iStockphoto / Rattankun Thongbun/BartekSzewczyk
assorted donuts with chocolate frosting, topping sprinkles donuts Colorful variety and Variety of flavors mix of multi colored sweet donuts with frosted sprinkled on pink background. top view
The annual Tour de Donuts cycling race in Illinois is a 36-mile race with a twist. There are two donut stations where racers can shave time off their official racing time.
Competitors must complete the 34-mile cycling race but there are two stops on the course with donut stations and 5-minutes from the cumulative time is subtracted for every donut eaten. This year, the winning rider at SIXTEEN donuts!
Could You Win The Tour de Donuts Cycling Race?
iStockphoto / Dmitry Epov
This year’s Tour de Donuts took place last weekend on July 11 in Staunton, Illinois. The overall goal is simple: have fun.
At the end of the day, this is PEAK endurance sports behavior. Finding a way to carb load as much as humanly possible while putting on a race for adults who still like to have fun. It reminds me of the last triathlon I did back in March where the biggest selling point on their website was ‘unlimited hot dogs for all finishers after the race.’
For this race, competitors can stop at two donut shops, one in Mt. Olive and another in Eagarville. For every donut eaten there is 5 minutes subtracted from the overall time. Anyone seeking to actually win needs to run the math of how many donuts they can eat while still maintaining peak form.
Colin Campbell won this year’s Tour de Donuts after downing 16 donuts. Competitor Rose Martin ate 20 (!!) donuts, the most of anyone in the field, and she finished 27th overall with a donut adjusted time of 1:34:09.3 (unadjusted time of 3:14:09.28).
These donut aid stations look slammed. It’s an all-out dash to get your hands on donuts. So there definitely has to be a strategy of sprinting in Zone 5 from donut stop to donut stop and using your time eating donuts to let your heart rate come down before blasting it back up to 185 BPM on the way to the next station.
Colin Campbell’s winning donut adjusted time was 43:44.7. His unadjusted time was 2:03:44.61. He was able to shave off an hour and 20 minutes from his time on the course by crushing 16 donuts. Worth it? I’d say so as he will forever be known as the 2026 Tour de Donuts winner. With the donut adjustment, his average donut adjusted speed was 49.9 MPH… I love that they’ve actually included the donut adjusted miles per hour times.
After eating the most donuts of any racers, Rose Martin took to Instagram to flex on the field:
This all reminds me of the Taco Bell 50K Ultra Marathon where competitors have to eat certain menu items from Taco Bell along the way. That’s a race I hope to participate in next year.
I didn’t get a good look at this year’s medals for finishers. But the Tour de Donuts medals from years past rocked. At this point, I just have a shelf in my closet where I’m tossing medals because they’re not super meaningful but I’d almost certainly display this one somewhere in the house if I won. I hve to say, I’m a little surprised at how crowded the donut stations looked in this clip:
So again, I ask, could you win the Tour de Donuts? What would your strategy be? Go all out on the bike in hopes of winning through time? Would you train by eating donuts? I had 2 this morning before 90 minutes on the bike just as a source of carbs. I’ve somehow reached that point in endurance sports training where ‘fuel’ comes from things like donuts and Nerds Gummy Clusters. Carbs are carbs.
While the strategy of eating a TON of donuts seems like the easiest path to glory, you still have to be able to go fast on the bike after finishing those donuts. So training while downing donuts seems like a must. Let me know what you think down below in the comments!