog and each contest I enter: Anyone must be able to enter the event. Clearly, this was more of a private contest.

Plus, I knew very little about my would-be host.

I did know that Matt Glass was one of the roughly 20 people I’ve never met who follows Anyone Can Enter on Twitter or is a fan of my Facebook page (which doesn’t include about a dozen Twitter followers that I’m pretty sure are robot spammers). In other words, he was a nonobligatory fan. Unlike a friend or a family member, he had no obligation to hit that Like button. He probably found the blog by chance, enjoyed watching a video of me humiliating myself in some fashion, and clicked Like without an ulterior motive. He wasn’t hoping that I would soon return the favor by Liking his recently uploaded vacation photos. He was simply a kindred spirit. Someone who seizes the day. Who’s willing to try any crazy sport once.

Or maybe, just maybe, he was a psychotic stalker and this was all a plot to lure me into some kind of deranged trap. Crazy as it sounds, I couldn’t rule anything out.

Soon after receiving his invitation, even worse scenarios occurred to me as I typed a mid-day e-mail to Carie. I had barely finished typing “999” in the Subject line when it hit me. What if 999 was a code for 666? Was I being invited to a satanic cult initiation?

I proceeded with caution. I Googled “999 challenge” and learned that it’s a rite of passage for an underground population of baseball fans. Some even do it at actual games, where it must cost them a small fortune. Next, I inspected the guest list for Matt’s 999 Challenge. Twelve people had already confirmed their attendance. A few of them even had mutual friends of mine from college. I Googled “Matt Glass” and “999 Challenge” and found an old blog post by one of his friends. I took a closer look at Matt’s Facebook profile picture. He didn’t look like a stalker at all. If anything, after my little investigation, I was the one stalking him.

All of a sudden, I felt like a spectacular creep.

But there was still the matter of this not being an event that anyone can enter. I thought about this for a while. Did I really need this rule? Wasn’t Anyone Can Enter more about the spirit of trying new things? Besides, anyone could pick up a case of beer, a couple of packs of hot dogs and buns, flip on their TV and attempt the 999 Challenge. So what if they couldn’t officially register for the 999 Challenge I was attending? So what if there wasn’t a race bib with an official entry number? So what if this event didn’t require a dozen sponsors and the cooperation of local law enforcement to redirect traffic for six hours on a Saturday morning?

Just like that, I had talked myself into the 999 Challenge.

•     •     •     •     •     •     •     •     •     •     •     •     •     •     •     •     •

A few days before the challenge, I spoke to Matt on the phone. Like me, he was just turning 30. He had recently completed some of the same events as me, like the Tobacco Road Marathon and the Krispy Kreme Challenge (except that Matt, unlike me, actually finished the challenge with an impressive time).

Matt and a friend tried the 999 Challenge on a whim in 2005 while watching a Yankees-Red Sox game. Both of them failed to make it past four innings, so they gave it a shot again the next year. Matt finished that year, but he later vomited, took a nap, and awoke feeling like he was “sweating hot dogs.” Despite that, he’s held a 999 Challenge at his house every year since.

Over the years he has tweaked the rules. Unlike the general 999 Challenge, competitors in Matt’s challenge must eat at least one hot dog and drink one beer during each inning. If a double play ends the first inning and you still have a sip of beer or the butt-end of a hot dog on your plate, you’re out of the contest. Also, competitors can eat more than one dog and drink more than one beer per inning. Those who play for the win will mix in a few double-dog, double-brew innings. The record at Matt’s 999 Challenge is 13, a record he owns. He even has a plague in his garage with the winners’ name from each year. Matt’s name is on nearly all of the plates, so I asked him for his No. 1 piece of advice for a newcomer whose only hope is to complete the challenge.

“Don’t do anything differently than you would normally do,” he said. “If you have a favorite brand of hot dog, stick with it. If you have a favorite beer, stick with your brand.”

I couldn’t claim a favorite hot dog brand, so I decided to choose a combination of dogs, buns, and brew that stuck closest to the 300-calorie minimum. I found a bag of buns at 90 calories each, a 10-pack of Oscar Meyer dogs with 130 calories each, and I chose Yuengling Light and its 99 calories as my beer.

At 319 calories per inning, I was set to consume a whopping 2,871 calories during the game.

In order to maintain an inkling of dietary balance, I decided I should go for a 10-mile run on the day of the challenge. I threw in an extra 2.7 miles for good luck to burn an estimated 1,433 calories. When I factored in what I ate for breakfast and lunch, I calculated that my net total of calories for the day would be 2,089. Not too shabby, I thought. I didn’t bother tallying the fat, sodium, and artificial ingredients I was about to consume. Some things, like hot dogs, are better left a mystery.

Even after speaking to Matt and making my caloric calculations, a few co-workers and family members thought I was crazy.

The day of the challenge, I even received an e-mail from my parents and a phone call from my dad, suggesting that I shouldn’t enter because he thought the 999 challenge sounded like a “freshman-year binge drinking event.” I assured him this wasn’t the case. I had a designated driver. Not to mention the fact that my beer tastes had long since evolved past freshman level. Nine light beers didn’t scare me at all.

