Competitive eater Joey Chestnut made history once again on the Fourth of July, cramming down a record 74 hot dogs in 10 minutes at the 2018 Nathan’s Famous International Hot Dog Eating Contest in Coney Island.
That gave him his eleventh title in the contest overall, and was two more than he managed to swallow in last year’s competition.
Now, the fact that he emerged victorious once again didn’t surprise us. What did throw us? During the broadcast, the ESPN announcers mentioned that Chestnut runs 10 miles a week, which he credits for giving him the boost in both his endurance and breathing to help him power through the dreaded “hot dog wall” that rises up mid-competition.
We’re obviously familiar with the far-reaching benefits of running—everything from heart health to stress management—but this is the first we’ve heard that it can also help you eat mass quantities of food in small snippets of time.
What those 10 miles a week can’t do: make up for the caloric damage caused by the 10 minutes of shoveling hot dogs down your throat as the clock ticks away.
If you really want a running regimen that’s going to cancel out a 10-minute, 74-hot dog binge, you’re going to have to kick it up quite a bit from Chestnut’s routine.
So we wanted to do the math. According to Nathan’s website, one natural casing frankfurter comes in at 170 calories. Then, add another 130 for the bun. That gives you 300 calories for the entire sandwich—or 22,200 for all 74 dogs and buns.
Then let’s look at Chestnut, a 34-year-old, 6-foot-1 guy weighing in normally at 230 pounds.
According to AdAge,Chestnut says he tries to exercise at least three times a week. We’re not sure of his mile pace, but let’s estimate him at a 10-minute mile. If he’s running three days a week for about 10 miles total, each run would be about three and one-third miles. According to our calories-burned running calculator, at a 10-minute mile pace, he’d end up burning 579 calories per run, or 174 calories per mile.
That would bring him up to about 1,740 calories burned with running per week.
So Chestnut’s running routine burns enough extra calories to allow him to eat just about six hot dogs without putting him a caloric surplus for the week. If you look at his record-setting 74 hot dogs and buns from Wednesday (22,200 calories total), Chestnut would have to run more than 127 miles a week at that 10-minute mile pace in order to burn off all those dogs.
The average runner wouldn’t come close to that mileage a week—and, well, there’s really no reason to. That number seems daunting because that massive pile of hot dogs consumed was extreme. Though Chestnut is certainly more game for the food challenges over the running.
“Oh, I love a good hot dog,” Chestnut told ESPN. “It doesn’t get old. Just like running doesn’t get old to people who like to run. I just love to eat.”
Here’s a better option. Consume your hot dogs in a quantity able to be counted more accurately on the fingers of one hand, rather than those tracked using the baker’s dozen. Make it fit into your diet, so that way, you won’t feel the need to do crazy calculations to figure out everything you’d have to do to burn them off.
Hot dogs in moderation are perfectly fine. Eating so many you feel the need to run every hour of your off-time? Not so much.
Another option: Why not merge the two together, into one delicious, hot-dog fueled exercise session, which we’d like to propose as the Hot Dog Mile. The staff here at Runner’s World is no stranger to food-guzzling running events—take our Taco Mile, for instance.
We have the running part down, but none of us here has quite the competitive eating pedigree as Chestnut—so, who would emerge victorious? We’d like to see.
So Joey, if you’re reading this, think you can beat us in the Hot Dog Mile?
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