Preparing for the Pizza Challenge

Today would be a HUGE day, so I tried to keep it pretty light. This of course means having a brotein bar for breakfast. 

I then had a small slice of chocolate pound cake that Sidney's aunt had made.

I then fasted the rest of the day. I had made plans to meet Ray at Johnny's later in the evening to catch up some more. This gave me an idea. For a while now, Quinn and I have been planning to take on the 18" Biggin pizza challenge at Old Shawnee Pizza Company. Given these plans, I've been trying to judge how difficult it will be and my abilities to eat an entire 18" pizza. One of the barometers I've used in the past was Johnny's pizza. Now, I never order pizza at Johnny's since their Buffalo chicken strips are so good, but everyone else orders the pizza quite frequently. And it always is the case that the pizzas go unfinished, so I inevitable have a couple slices after eating my meal. There are a few things to consider in these situations.

(1) The pizzas at Johnny's are 18"
(2) There are 8 slices in each pizza
(3) I never really feel that full after eating my food plus the couple slices of pizza

So, I'm essentially eating a quarter of an 18" pizza after I eat all of my own food. And since I don't feel full even after all of that, I always kind of assume I could eat a whole 18" pizza. Well, tonight, I decided to find out for sure.

When we got there, I ordered an 18" pizza with sausage. I wanted to keep it simple so I could get a good baseline measurement.

I know it might be hard to discern the size of this pizza, but here's another picture with a glass for perspective:

And here is one slice on a full size plate:

So, with Ray's approval, I started the timer and got to work.

And? Did I finish? Is that even a question? Of course I finished! I ate the whole pizza in 28 minutes. But again, there are a few things to consider regarding these results.

(1) The pizza at Johnny's may be thinner than the pizza at Old Shawnee
(2) I wasn't in hardcore food challenge mode tonight
(3) I wasn't full after eating the whole pizza

I realize that the pizza at Johnny's may be and likely is completely different from the pizza at Old Shawnee Pizza Company. I've never been to Old Shawnee. That being said, I won't say I took my time eating this pizza, but I wasn't eating as fast as I could. I was talking to Ray, we were telling stories, and we were chatting with our waitress. If I had been solely focused on eating this pizza as fast as possible, I think I could have done it in under 20 minutes. This is encouraging because the official challenge at Old Shawnee has a time limit of 60 minutes, which is more than double the time it took me to eat this pizza. Also, regardless of the time it took me to eat it, I wasn't full afterward. Ray even gave me one of his chicken strips that he couldn't eat.

And to top it all off, we went to Sylas and Maddy's afterward.

The moral of this story is that I'm feeling pretty confident about this pizza challenge. Stay tuned for the results on December 30th.