But what really bugged him, I think, was that the 999 Challenge seemed to have no redeeming value. Was there any possibility that I’d be a better person after such a gluttonous pursuit? Was there any way that the world would be better for it?

Probably not. But there was only one way to know for sure.

•     •     •     •     •     •     •     •     •     •     •     •     •     •     •     •     •

When Carie and I arrived at Matt’s house, half the neighborhood appeared to be spilling out of his garage. Matt, who wore gym shorts and a neon shirt that read THE CHAMP IS HERE, spotted us immediately. He and his wife Danica were gracious hosts. Since our game was getting ready to start, Matt gave me some quick instructions. I opted to throw a few of my hot dogs on the gas grill, rather than the rented hot dog rotisserie. I was the 11th person to write my name on the dry-erase scoreboard (one more person entered after me) and I also weighed in at 165 pounds. Yes. There was a scale by the TV.

Since I hadn’t eaten much in the past five hours, I was happy to bite into my first hot dog. In fact, I had finished it before the first out. The first beer was equally welcome.

Over the first few innings, I watched the game like I had never watched baseball. Although I wasn’t paying much attention to who was at bat, the count, or the score, I constantly kept watch over a small arrow next to the inning, indicating whether it was the top or the bottom of the inning. And the outs. Every other inning, usually with about 2 outs in the top of the inning, someone seated near the TV would yell, “Two outs!” Inevitably, this would cause at least two people, who were standing in the driveway and thought the inning would soon be over, to chug their beers. Once, I’m sad to say, it even happened to me.

The Mariners eventually took a 2-0 lead into the bottom of the sixth inning. By then, the scale said I was nearly four pounds heavier. Fortunately, the pressure on my waistline had eased after a pit stop. Even better, I wasn’t really feeling the effects of the alcohol. Most likely because it was competing with processed meat, gooey balls of dough, and French’s mustard.

My biggest problem was that I seemed to be missing two hot dogs, which were probably casualties of another drunken competitor. I decided not to worry about it, knowing that there were plenty of dogs on the grill. At that point, I didn’t think anyone would mind the new guy stealing his wiener.

While I was simply happy to be on track to complete the challenge, Matt had set a gut-busting pace by eating two hot dogs and drinking two beers in each of the first three innings. He seemed destined for a solo victory, but one competitor, whose name I didn’t catch, dreamed of taking him down. I know this because I overheard one of his friend’s urging him on to eat more two hot dogs in the eighth inning. For the better part of the evening, I made small talk with several people, but I had abstained from talking junk. Better to bite my lip, I figured, in a setting where I barely knew anyone. But now that I was feeling slightly tipsy, I decided to urge on this rising contender.

“Come on man, this is your one chance to be great,” I told him. I meant it with a hint of playful sarcasm, obviously, although it came across quite seriously. I assumed he would laugh and maybe say something like, “Then I’m going to need a dozen more hot dogs. And relish. Lots and lots of relish.” But the thing about sarcasm is that you have to know somebody to know that they’re being sarcastic. And this guy definitely didn’t know me.

“Actually, I was a state champion in wrestling,” he said, completely straight-faced, as if no other achievement could match it. Seventy-six ounces of beer dared me to tell him that I had actually won a national championship last year. But something else—probably the hot dogs—told me not to mess with a champion wrestler who’d been drinking for the past two hours. I froze for an incredibly awkward five seconds.

“Well,” I finally said, “consider this another opportunity to be great.” He continued to stare blankly at me. So I shut up.

When the ninth inning rolled along, I was especially happy that the Mariners had the lead, meaning that the Red Sox would have to bat in the bottom of the inning and extend the time we had to complete the challenge. Even though the mystery hot dog I chose from the grill tasted like it had gone for a ride down the Glass’ driveway, straight to the gutter, and back to the grill—and even though it was burnt (something like seven innings burnt)— I refused to let one bad hot dog ruin eight innings of hard work. I finished the burnt dog and chugged my last beer with one out to spare.

The real surprise came at the last minute, when the wrestler revealed that he had eaten two dogs and drank two beers in the final inning to tie Matt for the title. Between them, they’d put away 24 hot dogs and a case of beer over the course of three hours and five minutes.

•     •     •     •     •     •     •     •     •     •     •     •     •     •     •     •     •

As Carie drove us home, I thought back to that phone call with my dad. I considered calling him to let him know that I wasn’t terribly drunk. Of course, I planned to do this by acting extremely drunk, at first, before screaming, “Siiiiike, dad! I totally owned the 999 Challenge and I’m not even that drunk!”

Mainly, I thought about his biggest concern. That there was no value to participating in the 999 Challenge.

Now that I’d completed the challenge, I realized that those concerns were all for nothing. There was great value in this. I had made new friends (considering Matt doesn’t think I’m a psychotic stalker after reading this) and I had witnessed two men push themselves to extremes.

Best of all, I discovered the secret to guaranteed success in the 999 Challenge:

Always wear shorts with an elastic waistband.